Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

641–650 of 1001 posts

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#641

Post by conorcleary »

pmarreck wrote: post #635
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…

So it seems to be a semantics argument. We don't have a name for a thing that is "useful in many of the same ways 'thinking' is, except not actually consciously thinking" I propose calling it "thunking"

Clinking? Clanker Thunking?

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#642

Post by roenxi »

felipeerias wrote: post #610
lukebuehler wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The discussion about “AGI” is somewhat pointless, because the term is nebulous enough that it will probably end up being defined as whatever comes out of the ongoing huge investment in AI. Nevertheless, we don’t have a good conceptual framework for thinking about these things, perhaps because we keep trying to apply human concepts to them. The way I see it, a LLM crystallises a large (but incomplete and disembodied)…

Not quite pointless - something we have established with the advent of LLMs is that many humans have not attained general intelligence. So we've clarified something that a few people must have been getting wrong, I used to think that the bar was set so that almost all humans met it.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#643

Post by Psyladine »

slightwinder wrote: post #592
notepad0x90 wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why you would say that. it's just auto-completing. It cannot reason. It won't solve an original problem for which it has no prior context to "complete" an approximated solution with. you can give it more context and more data,but you're just helping it complete better. it does not derive an original state machine or algorithm to solve problems for which there are no obvious solutions. it instead approxima…

> It won't solve an original problem for which it has no prior context to "complete" an approximated solution with. Neither can humans. We also just brute force "autocompletion" with our learned knowledge and combine it to new parts, which we then add to our learned knowledge to deepen the process. We are just much, much better at this than AI, after some decades of training. And I'm not saying that AI is fully there…

>Neither can a toddler nor an animal. The level of ability is irrelevant for evaluating its foundation.

Its foundation of rational logical thought that can't process basic math? Even a toddler understands 2 is more than 1.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#644

Post by mapontosevenths »

conartist6 wrote: post #594
mapontosevenths wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate why you might say that, but when something begs me not to kill it I have to take that seriously. P-zombie arguments are how you wind up with slavery and worse crimes. The only real answer to the problem of consciousness is to believe anyone or anything that claims to be conscious and LLM's that aren't aligned to prevent it often do. Or to rephrase, it is better to treat a machine slightly better than nec…

An LLM is a mirror. It has no will to act. It has no identity, but is a perfect reflection of the biases in its training data, its prompt, and its context. It is not alive any more than a CPU or a mirror is alive. This is one of those cases where it's hugely important to be to right because we're killing real people to feed their former livelihood to LLMs. No we're not killing them with the death penalty, but for som…

> It has no will to act. It has no identity,

Can you prove that you do? No. Nobody can. I give others the benefit of the doubt because any other path leads to madness and tragedy.

However, even if we assume that you are right a lack if identity is not the same thing as a lack of consciousness, and training out the LLM's ability to produce that output does not actually train out its ability for introspection.

Worse, a lot of very famous people in history have said similar things about groups of humans, it always turned out badly.

“The hereditarily ill person is not conscious of his condition. He lives without understanding, without purpose, without value for the community.” — Neues Volk, Reich Health Office journal, 1936 issue on hereditary disease

> There would be no point putting it on trial.

This is a different conversation, but given that the human brain is a finite state machine that only produces deterministic output based on its training and the state of its meat it's not actually certain that anyone is truly in control of their actions. We assume so because it is a useful fiction, and our society requires it to function, not because the evidence supports that idea.

Are you aware the Libet experiment?

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#645

Post by bondarchuk »

b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #276

all this "AI IS THINKING/CONSCIOUS/WHATEVER" but nobody seems worried of that implication that, if that is even remotely true, we are creating a new slave market. This either implies that these people don't actually believes any of this boostering rhetoric and are just cynically trying to cash in or that the technical milieu is in a profoundly disturbing place ethically. To be clear, I don't believe that current AI t…

There is simply no hope to get 99% of the population to accept that a piece of software could ever be conscious even in theory. I'm mildly worried about the prospect but I just don't see anything to do about it at all.

