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The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

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Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#541

Post by geon »

XenophileJKO wrote: post #468
aydyn wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learn to work on interesting problems? If the problem you are working on is novel and hard, the AI will stumble. Generalizing your experience to everyone else's betrays a lack of imagination.

I'm genuinely curious what you work on that is so "novel" that an LLM doesn't work well on? I feel like so little is TRUELY novel. Almost everything is built on older concepts and to some degree expertise can be applied or repurposed.

It doesn't have to be very novel at all. Anything but the most basic TODO-list app.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#542

Post by darthvaden »

tkz1312 wrote: post #274

Having seen LLMs so many times produce coherent, sensible and valid chains of reasoning to diagnose issues and bugs in software I work on, I am at this point in absolutely no doubt that they are thinking. Consciousness or self awareness is of course a different question, and ones whose answer seems less clear right now. Knee jerk dismissing the evidence in front of your eyes because you find it unbelievable that we c…

If AI is thinking if slavery is bad then how can somebody own AI. How can investors can shares from AI profits? We are ok with slavery now. Ok i will have two black slaves now. Who can ask me? Why shld that be illegal?

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#543

Post by lukebuehler »

keiferski wrote: post #537
tkz1312 wrote: post #274

Having seen LLMs so many times produce coherent, sensible and valid chains of reasoning to diagnose issues and bugs in software I work on, I am at this point in absolutely no doubt that they are thinking. Consciousness or self awareness is of course a different question, and ones whose answer seems less clear right now. Knee jerk dismissing the evidence in front of your eyes because you find it unbelievable that we c…

I don’t see how being critical of this is a knee jerk response. Thinking , like intelligence and many other words designating complex things, isn’t a simple topic. The word and concept developed in a world where it referred to human beings, and in a lesser sense, to animals. To simply disregard that entire conceptual history and say, “well it’s doing a thing that looks like thinking, ergo it’s thinking” is the lazy m…

If cannot the say they are "thinking", "intelligent" while we do not have a good definition--or, even more difficult, unanimous agreement on a definition--then the discussion just becomes about output.

They are doing useful stuff, saving time, etc, which can be measured. Thus also the defintion of AGI has largely become: "can produce or surpass the economic output of a human knowledge worker".

But I think this detracts from the more interesting discussion of what they are more essentially. So, while I agree that we should push on getting our terms defined, I think I'd rather work with a hazy definition, than derail so many AI discussion to mere economic output.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#544

Post by AlphaAndOmega0 »

popalchemist wrote: post #531
layer8 wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes after a night’s sleep, we wake up with an insight on a topic or a solution to a problem we encountered the day before. Did we “think” in our sleep to come up with the insight or solution? For all we know, it’s an unconscious process. Would we call it “thinking”? The term “thinking” is rather ill-defined, too bound to how we perceive our own wakeful thinking. When conversing with LLMs, I never get the feelin…

There is simply put no ongoing process and no feedback loop. The model does not learn. The cognition ends when the inference cycle ends. It's not thinking, it just produces output that looks similar to the output of thinking. But the process by which it does that is wholly unreleated.

Humans with certain amnestic syndromes are incapable of learning. That doesn't make them unintelligent or incapable of thought.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#545

Post by mirekrusin »

embedding-shape wrote: post #83
vidarh wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no way of measuring whether or not you experience feelings and sensations, or are just regurgitating statements to convince me of that. The only basis I have for assuming you are sentient according to that definition is trust in your self-reports.

I'm fairly sure we can measure human "sensation" as in detect physiological activity in the body in someone who is under anesthesia yet the body reacts in different ways to touch or pain. The "feelings" part is probably harder though.

You can measure model activity even better.

How do you know that model processing text or image input doesn't go through feeling of confusion or excitement or corrupted image doesn't "smell" right for it?

