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They’re made out of weights

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Re: They’re made out of weights

#531

Post by penteract »

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…

I'm open to the possibilty of AI conciousness, and there is some desparation related to the concept of a higher being:

There are many people who will categorically rule out the posibility of AI consciousness due to near-unshakable belief in a higher being. This argument resembles "Christians should not be worried about our climate since God is ultimately in control." Such views make it harder to collectively prevent dangers from a sentient AI, or harm to a sentient AI.

I do not claim that everyone who believes in a higher power believes concious AI to be impossible, or vice versa; just that it would be very hard to change the minds of those who adhere to this reasoning.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#532

Post by IsTom »

orangecat wrote: post #502
IsTom wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internal experience affects movement of physical molecules in what way?

Having internal mental experiences causes my brain to send physical signals to my fingers in order to type the words "I have internal mental experiences". A philosophical zombie would type those same words, but they would be caused by something else since by definition it lacks those experiences. That would be rather surprising, and it would be even more surprising that the words that the zombie emits coincidentally…

As the article says the alternatives (that the author seems to favor instead) boil down to "there's some physics we missed" and probably that's the point where we differ. I find that implausible, what would that be? Consciousness quantum field? Consciousness boson? If it's going to be interacting with matter it has to have a way to do that.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#533

Post by mjg2 »

simpaticoder wrote: post #518
mjg2 wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot tell if you are asserting my comment is chauvinistic with your use of "we." If that is so: that's a poor counter to my point or assessment of my stance because it assumes I'm making a baseless argument as a "proud human." My original comment (roughly "there's no intelligence in this article, nor sentience in LLMs") is in response to the blog post's buried lede (that the cumulative activity of LLMs has accrue…

I read your comment as criticizing the OP's story as pointless and unoriginal. My comment elucidated the point of the original story, and what I think is the point of the second story.

Roger that, thank you. w/r/g your recapitulation of my point: yes, the story is unoriginal and pointless, and the HN community seems to eat it up-- isn't that odd.

So I still disagree with your elucidated point (as you end with "which is valid"): the OP author is using prior art fiction to bolster their opinion of LLM-based software tools as being a possible vector of sentience, not to disarm our chauvinism like the original author intended. If OP wanted to make that point, they could have written a critical essay instead of farming out their thoughts as tokens.

But still, I look forward to reading the book you suggested to understand and appreciate your perspective more.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#534

Post by f_klem »

ozgung wrote: post #431
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…

> I highly recommend people in the AI research space should read philosophy and modern linguistics. On the contrary, I highly recommend people in Philosophy of mind and linguistics should start reading AI research papers because their theories and ideas are highly outdated, even ancient. Your books are from 1927 and 1972 respectively and Turing's article is from 1950s. And they are relatively new with respect to othe…

> On the contrary, I highly recommend people in Philosophy of mind and linguistics should start reading AI research papers because their theories and ideas are highly outdated, even ancient. Your books are from 1927 and 1972 respectively and Turing's article is from 1950s. And they are relatively new with respect to other works in Philosophy.

People in philosophy and cognitive linguistics do read AI research. Don't get fooled by the publishing dates: although Heidegger's work dates from 1927, the work is contemporary. The same happens with Dreyfus' work. Again, publishing dates don't mean anything here. Maybe you can clarify why they are outdated.

> If one doesn't adequately understand what we have in 2026, how can they theorize about it? As others they don't understand how the mind/brain work, BUT ALSO they don't understand how the AI works.

I would say that people involved in the critique of AI do know how it works. But I've found that is normally the case that people in AI research does not have the framing provided by works in philosophy or cognitive linguistics.

> I think philosophy people and Linguist will catch up in a century, like they did with Turing. Philosophers of this century are not in humanities or literature. They are in science and engineering. What do you base your claims on? Plenty of philosophers work in humanities, literature, sociology as well as science and engineering. Philosophers not catching up? The critique on automation and AI already dates from the early 20s if not before.

> Heidegger was trained on priesthood and Theology. You should read greater minds like Hinton, LeCun etc. if you want to think on these things. They are the real Philosophers.

Sorry, but this does not make too much sense. Hinton and LeCun are great in their own fields. But seriously, they are not philosophers, they are inventors.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#535

Post by anon291 »

The weights are uninteresting. People need to get out of their head that NNs are built on numbers. They're built on matrices, which are conveniently representable as numeric arrays, but are their own thing. Similarly, the rational numbers are their own thing and some are representable as 32-bit numbers via the IEEE754 encoding (or 16-bit numbers via a variety of encodings, etc).

