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Why does nlp need to mimic human brain function to count as cognition? This seems overly reductive; I see no reason to believe that biomimicry is necessary for
by sdenton4 4y ago
Why does nlp need to mimic human brain function to count as cognition? This seems overly reductive; I see no reason to believe that biomimicry is necessary for intelligence. The argument is overly reductive: only brains think, and this is not a brain, ergo it does not think.
(To be clear, I don't think this system is an AGI; just making the point that better goal posts are needed...)
- gillesjacobs 4y agoI agree and focusing on biomimetics is indeed insufficient in discussions of what constitutes intelligence. The discussion on what constitutes intelligence and cognition is too vast and complex. The central point is that haphazard and unsubstantiated authromorphising language should be barred from scientific papers. We know that an LLM does not "know", "believe", "intent", or "feels" because they lack any form of integrated, general human-like intelligence. It is trivially correct to use different terms like "models", "predicts", "outputs emotive expressions" and avoid unevidenced claims of human behaviour. I also wanted to nuance my opening post: I file the "don't humanise ML models"-comment of peer review under "minor issues". This means that it is an issue with the paper that does not prevent publication. This is not a hill I am willing to let good research die on.
- eternalban 4y agoEven if matter other than brains were capable of thinking, that does not ipso facto bestow the title 'thinking thing' onto things which are not brains. All we can say is "well, it is certainly not a brain!". That is it. Also, computation is not cognition. We need to focus on what distinguishes cognition from computation, if indeed these are distinct. I feel we are using the wrong words and thus having unproductive conversations regarding this topic (in general).