Just the fact that you can pause and restart it doesn't mean it doesn't emerge.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#546

Post by hagbarth »

tkz1312 wrote: post #274

Having seen LLMs so many times produce coherent, sensible and valid chains of reasoning to diagnose issues and bugs in software I work on, I am at this point in absolutely no doubt that they are thinking. Consciousness or self awareness is of course a different question, and ones whose answer seems less clear right now. Knee jerk dismissing the evidence in front of your eyes because you find it unbelievable that we c…

I'm not so sure. I, for one, do not think purely by talking to myself. I do that sometimes, but a lot of the time when I am working through something, I have many more dimensions to my thought than inner speech.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#547

Post by keiferski »

lukebuehler wrote: post #543
keiferski wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see how being critical of this is a knee jerk response. Thinking , like intelligence and many other words designating complex things, isn’t a simple topic. The word and concept developed in a world where it referred to human beings, and in a lesser sense, to animals. To simply disregard that entire conceptual history and say, “well it’s doing a thing that looks like thinking, ergo it’s thinking” is the lazy m…

If cannot the say they are "thinking", "intelligent" while we do not have a good definition--or, even more difficult, unanimous agreement on a definition--then the discussion just becomes about output. They are doing useful stuff, saving time, etc, which can be measured. Thus also the defintion of AGI has largely become: "can produce or surpass the economic output of a human knowledge worker". But I think this detrac…

Personally I think that kind of discussion is fruitless, not much more than entertainment.

If you’re asking big questions like “can a machine think?” Or “is an AI conscious?” without doing the work of clarifying your concepts, then you’re only going to get vague ideas, sci-fi cultural tropes, and a host of other things.

I think the output question is also interesting enough on its own, because we can talk about the pragmatic effects of ChatGPT on writing without falling into this woo trap of thinking ChatGPT is making the human capacity for expression somehow extinct. But this requires one to cut through the hype and reactionary anti-hype, which is not an easy thing to do.

That is how I myself see AI: immensely useful new tools, but in no way some kind of new entity or consciousness, at least without doing the real philosophical work to figure out what that actually means.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#548

Post by Rebuff5007 »

lukebuehler wrote: post #543
keiferski wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see how being critical of this is a knee jerk response. Thinking , like intelligence and many other words designating complex things, isn’t a simple topic. The word and concept developed in a world where it referred to human beings, and in a lesser sense, to animals. To simply disregard that entire conceptual history and say, “well it’s doing a thing that looks like thinking, ergo it’s thinking” is the lazy m…

If cannot the say they are "thinking", "intelligent" while we do not have a good definition--or, even more difficult, unanimous agreement on a definition--then the discussion just becomes about output. They are doing useful stuff, saving time, etc, which can be measured. Thus also the defintion of AGI has largely become: "can produce or surpass the economic output of a human knowledge worker". But I think this detrac…

Heres a definition. How impressive is the output relative to the input. And by input, I don't just mean the prompt, but all the training data itself.

Do you think someone who has only ever studied pre-calc would be able to work through a calculus book if they had sufficient time? how about a multi-variable calc book? How about grad level mathematics?

IMO intelligence and thinking is strictly about this ratio; what can you extrapolate from the smallest amount of information possible, and why? From this perspective, I dont think any of our LLMs are remotely intelligent despite what our tech leaders say.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#549

Post by _puk »

Zardoz84 wrote: post #497
tkz1312 wrote: post #274

Having seen LLMs so many times produce coherent, sensible and valid chains of reasoning to diagnose issues and bugs in software I work on, I am at this point in absolutely no doubt that they are thinking. Consciousness or self awareness is of course a different question, and ones whose answer seems less clear right now. Knee jerk dismissing the evidence in front of your eyes because you find it unbelievable that we c…

Having seen parrots so many times produce coherent, sensible, and valid chains of sounds and words, I am at this point in absolutely no doubt that they are thinking.

You think parrots don't think?

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#550

Post by lispybanana »

tkz1312 wrote: post #274

Having seen LLMs so many times produce coherent, sensible and valid chains of reasoning to diagnose issues and bugs in software I work on, I am at this point in absolutely no doubt that they are thinking. Consciousness or self awareness is of course a different question, and ones whose answer seems less clear right now. Knee jerk dismissing the evidence in front of your eyes because you find it unbelievable that we c…

Would they have diagnosed an issue if you hadn't presented it to them?

Life solves problems itself poses or collides with. Tools solve problems only when applied.

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