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They’re made out of weights

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Re: They’re made out of weights

#521

Post by danielmarkbruce »

runarberg wrote: post #489
cortesoft wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only major difference I see is that beyond a certain number of transformations, people are willing to treat it as some sort of miracle, and too tired to figure out why it came up with the answer it came up with. It’s funny, because I thought you were talking about humans here when you wrote this. We know some things about how our bodies encode information that is sent to the brain, and we know some things about…

> but after that we get too tired and give up on how the brain works and treat it like a miracle. I disagree. We know very well how neurons work, and we have a pretty good idea of how neural activity translates to behavior. In other words, we have a pretty good idea on how the brain works. We stop at consciousness because as of yet it is in the realm of philosophy, not science. We don‘t know what consciousness is or…

Saying we have a good idea of how the brain works massively overstates the case...

We know how neurons fire. We do not know how a brain turns that into thought, meaning, intention, experience and on and on. That is not "pretty well understanding the brain", it's understanding some components and hand waving the thing we actually care about.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#522

Post by f_klem »

Sharlin wrote: post #384
gyomu wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you disagree with the assumption that cells are machines? Yes? Literally no machine ever built by humans is capable of (or even hinting at beginnings of capability for) replication or novel synthesis like cells are, let alone autonomously, it’s quite unconceivable that anyone would take this to be a reasonable assumption in the first place.

What exactly is there about cells that's inconceivable to replicate or synthetize? "I cannot conceive it" is a fallacy, an argument from incredulity. Trying to disguise it by draping it in the passive voice does not change that fact.

Nothing. It is just that they are so incredibly complex, that after +100 years of research we still don't know how they work or why. Will there be a time when we finally understand them 100% and could replicate them? Could be. That does not make them machines in any case, and the fallacy of thinking that mind/consciousness can emerge from machines will still be there.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#523

Post by brainwad »

leothetechguy wrote: post #268

>Weights helped me draft and proof this story. I'm suprised no one talks about this. AI Art isn't Art. AI Poetry isn't Art. And I'm tired of it. I know hacker news isn't the best place to complain about that but still... I'm not gonna read something somebody didn't put in the effort to write on their own. Especially not Poetry.

Who cares if it's art? I enjoyed the read nevertheless.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#524

Post by f_klem »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #302
f_klem wrote: post #161

After reading Being and Time from Martin Heidegger, What Computers can't still do by Hubert Dreyfus, and some authors in cognitive linguistics (Langacker and Lakoff mainly), I strongly tend to disagree with any theory about emergent consciousness in modern or future AI systems, any theory proposing a similarity between AI systems and the human brain/mind, or any theory about the computational mind. What all these the…

> These theories are flawed in the sense that they cannot account for subjective experience and agency, amongst other things I don't see how any of the works you referenced can account for that either? Since when is the problem of consciousness solved and we can definitely say what does or doesn't result in consciousness?

None of the works I mentioned solved or try to solve the mind/body problem or the issue of consciousness.

They are a frame of reference for not stepping into the common fallacies that the AI research field is based on.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#525

Post by Lplololopo »

Jensson wrote: post #466
Lplololopo wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a blind person only can describe lava to you after they touched and heared it?

A blind person has touched warm and hot things and gotten burned before, and then they are told lava is this molten liquid that is even hotter than anything they have touched. That is enough for them to understand. A blind person that never touched a hot object wouldn't really know though, there is a reason we dismiss talk from people who lack experience.

You don't know that. Yo don't know what someone would think if you tell them the general concept of cold and warm.

The reaction you should have, the feeling etc.

I asked chatgpt how it would describe a scene without mentioning temperature. It was very good in describing what a human would describe.

I'm aware of the bias we have against LLMs but I think people just underestimate how much data is there.

I'm not saying a robot wouldn't be better with this information or an LLM and they actually use temperature sensors for robots so they can control movement speed and dexterity with overheating elements but the gap is small.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#526

Post by monknomo »

jenniferhooley wrote: post #458
Lplololopo wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agency? What are you talking about? I want freedom. I want freedom to do what i want and not sitting in front of a computer and coding for some company. Please AI lets burn down knowledge work and labor work. Lets create so much stress to our society that we start rethinking what works mean. Lets redefine work into discovering the world again. Let people do old handcraft jobs, let them do more sports, let them read m…

"I want freedom to do what i want and not sitting in front of a computer and coding for some company." "Please AI lets burn down knowledge work and labor work" "Let people do old handcraft jobs." So many presuppositions about what people want to do. As a child I spent a lot of time programming and doing "knowledge work" because it's fun - I don't enjoy "old hand-crafted jobs". Sure, let's definitely destroy capitalis…

right, these knowledge work and coding jobs are, by my lights, about the best possible job. From my perspective we've invented a machine that does the fun parts while leaving me the less fun parts (review, various hard-to-claude janitorial tasks, etc).

