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The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

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Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#841

Post by hodgehog11 »

neom wrote: post #839

I wrote about this the other day more fully. I'd suspect sooner rather than later we formalize consciousness as self model coherence. Simply any dynamical state where predictive and reflective layers remain mutually consistent. Machines will exhibit that state, and for operational purposes it will count as consciousness. Philosophers will likely keep arguing, but it makes sense for industry and law to adopt something…

Consistency is one aspect, but it is not enough. I believe (and this is somewhat based in other arguments from neuroscience and discussions with alignment researchers) that two more are necessary: compression, which demonstrates algorithmic development; and linear representation capacity, as this is the only way that we really interpret the world, and therefore will only define another as intelligent if it can distill knowledge into the same language that we understand.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#842

Post by Tade0 »

naasking wrote: post #831
Tade0 wrote: post #818

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of this experiment was to show that if we don't know whether something is a mind, we shouldn't assume it is and that our intuition in this regard is weak. I know I am a mind inside a body, but I'm not sure about anyone else. The easiest explanation is that most of the people are like that as well, considering we're the same species and I'm not special. You'll have to take my word on that, as my only p…

> In any case LLMs most likely are not minds due to the simple fact that most of their internal state is static. This is not a compelling argument. Firstly, you can add external state to LLMs via RAG and vector databases, or various other types of external memory, and their internal state is no longer static and deterministic (and they become Turing complete!). Second if you could rewind time, then your argument sugg…

> and their internal state is no longer static and deterministic (and they become Turing complete!).

But it's not the LLM that makes modifications in those databases - it just retrieves data which is already there.

> Why would you travelling through time suddenly erases all other minds in reality?

I'm not following you here.

> they are active minds while they are processing a prompt.

Problem is that this process doesn't affect the LLM in the slightest. It just regurgitates what it's been taught. An active mind is makes itself. It's curious, it gets bored, it's learning constantly. LLMs do none of that.

You couldn't get a real mind to answer the same question hundreds of times without it being changed by that experience.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#843

Post by Tade0 »

echelon wrote: post #821
Tade0 wrote: post #801

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a simulated mind is not a mind. This was already debated years ago with the aid of the Chinese Room thought experiment.

> But a simulated mind is not a mind. How would the mind know which one it is? Maybe your mind is being simulated right now.

> How would the mind know which one it is?

I'm not assuming it is without hard proof - that's my only argument.

> Maybe your mind is being simulated right now.

I'm experiencing consciousness right now, so that would have to be a damn good simulation.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#845

Post by gkbrk »

gloosx wrote: post #836
gkbrk wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are increasingly trained on images for multi-modal learning, so they too would have seen one object, then two.

They never saw any kind of object, they only saw labeled groups of pixels – basic units of a digital image, representing a single point of color on a screen or in a digital file. Object is a material thing that can be seen and touched. Pixels are not objects.

Okay, goalpost has instantly moved from seeing to "seeing and touching". Once you feed in touch sensor data, where are you going to move the goalpost next?

Models see when photons hit camera sensors, you see when photons hit your retina. Both of them are some kind of sight.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#846

Post by pmarreck »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #706
pmarreck wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

agreed.

also, sorry but you (fellow) nerds are terrible at naming.

while "thunking" possibly name-collides with "thunks" from CS, the key is that it is memorable, 2 syllables, a bit whimsical and just different enough to both indicate its source meaning as well as some possible unstated difference. Plus it reminds me of "clunky" which is exactly what it is - "clunky thinking" aka "thunking".

And frankly, the idea it's naming is far bigger than what a "thunk" is in CS

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#847

Post by fragmede »

fellowniusmonk wrote: post #761
GoblinSlayer wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, worms think, let the computers have thinking too, the philosophers can still argue all they want about consciousness. Humans are special, we emit meaning the way stars emit photons, we are rare in the universe as far as empirical observation has revealed. Even with AGI the existence of each complex meaning generator will be a cosmic rarity. For some people that seems to be not enough, due to their factually wron…

Are we that special? We may be the only species left on Earth that's built civilization, but there are other species on Earth that we've deemed sentient, even if they don't have smartphones. (That may argue that they're smarter than us though.) If octopodes can dream, if elephants get depressed when their spouse dies, then I'd we're not so totally alone on our own planet, then it seems, despite no evidence, that we can't be totally alone in the universe. That is for philosophy professors to ponder Drakes equation until we have irrefutable evidence, however.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#848

Post by solumunus »

terminalshort wrote: post #803
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…

But we don't have a more rigorous definition of "thinking" than "it looks like it's thinking." You are making the mistake of accepting that a human is thinking by this simple definition, but demanding a higher more rigorous one for LLMs.

I agree. The mechanism seems irrelevant if the results are the same. If it’s useful in the exact way that human thinking is useful then it may as well be thinking. It’s like a UFO pulling itself through the sky using gravitational manipulation while people whine that it’s not actually flying.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#849

Post by solumunus »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #755
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…

That, and the article was a major disappointment. It made no case. It's a superficial piece of clueless fluff. I have had this conversation too many times on HN. What I find astounding is the simultaneous confidence and ignorance on the part of many who claim LLMs are intelligent. That, and the occultism surrounding them. Those who have strong philosophical reasons for thinking otherwise are called "knee-jerk". Ad ho…

If the LLM output is more effective than a human at problem solving, which I think we can all agree requires intelligence, how would one describe this? The LLM is just pretending to be more intelligent? At a certain point saying that will just seem incredibly silly. It’s either doing the thing or it’s not, and it’s already doing a lot.

Re: The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

#850

Post by solumunus »

staticman2 wrote: post #743
Workaccount2 wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no true and untrue claims about how the brain works, because we have no idea how it works. The reason people give that humans are not auto-complete is "Obviously I am not an autocomplete" Meanwhile, people are just a black box process that output words into their head, which they then take credit for, and calling it cognition. We have no idea how that black box that serves up a word when I say "Think of a c…

>>>There are no true and untrue claims about how the brain works, because we have no idea how it works. Which is why if you pick up a neuroscience textbook it's 400 pages of blank white pages, correct? There are different levels of understanding. I don't need to know how a TV works to know there aren't little men and women acting out the TV shows when I put them on. I don't need to know how the brain works in detail…

The trouble is that no one knows enough about how the brain works to refute that claim.
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