5 ms·

I don’t think that’s the right conclusion - predicting the next word doesn’t mean that’s the only thing we’re doing. But it would be a sensible and useful bit o

I don’t think that’s the right conclusion - predicting the next word doesn’t mean that’s the only thing we’re doing. But it would be a sensible and useful bit of information to have for more processing by other bits of brain. It makes complete sense you would have an idea of the next word in any sentence and some brain machinery to make that happen. It in no way means you’re just a LLM

FrustratedMonky 4y ago
I think this is moving the goal post. Every time there is an advance in AI/Machine Learning, the response is "well humans can still do X that a computer can't do, explain that!". And whenever there is a discovering in the brain, the response is "well, ok, that looks a lot like its running an algorithm, but we still have X that is totally un-explainable". "and some brain machinery to make that happen" - Getting close to not having a lot of "brain machinery" left that is still a mystery. Pretty soon we'll have to accept that we are just biological machines (albeit in the form of crap throwing monkeys), built on carbon instead of silicon, and we run a process that looks a lot like large scale neural nets, and we have same limitations, and how we respond to our environment is pre-determined.
- Jensson 4y ago
  Setting short goals and them moving that goal once you hit it is a valid way to make progress, not sure why you think this is a bad thing. We hit a goal, now we are talking about future goals, why not?
  - FrustratedMonky 4y ago
    Sorry. Was responding to the overall gestalt of AI, where there are always things that "only a human can do", then they gets solved or duplicated by a computer, then the argument is "well, humans can still do X that a computer never will because of some mysterious component that is unique to humans, thus a computer can never ever replace humans or be conscious"
    - Jensson 4y ago
      To me it looked like you just repeated a meme, there isn't a large number of such people you talked about here on HN, so there is no need to repeat that meme everywhere. If someone says "Computers will never be smarter than humans", then sure go ahead, post it. But most of the time it is just repeated whenever someone says that ChatGPT could be made smarter, or there is some class of problem it struggles with.
      - archon1410 4y ago
        Repeating a meme on cue sounds very LLM-like. More evidence in favour of the thesis.
        Jensson 4y ago
        Make the thesis "some parts of human thinking works like an LLM" and you would see way less resistance. Making extreme statements like "humans are no different from LLM" will just hurt discussion since it is very clearly not true. Humans can drive cars, balance on a tight rope etc, so it is very clear that humans have systems that an LLM lacks. The objection people would come with then is something like "but we could add those other systems to an LLM, it is no different from a human!". But then the thesis would be "humans are no different from an LLM connected to a whole bunch of other systems", which is no different from saying "some parts of human thinking works like an LLM" as I suggested above.
        FrustratedMonky 4y ago
        The only reason we are talking about LLM is because it is the latest shiny thing. My overall point was that we are chipping away at what it means to be human through many advances in AI, across disciplines. NOT that LLM is the entire brain, it is just latest solving one aspect. So LLM is just latest 'check that off the list' of what a human can do but computer can't.
        mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
        Sigh.
- lloeki 4y ago
  I find it funny that we expect AI-du-jour to qualify as equal to human brains when the first has been trained on a slice of content for a bunch of hours and is then getting compared to wetware that's been trained for at least a decade. Recently stuff like ChatGPT is challenged by people pointing out the nonsense it outputs, but it has no way of knowing whether either of its training input or its output is valid or not. I mean one could hack the prompt and make it spit out that fire is cold, but you and I know for a fact that it is nonsense, because at some point we challenged that knowledge by actually putting our hand over a flame. And that's actually what kids do! As a parent you can tell your kid not to do this or that and they will still do it. I can't recall where I read last week that the most terrible thing about parenting is the realisation that they can only learn through pain... which is probably one of the most efficient feedback loops. Copilot is no different, it can spit out broken or nonsensical code in response to a prompt but developers do that all the time, especially beginners because that's part of the learning process, but also experts as well. Yet we somehow expect Copilot to spit out perfect code, and then claim "this AI is lousy!", and while it has been trained with a huge body of work it has never been able to challenge it with a feedback loop. Similarly I'm quite convinced that if I were uploaded everything there is to know about kung fu, I would be utterly unable to actually perform kung fu, nor would I be able to know whether this or that bit that I now know about kung fu is actually correct without trying it. So, I'm not even sure moving goal posts is actually the real problem but only a symptom, because the whole thing seems to me as being debated over the wrong equivalence class.