I might like woodworking as a hobby (for example), but I sure as heck don't want to be a carpenter or to depend on my ability to hand craft enough widgets people like to survive

Re: They’re made out of weights

#527

Post by LordDragonfang »

irishcoffee wrote: post #473
mjg2 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your point. I don't understand why half these comments are taking this blog post seriously when it ends with "Weights helped me draft and proof this story." > Weights helped me draft and proof this story. Any HN reader here now, I encourage you to read the original ( https://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/TheyMade.s... ) in one sitting, go about your day, then read it again. Maybe make some n…

People argue for AI sentience from a place of emotion couched in logic. they _desperately_ want it to be true and will not take a logical step back. Any argument comes back to "well doesn't a human brain work like that?" Or some variation of it. My personal theory is a fuzzy thought about how people want to reject the concept of a higher being and want to embrace the fact that we are now able to create our own consci…

> People argue for AI sentience from a place of emotion couched in logic. they _desperately_ want it to be true and will not take a logical step back. Any argument comes back to "well doesn't a human brain work like that?" Or some variation of it.

It's funny, because I find myself constantly stating the inverse of this. Every argument I've seen against AI being sentient plainly comes from, as you so eloquently put it, exactly "a place of emotion couched in logic". People desperately want it to not be true and will not take the logical step back of examining its actual similarities to human intelligence. Every argument comes down to "but it's not actually a human", or some variation of it -- which, if you pay attention, is not actually a logical counterargument. (Or, ironically, "but it doesn't have a soul", which is why the Pope is the perfect figurehead for these people).

If you already know any logical argument against it can be countered with "well doesn't a human brain work like that?", why are you so confident that your position is actually the logical one?

...And could it simply be that, alternatively, the concept is not actually a logical distinction, but rather an emotional one, made by emotional beings to put a word to what they claim makes them special?

Re: They’re made out of weights

#528

Post by dekhn »

dekhn's 12th law (amended): any discussion of how AI and brains work will devolve into several threads about the nature of the subjective human experience, solipsism, whether humans are machines, and whether a feedforward network trained by backpropagation can be conscious.

12th law, corollary: nothing of value will come from these threads

Re: They’re made out of weights

#529

Post by f_klem »

phkahler wrote: post #392
f_klem wrote: post #161

After reading Being and Time from Martin Heidegger, What Computers can't still do by Hubert Dreyfus, and some authors in cognitive linguistics (Langacker and Lakoff mainly), I strongly tend to disagree with any theory about emergent consciousness in modern or future AI systems, any theory proposing a similarity between AI systems and the human brain/mind, or any theory about the computational mind. What all these the…

>> and that is that we understand (or we think we understand) how our brain/mind works. But the truth is that we don't know. And there's even not a single clue that we actually know too much, and not a clue that our brain/mind and cells work 'as the machines we build'. >> I highly recommend people in the AI research space should read philosophy and modern linguistics. I highly recommend the philosophers read some neu…

> I highly recommend the philosophers read some neuroscience Philosophers do read neuroscience and technical reports on AI.

> The whole "model weights" thing in AI is modeled after the synaptic connections and between actual neurons In reality, it is a really poor and basic model of what is actually happening in a real brain

Brains and modern AI systems (LLMs for example) are structurally different. (Don't get confused by topology. A structure is more than topology: it is also what the structure is made of, thus the properties of the material contribute and define what can emerge atop the structure)

Re: They’re made out of weights

#530

Post by brainwad »

namuol wrote: post #513
brainwad wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is clearly fair use parody.

I never said it wasn’t fair use, I just think it’s kind of disrespectful of the author’s wishes. Being legal doesn’t make it moral or admirable.

I generally give short shrift to the idea of author's moral rights , _especially_ when they try to use those rights to stop derivative works. OP credited Bisson, that's enough in my books.
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