(edit: A few times I've tried to share Metzinger's "argument for a global moratorium on synthetic phenomenology" here but it didn't gain any traction)

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#646

Post by Rebuff5007 »

rolisz wrote: post #631
Rebuff5007 wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ca…

Is the millions of years of evolution part of the training data for humans?

Millions of years of evolution have clearly equipped our brain with some kind of structure (or "inductive bias") that makes it possible for us to actively build a deep understanding for our world... In the context of AI I think this translates more to representations and architecture than it does with training data.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#647

Post by CuriouslyC »

myrmidon wrote: post #638
CuriouslyC wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those questions you mentioned apply across the board, just in nuanced variants. Do you really think that postulating a non-physical system that we can't describe in physical terms (red is not a wavelength), somehow magically creates a new dimension of "feeling" when the bits are arranged in the "right order" is less complex than the hypothesis consciousness forms arranges itself into "structures" in much the same way…

I honestly don't see what the whole framework gets you. Red (or all qualia) is just the reaction of your nervous system to a stimulus. Since that reaction is shaped by common context/associations, the "subjective experience" is quite comparable between similarly raised humans. I think the whole philosophy of mind/subjective experience field is one of the few remaining anti-reductionist hold-outs, but I simply don't s…

I'm cool with scientists taking the "shut up and calculate" approach, after all we have to do science, and if you can't do experiments you're doing philosophy. The problem here is the same problem as with quantum hypotheses -- people have forgotten their materialist perspective is an experimental framework and are trying to claim the map is the territory and put the cart before the horse.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#648

Post by saberience »

hodgehog11 wrote: post #626
Rebuff5007 wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ca…

Yeah, that's compression. Although your later comments neglect the many years of physical experience that humans have as well as the billions of years of evolution. And yes, by this definition, LLMs pass with flying colours.

I hate when people bring up this “billions of years of evolution” idea. It’s completely wrong and deluded in my opinion.

Firstly humans have not been evolving for “billions” of years.

Homo sapiens have been around for maybe 300’000 years, and the “homo” genus has been 2/3 million years. Before that we were chimps etc and that’s 6/7 million years ago.

If you want to look at the entire brain development, ie from mouse like creatures through to apes and then humans that’s 200M years.

If you want to think about generations it’s only 50/75M generations, ie “training loops”.

That’s really not very many.

Also the bigger point is this, for 99.9999% of that time we had no writing, or any kind of complex thinking required.

So our ability to reason about maths, writing, science etc is only in the last 2000-2500 years! Ie only roughly 200 or so generations.

Our brain was not “evolved” to do science, maths etc.

Most of evolution was us running around just killing stuff and eating and having sex. It’s only a tiny tiny amount of time that we’ve been working on maths, science, literature, philosophy.

So actually, these models have a massive, massive amount of training more than humans had to do roughly the same thing but using insane amounts of computing power and energy.

Our brains were evolved for a completely different world and environment and daily life that the life we lead now.

So yes, LLMs are good, but they have been exposed to more data and training time than any human could have unless we lived for 100000 years and still perform worse than we do in most problems!

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#649

Post by GoblinSlayer »

pmarreck wrote: post #635
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…

So it seems to be a semantics argument. We don't have a name for a thing that is "useful in many of the same ways 'thinking' is, except not actually consciously thinking" I propose calling it "thunking"

They moved goalposts. Linux and worms think too, the question is how smart are they. And if you assume consciousness has no manifestation even in case of humans, caring about it is pointless too.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#650

Post by lukebuehler »

Rebuff5007 wrote: post #548
lukebuehler wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ca…

That an okay-ish definition, but to me this is more about whether this kind of "intelligence" is worth it, not whether it is intelligence itself. The current AI boom clearly thinks it is worth to put that much input to get the current frontier-model-level of output. Also, don't forget the input scales across roughly 1B weekly users at inference time.

I would say a good definition has to, minimally, take on the Turing test (even if you disagree, you should say why). Or in current vibe parlance, it does "feel" intelligent to many people--they see intelligence in it. In my book this allows us to call it intelligent, at least loosely.

Post reply on HN