  - yyyk 4y ago
    >when the first has been trained on a slice of content for a bunch of hours and is then getting compared to wetware that's been trained for at least a decade. Typical LLM AI has been trained for the equivalent of many person-years. How long would it have taken us to read terabytes of information?
- thomastjeffery 4y ago
  So let me get this straight: a solution is a mysterious system. What we have is a mysterious system. We must have the solution! > Pretty soon we'll have to accept that we are just biological machines But what is the code running on those machines? That's what you are missing. If the mechanics of the machine are a mystery, you will never read the code. You didn't find the solution, you found your lack of a solution.
- moonchrome 4y ago
  > I think this is moving the goal post. No it isn't - his entire argument is that LLM != Humans, just because LLM can do some human like thinhgs. Pointing out the differences isn't moving the goalposts - it's proving the point. > Pretty soon we'll have to accept that we are just biological machines Sounds strawmanish, humans != LLM doesn't mean humans == magic. > and how we respond to our environment is pre-determined What does this even mean ? Even these models are stochastic.
  - FrustratedMonky 4y ago
    Seems like because LLM is the latest hot topic, that all AI=Human arguments right now are about LLM. Think that is exactly moving the goal post. "Latest greatest AI thing comes out, everyone 'but because of xyz that isn't human". The argument isn't about LLM, its about ALL related AI/Machine learning techniques. They are all chipping away at one aspect or another, and eventually they'll all be put together and completely mimic a human, and nobody will have any ground to stand on to argue that humans have any special difference that keeps them unique.
    - moonchrome 4y ago
      ChatGPT/LLM is driving a lot of hype and is explicitly called out in root comment. Arguments like parent reply specifically argue against that. You seem to be strawmaning that and bringing up almost tautological "once we advance enough towards AGI we will have human level intelligence". ChatGPT/LLM has a lot of hype - they are fundamentally not human level intelligence.
- IIAOPSW 4y ago
  You're conflating skepticism that LLM's "solve the mystery" with contrarian "AI denialism". The former is very sanely grounded and frankly there's a lot about the brain that is still a mystery (yes the algorithms, not the boring biologically specific details). The later is tedious Neo-cartesian dualism that usually has ulterior motives. This paper did not in fact show the brain working anything like a LLM. You can kind of shoe horn a LLM into reproducing a fair bit of what the brain does, but you are taking a hammer to a screw and claiming you've understood how it works you just have to scale up your hammer.
  - yyyk 4y ago
    >yes the algorithms, not the boring biologically specific details Some of the biological details are a mystery too. Just recently a 4th brain membrane was discovered: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34279605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34279605
    - IIAOPSW 4y ago
      There's two camps interested in studying the brain. One is interested primarily in figuring out human physiological function, of which the brain is a most difficult challenge. The other is interested in figuring out consciousness and cognition well enough to make an AI, for which the brain is the only reference implementation and so they have no choice. The former finds new membranes interesting and wants to catalog them all and that is undoubtedly good and useful work. The latter wants to deduce exactly which mechanisms make thought happen and avoid overfitting to the very messy details of this particular implementation and that is also undoubtedly good and useful work. But for the latter group, a 4th membrane is yet more work on their pile. They're trying to distill things down to the fewest possible things needed for it to work, not the most possible things that actually can be found! Very divergent interests despite a deeply shared object of attention and intellectual capacity. What I'm getting at is, membranes are cool, I'm not personally very motivated by them.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  I'm fascinated by this meme that appears again and again recently. "This is moving the goal posts" <insert argument that implies there should be no goal posts> <insert some uncritical and speculative extrapolation of current AI abilities arbitrarily far into the future> Honestly, now whenever I see the word "goal post" my eyes glaze over because I already know exactly what's coming next.
  - FrustratedMonky 4y ago
    It's a meme because it is happening. 30 years ago "Computers will never achieve voice recognition because it is innately human". Now its old. This happens repeatedly, so it is getting to be tired, but not because it isn't true.
