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The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

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Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#701

Post by uberduper »

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…

Sometimes I start thinking our brains work the same way as an LLM does when it comes to language processing. Are we just using probability based on what we already know and the context of the statement we're making to select the next few words? Maybe we apply a few more rules than an LLM on what comes next as we go.

We train ourselves on content. We give more weight to some content than others. While listening to someone speak, we can often predict their next words.

What is thinking without language? Without language are we just bags of meat reacting to instincts and emotions? Are instincts and emotions what's missing for AGI?

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#702

Post by hackinthebochs »

prmph wrote: post #309
tsimionescu wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all sounds very irrelevant. Consciousness is clearly tied to specific parts of a substrate. My consciousness doesn't change when a hair falls off my head, nor when I cut my fingernails. But it does change in some way if you were to cut the tip of my finger, or if I take a hormone pill. Similarly, if we can compute consciousness on a chip, then the chip obviously contains that consciousness. You can experimentall…

You make some interesting points, but: > Similarly, if we can compute consciousness on a chip, then the chip obviously contains that consciousness. This is like claiming that neurons are conscious, which as far as we can tell, they are not. For all you know, it is the algorithm that could be conscious. Or some interplay between the algorithm and the substrate, OR something else. Another way to think of it problem: Im…

>Is is the cluster that is conscious? Or the individual machines, or the chips, or the algorithm, or something else?

The bound informational dynamic that supervenes on the activity of the individual units in the cluster. What people typically miss is that the algorithm when engaged in a computing substrate is not just inert symbols, but an active, potent causal/dynamical structure. Information flows as modulated signals to and from each component and these signals are integrated such that the characteristic property of the aggregate signal is maintained. This binding of signals by the active interplay of component signals from the distributed components realizes the singular identity. If there is consciousness here, it is in this construct.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#703

Post by slightwinder »

staticman2 wrote: post #696
slightwinder wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>>> We also just brute force "autocompletion" Wouldn't be an A.I. discussion without a bizarre, untrue claim that the human brain works identically.

Similar, not identical. Like a bicycle and car are both vehicles with tires, but are still not identical vessels.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#704

Post by Uehreka »

guy2345 wrote: post #585
Uehreka wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here you go: (holds up phone with a photo of of Wittgenstein on the screen) Ah shoot, that’s not what you meant is it? Just use more precise language next time and I’m sure you’ll be understood.

what youre describing is an image of wittgenstein which is different from wittgenstein

Oh no, I miscommunicated my Wittgenstein joke so badly it’s being interpreted as a Rene Magritte joke!

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#705

Post by everdrive »

utopiah wrote: post #677
everdrive wrote: post #77

This is merely a debate about what it means to "think." We didn't really previously need to disambiguate thinking / intelligence / consciousness / sentience / ego / identity / etc. Now, we do. Partly because of this we don't have really well defined ways to define these terms and think about. Can a handheld calculator think? Certainly, depending on how we define "think."

> We didn't really previously need to disambiguate thinking / intelligence / consciousness / sentience / ego / identity / etc. Eh... Plato would like a word with you. Philosophy has been specifically trying to disentangle all that for millennia. Is this a joke?

And Plato had no grounding in biology, and so his work here was quite interesting but also quite wrong.

More precisely, I mean that the average person and the common culture has not really needed to disambiguate these terms. Can you define consciousness vs. sentience? And if you can, do you really think that the average person would share your definition? ie, your definition could be the _best_ definition, but my argument is that these are not widely agreed-upon terms.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#706

Post by skeeter2020 »

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"

I don't like it for a permanent solution, but "synthetic thought" might make a good enough placeholder until we figure this out. It feels most important to differentiate because I believe some parties have a personal interest in purposely confusing human thought with whatever LLMs are doing right now.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#707

Post by cindyllm »

dns_snek wrote: post #609
sdenton4 wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

s/LLM/human/

Clever. Yes, humans can be terrible at reasoning too, but in any half decent technical workplace it's so rare for people to fail to apply logic as often and in ways that are as frustrating to deal with as LLMs. And if they are then they should be fired. I can't say I remember a single coworker that would fit this description though many were frustrating to deal with for other reasons, of course.

[dead]

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#708

Post by bopbopbop7 »

bongodongobob wrote: post #504
bopbopbop7 wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are only meaningful and quality if you don’t know what you’re doing. But please do show some of this meaningful and quality work so I can be proven wrong.

See my comment to parent. One example of many. You can say "Oh, well, it just sounds like your company needs better tools and processes, you don't really need AI for any of that. You should just invest in a tool for this and monitor that and have managment prioritize..." Yeah, I know, yet here we are and it saves me boatloads of time.

I never said any of that, look at my comment again. Or is the LLM replying for you also?

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#709

Post by skeeter2020 »

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…

This feels too linear. Machines are great at ingesting huge volumes of data, following relatively simple rules and producing optimized output, but are LLMs sufficiently better than humans at finding windy, multi-step connections across seemingly unrelated topics & fields? Have they shown any penchant for novel conclusions from observational science? What I think your ratio misses is the value in making the targeted extrapolation or hypothesis that holds up out of a giant body of knowledge.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#710

Post by Workaccount2 »

lossyalgo wrote: post #695
ako wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An LLM by itself is not thinking, just remembering and autocompleting. But if you add a feedback loop where it can use tools, investigate external files or processes, and then autocomplete on the results, you get to see something that is (close to) thinking. I've seen claude code debug things by adding print statements in the source and reasoning on the output, and then determining next steps. This feedback loop is w…

Just ask it how many r's are in strawberry and you will realize there isn't a lot of reasoning going on here, it's just trickery on top of token generators.

This is akin to "Show a human an optical illusion that exploits their physiology".

LLM's be like "The dumb humans can't even see the dots"[1]

[1]https://compote.slate.com/images/bdbaa19e-2c8f-435e-95ca-a93...

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