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No matter how much you explain to somebody what an apple tastes like, they'll never be able to truly know without having experienced it. Language is reductive o
by jppittma 4y ago
No matter how much you explain to somebody what an apple tastes like, they'll never be able to truly know without having experienced it. Language is reductive on experience.
Likewise, we have models like gravity that describe planetary motion. It is useful, but by nature of being a model, it's incomplete. Models are also reductive on experience.
Can you see then how a large language model, something that describes and predicts human language, is different than a human that uses language to communicate his experience?
- maxdoop 4y agoThis is true, but I fail to see how something like qualia ( the subjective experience ) necessarily matters. The thing I find interesting in the current LLM conversation is how much it’s opened up conversations around “what is knowing? What is consciousness?” Does it matter, not philosophically but utility-wise, if something can give the illusion of intelligence or “knowing”? And to go on something you said about taste— this is the age-old conundrum that still applies to humans, not just LLMs. I will never know if the color green to me is the same color as it is to you; our subjective experience may be entirely different, yet we both use the same language to describe what we experience. And that language does the job just fine, even without the experience itself factored in.