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
      Who is this quote about voice rec from?
    - YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
      >> "Computers will never achieve voice recognition because it is innately human" Can't find this exact quote anywhere. Who ever said anything like that?

FrustratedMonky 4y ago

I think this is moving the goal post. Every time there is an advance in AI/Machine Learning, the response is "well humans can still do X that a computer can't do, explain that!". And whenever there is a discovering in the brain, the response is "well, ok, that looks a lot like its running an algorithm, but we still have X that is totally un-explainable". "and some brain machinery to make that happen" - Getting close to not having a lot of "brain machinery" left that is still a mystery. Pretty soon we'll have to accept that we are just biological machines (albeit in the form of crap throwing monkeys), built on carbon instead of silicon, and we run a process that looks a lot like large scale neural nets, and we have same limitations, and how we respond to our environment is pre-determined.

Jensson 4y ago
Setting short goals and them moving that goal once you hit it is a valid way to make progress, not sure why you think this is a bad thing. We hit a goal, now we are talking about future goals, why not?
- FrustratedMonky 4y ago
  Sorry. Was responding to the overall gestalt of AI, where there are always things that "only a human can do", then they gets solved or duplicated by a computer, then the argument is "well, humans can still do X that a computer never will because of some mysterious component that is unique to humans, thus a computer can never ever replace humans or be conscious"
  - Jensson 4y ago
    To me it looked like you just repeated a meme, there isn't a large number of such people you talked about here on HN, so there is no need to repeat that meme everywhere. If someone says "Computers will never be smarter than humans", then sure go ahead, post it. But most of the time it is just repeated whenever someone says that ChatGPT could be made smarter, or there is some class of problem it struggles with.
    - archon1410 4y ago
      Repeating a meme on cue sounds very LLM-like. More evidence in favour of the thesis.
      - Jensson 4y ago
        Make the thesis "some parts of human thinking works like an LLM" and you would see way less resistance. Making extreme statements like "humans are no different from LLM" will just hurt discussion since it is very clearly not true. Humans can drive cars, balance on a tight rope etc, so it is very clear that humans have systems that an LLM lacks. The objection people would come with then is something like "but we could add those other systems to an LLM, it is no different from a human!". But then the thesis would be "humans are no different from an LLM connected to a whole bunch of other systems", which is no different from saying "some parts of human thinking works like an LLM" as I suggested above.
        FrustratedMonky 4y ago
        The only reason we are talking about LLM is because it is the latest shiny thing. My overall point was that we are chipping away at what it means to be human through many advances in AI, across disciplines. NOT that LLM is the entire brain, it is just latest solving one aspect. So LLM is just latest 'check that off the list' of what a human can do but computer can't.
      - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
        Sigh.
lloeki 4y ago
I find it funny that we expect AI-du-jour to qualify as equal to human brains when the first has been trained on a slice of content for a bunch of hours and is then getting compared to wetware that's been trained for at least a decade. Recently stuff like ChatGPT is challenged by people pointing out the nonsense it outputs, but it has no way of knowing whether either of its training input or its output is valid or not. I mean one could hack the prompt and make it spit out that fire is cold, but you and I know for a fact that it is nonsense, because at some point we challenged that knowledge by actually putting our hand over a flame. And that's actually what kids do! As a parent you can tell your kid not to do this or that and they will still do it. I can't recall where I read last week that the most terrible thing about parenting is the realisation that they can only learn through pain... which is probably one of the most efficient feedback loops. Copilot is no different, it can spit out broken or nonsensical code in response to a prompt but developers do that all the time, especially beginners because that's part of the learning process, but also experts as well. Yet we somehow expect Copilot to spit out perfect code, and then claim "this AI is lousy!", and while it has been trained with a huge body of work it has never been able to challenge it with a feedback loop. Similarly I'm quite convinced that if I were uploaded everything there is to know about kung fu, I would be utterly unable to actually perform kung fu, nor would I be able to know whether this or that bit that I now know about kung fu is actually correct without trying it. So, I'm not even sure moving goal posts is actually the real problem but only a symptom, because the whole thing seems to me as being debated over the wrong equivalence class.
