6 ms·

Firstly, no need to get all prickly. In the absence of hard evidence everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Secondly, your brain is probably an ant colony

Firstly, no need to get all prickly. In the absence of hard evidence everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Secondly, your brain is probably an ant colony on steroids with emergent properties of consciousness, and your DNA is a paperclip maximizer without agency. Lastly, 'this rate', I remember marveling over Char-RNN, whose LSTM neurons automatically specialized in detecting bits of grammar, less than 10 years ago. I don't need to tell you what changed 5 years, 1 year, 1 month ago. To me the rate of progress is astronomical. My point of view is, when dealing with potentially conscious entities, better to err on the side of caution. If you find my comment "breathless hype", deal with it without clamoring for silence.

danaris 4y ago
> If you find my comment "breathless hype", deal with it without clamoring for silence. The problem is that it's exactly this kind of hype that is trying to convince people that AGI is a) just around the corner, and b) going to wipe out humanity, and is thus calling for drastic measures in reaction to that perceived threat. Now, you may not personally believe that or advocate for those things—but intentionally or not, you are part of a chorus that is reacting to science fiction as if it is proven fact, and making demands that are likely to be very harmful to us as a people.
- mannykannot 4y ago
  On the one hand, extrapolation from recent developments is always uncertain, and practically useless when we do not know how far it would have to be sustained, but on the other, the argument that we won't get there because we haven't made any progress yet will be just as true as it ever was right up until it is not.
- HervalFreire 4y ago
  He clearly stated there's no hard evidence for either conclusion and he is just forming his own opinion. This is clearly different from what you are doing. You are making a hard claim that everything you see with LLMs being conscious is science fiction. Unfortunately this claim cannot be made given lack of evidence and even lack of definition of what consciousness is. Therefore by logic your statement is the one that is outlandish here.
- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  I believe we are in the midst of the singularity. How exactly it plays out is important. It happened faster than anyone anticipated. People need to know. I see no moral value in claiming that this is business as usual.
- flangola7 4y ago
  >that is trying to convince people that AGI is a) just around the corner, and b) going to wipe out humanity, and is thus calling for drastic measures in reaction to that perceived threat. But those are all likely true statements.
kerkeslager 4y ago
> Firstly, no need to get all prickly. In the absence of hard evidence everyone is entitled to their own opinion. There is not an absence of hard evidence. We know exactly how LLMs work, and it's clear that you don't, although there's nothing stopping you from learning since the information is widely available. Not a single line of code in these systems is devoted to preference or originality, and there is no vector by which preference or originality could emerge from these systems. "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion" applies to subjective things like preferences, not to objective facts. Your belief that LLMs are even a step in the direction of "potentially conscious entities" isn't an opinion, it's an objectively incorrect belief. You can't reasonably expect people to treat your uninformed and incorrect speculation with the same respect they would give to an opinion or, god forbid, an actual fact. You're just wrong, and there's nothing "prickly" about telling you that.
- spion 4y ago
  No we don't
  - kerkeslager 4y ago
    > No we don't Then maybe you should listen to people who do instead of speculating.
    - baq 4y ago
      How do you know how something with 7, 14 or 135 billion parameters work?
      - kerkeslager 4y ago
        The same way you know how to compute the average of 135 billion numbers. You can't look at all 135 billion numbers in the input data, but you can easily understand that preference and originality aren't going to emerge from computing averages. Obviously the function of an LLM is a lot more complicated than the "average()" function, but it's not beyond human understanding. I'd venture it can be understood by an average 3rd-year undergraduate CS student.

danaris 4y ago

> If you find my comment "breathless hype", deal with it without clamoring for silence. The problem is that it's exactly this kind of hype that is trying to convince people that AGI is a) just around the corner, and b) going to wipe out humanity, and is thus calling for drastic measures in reaction to that perceived threat. Now, you may not personally believe that or advocate for those things—but intentionally or not, you are part of a chorus that is reacting to science fiction as if it is proven fact, and making demands that are likely to be very harmful to us as a people.

mannykannot 4y ago
On the one hand, extrapolation from recent developments is always uncertain, and practically useless when we do not know how far it would have to be sustained, but on the other, the argument that we won't get there because we haven't made any progress yet will be just as true as it ever was right up until it is not.
HervalFreire 4y ago
He clearly stated there's no hard evidence for either conclusion and he is just forming his own opinion. This is clearly different from what you are doing. You are making a hard claim that everything you see with LLMs being conscious is science fiction. Unfortunately this claim cannot be made given lack of evidence and even lack of definition of what consciousness is. Therefore by logic your statement is the one that is outlandish here.
dr_dshiv 4y ago
I believe we are in the midst of the singularity. How exactly it plays out is important. It happened faster than anyone anticipated. People need to know. I see no moral value in claiming that this is business as usual.
flangola7 4y ago
>that is trying to convince people that AGI is a) just around the corner, and b) going to wipe out humanity, and is thus calling for drastic measures in reaction to that perceived threat. But those are all likely true statements.

kerkeslager 4y ago

> Firstly, no need to get all prickly. In the absence of hard evidence everyone is entitled to their own opinion. There is not an absence of hard evidence. We know exactly how LLMs work, and it's clear that you don't, although there's nothing stopping you from learning since the information is widely available. Not a single line of code in these systems is devoted to preference or originality, and there is no vector by which preference or originality could emerge from these systems. "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion" applies to subjective things like preferences, not to objective facts. Your belief that LLMs are even a step in the direction of "potentially conscious entities" isn't an opinion, it's an objectively incorrect belief. You can't reasonably expect people to treat your uninformed and incorrect speculation with the same respect they would give to an opinion or, god forbid, an actual fact. You're just wrong, and there's nothing "prickly" about telling you that.

spion 4y ago
No we don't
- kerkeslager 4y ago
  > No we don't Then maybe you should listen to people who do instead of speculating.
  - baq 4y ago
    How do you know how something with 7, 14 or 135 billion parameters work?
    - kerkeslager 4y ago
      The same way you know how to compute the average of 135 billion numbers. You can't look at all 135 billion numbers in the input data, but you can easily understand that preference and originality aren't going to emerge from computing averages. Obviously the function of an LLM is a lot more complicated than the "average()" function, but it's not beyond human understanding. I'd venture it can be understood by an average 3rd-year undergraduate CS student.