Matrices are interesting because they can encode any algebraic group. They're also interesting because they can encode arbitrary linear transformations over a space. All of these things are interesting, and have nothing to do with numbers.

For any particular language model, you can always rotate the matrices and the embeddings and such and get a perfectly reasonable model out that behaves exactly the same.

This is because the training process produces a particular geometry, so transformations which preserve that geometry preserve the structure of the network. The geometry is interesting, the numbers are not.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#536

Post by mandymoorefan »

Lplololopo wrote: post #232
noduerme wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is that different from any other model of reality that you'd use to winnow a dataset into an answer to a question? 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 almost like people desperately want to give up their agency and creativi…

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…

This seems to be a little naive about how humans consume the benefits we create in society.

"Let people do old handcraft jobs, let them do more sports, let them read more, let them write and make more. Let them enjoy nature."

Very nice thoughts. You know we all could do this today without "burning it down"? Get in your pod, eat your slop, and watch your screen is where this is headed.

"I want freedom to do what i want and not sitting in front of a computer and coding for some company."

You get that it's you creating the misery here? Then stop? Don't do it. Go start a farm or whatever you think will solve your problems. At some point this all boils down to "chop wood and fetch water" so if the modern way of doing that is so terrible then stop. Go fetch water the old fashioned way and be free.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#537

Post by the_af »

mjg2 wrote: post #452
Planktonne wrote: post #141

The original story is an original work made by a human consciousness exploring how it might be different from other forms of consciousness. This one is a pastiche made by a human consciousness borrowing extremely heavily from another human consciousness justifying why something else might be another form of consciousness. That rather undercuts the point; if this was generated by an LLM unprompted, it would be differe…

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…

> I'm skeptical of AI sentience because we must do our due diligence, not because it's impossible. Skepticism is the only respectful approach because to grant sentience is a step away from granting rights.

Thanks for saying this! It amazes me to witness so much pushback (in HN of all places!) for the call for skepticism and scientific rigor on claims made by business which have vested interests in hyping things up.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#538

Post by f_klem »

housecarpenter wrote: post #275
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…

Why is asking 'can machines think?' assuming our thinking could be modeled as a machine? It's raising the possibility that our thinking could be modeled as a machine. Given that, as you acknowledge, we don't have a clue how our mind works, it seems premature to rule out this possibility. Rather, I would say that ruling it out betrays an assumption that we understand how the mind works enough that we can say that it i…

> It's raising the possibility that our thinking could be modeled as a machine. Given that, as you acknowledge, we don't have a clue how our mind works, it seems premature to rule out this possibility.

In order to raise the possibility that our thinking can be modeled as a machine, there needs to be a previous question: 'can our thinking be modeled at all?'. And before that, already the idea of possibility: 'our thinking could be something that can be modeled'. Since we know 'we can think', asking 'can machines think?' needs the assumption that machines and brains are alike. If there is no assumption, then we should ask 'if brains and machines are alike, then we could raise the possibility of thinking a machine could also think'. But when we say 'brains and machines are alike', we are implicitly saying 'brains are like machines'. There is no problem asking 'can machines think?', but there is indeed a problem with implicitly assuming that brains and machines are alike when we do not known it yet. I am critiquing the idea of assumptions here, not the research.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#539

Post by simpaticoder »

mjg2 wrote: post #533
simpaticoder wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read your comment as criticizing the OP's story as pointless and unoriginal. My comment elucidated the point of the original story, and what I think is the point of the second story.

Roger that, thank you. w/r/g your recapitulation of my point: yes, the story is unoriginal and pointless, and the HN community seems to eat it up-- isn't that odd. So I still disagree with your elucidated point (as you end with "which is valid"): the OP author is using prior art fiction to bolster their opinion of LLM-based software tools as being a possible vector of sentience, not to disarm our chauvinism like the…

The point is valid regardless of whether you judge LLM to be sentient or not, because the point is to say "don't let your prejudice about substrate bias your decision". Or in other words, if you're going to weigh something don't tip the scale. This is good advice whatever the outcome of the measurement.

Blindsight is a remarkable book - I hope you enjoy it!

Re: They’re made out of weights

#540

Post by f_klem »

truculent wrote: post #349
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. That agency or free will exists outside of our subjective experience is an assumption; does any given theory need to explain agency, or is it sufficient to explain that we feel we have agency?

Indeed, I know there is research going on placing agency and free will as illusions of our own subjective experience. Yet, there is a big gap from a purely mechanistic view of the mind to the idea/phenomena of subjective experience.
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