- yyyk 4y ago
  >when the first has been trained on a slice of content for a bunch of hours and is then getting compared to wetware that's been trained for at least a decade. Typical LLM AI has been trained for the equivalent of many person-years. How long would it have taken us to read terabytes of information?
thomastjeffery 4y ago
So let me get this straight: a solution is a mysterious system. What we have is a mysterious system. We must have the solution! > Pretty soon we'll have to accept that we are just biological machines But what is the code running on those machines? That's what you are missing. If the mechanics of the machine are a mystery, you will never read the code. You didn't find the solution, you found your lack of a solution.
moonchrome 4y ago
> I think this is moving the goal post. No it isn't - his entire argument is that LLM != Humans, just because LLM can do some human like thinhgs. Pointing out the differences isn't moving the goalposts - it's proving the point. > Pretty soon we'll have to accept that we are just biological machines Sounds strawmanish, humans != LLM doesn't mean humans == magic. > and how we respond to our environment is pre-determined What does this even mean ? Even these models are stochastic.
- FrustratedMonky 4y ago
  Seems like because LLM is the latest hot topic, that all AI=Human arguments right now are about LLM. Think that is exactly moving the goal post. "Latest greatest AI thing comes out, everyone 'but because of xyz that isn't human". The argument isn't about LLM, its about ALL related AI/Machine learning techniques. They are all chipping away at one aspect or another, and eventually they'll all be put together and completely mimic a human, and nobody will have any ground to stand on to argue that humans have any special difference that keeps them unique.
  - moonchrome 4y ago
    ChatGPT/LLM is driving a lot of hype and is explicitly called out in root comment. Arguments like parent reply specifically argue against that. You seem to be strawmaning that and bringing up almost tautological "once we advance enough towards AGI we will have human level intelligence". ChatGPT/LLM has a lot of hype - they are fundamentally not human level intelligence.
IIAOPSW 4y ago
You're conflating skepticism that LLM's "solve the mystery" with contrarian "AI denialism". The former is very sanely grounded and frankly there's a lot about the brain that is still a mystery (yes the algorithms, not the boring biologically specific details). The later is tedious Neo-cartesian dualism that usually has ulterior motives. This paper did not in fact show the brain working anything like a LLM. You can kind of shoe horn a LLM into reproducing a fair bit of what the brain does, but you are taking a hammer to a screw and claiming you've understood how it works you just have to scale up your hammer.
- yyyk 4y ago
  >yes the algorithms, not the boring biologically specific details Some of the biological details are a mystery too. Just recently a 4th brain membrane was discovered: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34279605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34279605
  - IIAOPSW 4y ago
    There's two camps interested in studying the brain. One is interested primarily in figuring out human physiological function, of which the brain is a most difficult challenge. The other is interested in figuring out consciousness and cognition well enough to make an AI, for which the brain is the only reference implementation and so they have no choice. The former finds new membranes interesting and wants to catalog them all and that is undoubtedly good and useful work. The latter wants to deduce exactly which mechanisms make thought happen and avoid overfitting to the very messy details of this particular implementation and that is also undoubtedly good and useful work. But for the latter group, a 4th membrane is yet more work on their pile. They're trying to distill things down to the fewest possible things needed for it to work, not the most possible things that actually can be found! Very divergent interests despite a deeply shared object of attention and intellectual capacity. What I'm getting at is, membranes are cool, I'm not personally very motivated by them.
mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
I'm fascinated by this meme that appears again and again recently. "This is moving the goal posts" <insert argument that implies there should be no goal posts> <insert some uncritical and speculative extrapolation of current AI abilities arbitrarily far into the future> Honestly, now whenever I see the word "goal post" my eyes glaze over because I already know exactly what's coming next.
- FrustratedMonky 4y ago
  It's a meme because it is happening. 30 years ago "Computers will never achieve voice recognition because it is innately human". Now its old. This happens repeatedly, so it is getting to be tired, but not because it isn't true.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    Who is this quote about voice rec from?
  - YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
    >> "Computers will never achieve voice recognition because it is innately human" Can't find this exact quote anywhere. Who ever said anything like that?