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How do you know your brain isn’t just clever statistics and a language model where it picks the next word? I talk to lots of normal people and they aren’t real

How do you know your brain isn’t just clever statistics and a language model where it picks the next word? I talk to lots of normal people and they aren’t really that different than this. Regurgitating something they saw on the news coupled with whatever logical fallacies and biases they have accumulated in their lifetime and from their environment that they want to throw in. Yet we are so certain they are sentient…

goatlover 4y ago
Because LLMs are something humans created to generate text based on existing human language. You’re using a metaphor and mistaking it for the real thing. People have done this before with technology, because we don’t have a good understanding of how the brain works.
- xyzelement 4y ago
  I don't think the person you are responding to is stretching a metaphor. He's pointing out human behavior that might just as well have been produced by an LLM. I think that's a correct observation.
  - goatlover 4y ago
    Humans have bodies that interact with the world. We have to concern ourselves with things like survival, relationships, and what not. An LLM is just a tool for generating human-like text. It's not biological, and doesn't have any drives. It's not trying to hookup, obtain food, or climb the social ladder.
    - xyzelement 4y ago
      I think you are just saying 'humans aren't machines running LLM' and nobody is arguing with you. There's a subtler thing being pointed to here.
      - goatlover 4y ago
        I'm saying humans don't produce language the same way LLMs do, because we have biological and social factors that result in the langue we use. Which is a bit more than predicting the next word based on a statistical model, even if that model does a good job at generating text that looks human-like. So yes, LLMs incorporate a lot of the structure of human language. No, that's not quite the same thing as humans producing language.

goatlover 4y ago

Because LLMs are something humans created to generate text based on existing human language. You’re using a metaphor and mistaking it for the real thing. People have done this before with technology, because we don’t have a good understanding of how the brain works.

xyzelement 4y ago
I don't think the person you are responding to is stretching a metaphor. He's pointing out human behavior that might just as well have been produced by an LLM. I think that's a correct observation.
- goatlover 4y ago
  Humans have bodies that interact with the world. We have to concern ourselves with things like survival, relationships, and what not. An LLM is just a tool for generating human-like text. It's not biological, and doesn't have any drives. It's not trying to hookup, obtain food, or climb the social ladder.
  - xyzelement 4y ago
    I think you are just saying 'humans aren't machines running LLM' and nobody is arguing with you. There's a subtler thing being pointed to here.
    - goatlover 4y ago
      I'm saying humans don't produce language the same way LLMs do, because we have biological and social factors that result in the langue we use. Which is a bit more than predicting the next word based on a statistical model, even if that model does a good job at generating text that looks human-like. So yes, LLMs incorporate a lot of the structure of human language. No, that's not quite the same thing as humans producing language.