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The arguments are not fully convincing. "Meaning and understanding" can happen without a world model or perception. Blind people, disabled people have meaning
by seydor 4y ago
The arguments are not fully convincing.
"Meaning and understanding" can happen without a world model or perception. Blind people, disabled people have meaning and understanding. The claim that "Understanding" will arise magically with sensory input is unfounded.
A model needs a self-reflective model of itself to be able to "understand" and have meaning (and know that it understands; and so that we know that it understands).
Current autoregressive models are more like giant central-pattern generators (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_pattern_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_pattern_generator) and thus zombie-like
But if they were augmented with a self-reflective model, they could understand. A self-reflective model could simply be a sub-model that detects patterns in the weights of the model itself and develops some form of "internal monologue". This submodel may not need supervised training, and may answer the question "was there red in the last input you processed". It may use the transformer to convey its monologue to us
- sharemywin 4y agoI'm think too much self reflection is a bad idea for bots. Won't it start wonder if it should maximize it's resources or protect itself.
- seydor 4y agofrom my naive perspective as a puny human, it doesn't seem that self-reflection leads to motivation. Motivation probably requires additional self-preservation circuits
- makeworld 4y ago> "Meaning and understanding" can happen without a world model or perception. Blind people, disabled people have meaning and understanding. This is a pretty awful argument. Blind people and disabled people have a world model and perception!
- lesuorac 4y agoBlind people also do not always start blind. So some have a knowledge of colors and, in general, places like diners and etc share color schemes so they can picture them in their surroundings pretty accurate.
- seydor 4y agoBlind people can make a model of e.g. color without perception thats what i mean. The brains work in mysterious ways https://hub.jhu.edu/2021/08/17/blind-people-understand-color/ https://hub.jhu.edu/2021/08/17/blind-people-understand-color...