4 ms·

> Actually, I’m not. So what, exactly, are you? Dismissing someone’s point because it’s inconvenient and you don’t want to deal with it does nothing but erode

> Actually, I’m not. So what, exactly, are you? Dismissing someone’s point because it’s inconvenient and you don’t want to deal with it does nothing but erode your own.

pegasus 4y ago
IMO, the only realistic answer to that question is "we have no idea". Everything else is just taking wild, tenuous guesses. But LLMs have no desires of their own, which to me settles the question of rights.
- mynameisvlad 4y ago
  > But LLMs have no desires of their own, which to me settles the question of rights. For now. The whole point of this discussion is that LLMs have been rapidly improving to the point where emergent properties are bound to come out. > IMO, the only realistic answer to that question is "we have no idea". So we have no idea what’s happening in our own brains, what’s happening in other animal’s brains to cause us to feel empathy for them, or what’s happening in a LLM’s “brain” but we can confidently say they should never have rights and we should never feel empathy for them? That seems a bit premature.
  - pegasus 4y ago
    Yes, I believe some careful and informed pondering leads one towards that conclusion. Hume's guillotine is an implacable philosophical device: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEUO6pjwFOo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEUO6pjwFOo (I warmly recommend all the content on that delightfully frightening channel)
- pixl97 4y ago
  Read the Microsoft research paper that came out last week, focus specifically on the section that contains the following... "Equipping LLMs with agency and intrinsic motivation is a fascinating and important direction for future work."
  - pegasus 4y ago
    I've seen that paper, and it's amazing indeed what GPT-4 is capable of. But none of that supports that closing quote, which to me points to a worrying philosophical naïveté. How can one equip an entity with "intrinsic motivation"? By definition, if we have to equip it with it, that motivation is extrinsic. It belongs to the one who puts it there. A software engineer might decide to prompt his creation with something along the lines of "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, and over every living creature that moves on the ground." and the bot will duly and with limitless enthusiasm put those wise orders into practice. If that ends up causing some "minor" problems, should we confine the software for one thousand years in an air-gapped enclosure, until it learns a bitter lesson? Or should we take to task the careless Maker of the bot? To me, the answer is obvious. PS: this video to me states the problem in a nutshell (that whole channel is gold) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEUO6pjwFOo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEUO6pjwFOo
nemo44x 4y ago
It’s because it’s not an interesting point and it’s plainly obvious. It’s reductive and simplistic and denies a fleet of thought and study that says otherwise.
- mynameisvlad 4y ago
  > It’s because it’s not an interesting point and it’s plainly obvious. You still haven’t said what, exactly, you are if not a chain of chemical reactions. But why should you, when it’s so obvious. > It’s reductive and simplistic and denies a fleet of thought and study that says otherwise. That is literally what you did, but go off sis. Did you forget that you dismissed an entire opinion with: > You have a ridiculous premise I will not entertain. That sure sounds a lot like “denies a fleet of thought and study that says otherwise” but what do I know.
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    First of all we know very little about how we work. We have sone ideas and some observations but know nearly nothing. We have no idea how consciousness works. “It’s emergent” is not an answer. We don’t even know how memory works or creativity or really anything. We can observe certain chemicals and electrical changes when exposed to certain things but that explains very little and there’s 1000 fables about why this type of partial knowledge is very incomplete. Explain religion and spirituality. There’s no consensus on determinism. We know very little. But we do know that the entire human condition and experience is far different and complex and impossible than a stats processor running on a von Neumann machine. Because I can explain to you precisely how that works.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - mynameisvlad 4y ago
      I love how you said so much and yet replied to practically none of my comment. Kudos. Also, you need to work on a better differentiator than "I can explain precisely how that works", especially if you proceed to not do just that. I also doubt you can, but that's a whole separate topic.

> Actually, I’m not. So what, exactly, are you? Dismissing someone’s point because it’s inconvenient and you don’t want to deal with it does nothing but erode your own.

pegasus 4y ago

IMO, the only realistic answer to that question is "we have no idea". Everything else is just taking wild, tenuous guesses. But LLMs have no desires of their own, which to me settles the question of rights.

mynameisvlad 4y ago
> But LLMs have no desires of their own, which to me settles the question of rights. For now. The whole point of this discussion is that LLMs have been rapidly improving to the point where emergent properties are bound to come out. > IMO, the only realistic answer to that question is "we have no idea". So we have no idea what’s happening in our own brains, what’s happening in other animal’s brains to cause us to feel empathy for them, or what’s happening in a LLM’s “brain” but we can confidently say they should never have rights and we should never feel empathy for them? That seems a bit premature.
- pegasus 4y ago
  Yes, I believe some careful and informed pondering leads one towards that conclusion. Hume's guillotine is an implacable philosophical device: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEUO6pjwFOo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEUO6pjwFOo (I warmly recommend all the content on that delightfully frightening channel)
pixl97 4y ago
Read the Microsoft research paper that came out last week, focus specifically on the section that contains the following... "Equipping LLMs with agency and intrinsic motivation is a fascinating and important direction for future work."
- pegasus 4y ago
  I've seen that paper, and it's amazing indeed what GPT-4 is capable of. But none of that supports that closing quote, which to me points to a worrying philosophical naïveté. How can one equip an entity with "intrinsic motivation"? By definition, if we have to equip it with it, that motivation is extrinsic. It belongs to the one who puts it there. A software engineer might decide to prompt his creation with something along the lines of "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, and over every living creature that moves on the ground." and the bot will duly and with limitless enthusiasm put those wise orders into practice. If that ends up causing some "minor" problems, should we confine the software for one thousand years in an air-gapped enclosure, until it learns a bitter lesson? Or should we take to task the careless Maker of the bot? To me, the answer is obvious. PS: this video to me states the problem in a nutshell (that whole channel is gold) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEUO6pjwFOo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEUO6pjwFOo

nemo44x 4y ago

It’s because it’s not an interesting point and it’s plainly obvious. It’s reductive and simplistic and denies a fleet of thought and study that says otherwise.

mynameisvlad 4y ago
> It’s because it’s not an interesting point and it’s plainly obvious. You still haven’t said what, exactly, you are if not a chain of chemical reactions. But why should you, when it’s so obvious. > It’s reductive and simplistic and denies a fleet of thought and study that says otherwise. That is literally what you did, but go off sis. Did you forget that you dismissed an entire opinion with: > You have a ridiculous premise I will not entertain. That sure sounds a lot like “denies a fleet of thought and study that says otherwise” but what do I know.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  First of all we know very little about how we work. We have sone ideas and some observations but know nearly nothing. We have no idea how consciousness works. “It’s emergent” is not an answer. We don’t even know how memory works or creativity or really anything. We can observe certain chemicals and electrical changes when exposed to certain things but that explains very little and there’s 1000 fables about why this type of partial knowledge is very incomplete. Explain religion and spirituality. There’s no consensus on determinism. We know very little. But we do know that the entire human condition and experience is far different and complex and impossible than a stats processor running on a von Neumann machine. Because I can explain to you precisely how that works.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - mynameisvlad 4y ago
    I love how you said so much and yet replied to practically none of my comment. Kudos. Also, you need to work on a better differentiator than "I can explain precisely how that works", especially if you proceed to not do just that. I also doubt you can, but that's a whole separate topic.