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>> There is very clearly emergent behavior going on, and while neuroscientists have yielded this point for decades about the brain (any brain, even tadpoles), t

>> There is very clearly emergent behavior going on, and while neuroscientists have yielded this point for decades about the brain (any brain, even tadpoles), the AI guys still are stubbornly holding on to "we know exactly how the system works, because we know how the individual bits work". That's because the "AI guys" are working with computers, and not with tadpoles, or even neurons. And certainly not brains.

Workaccount2 4y ago
There is no difference unless you believe in some kind of supernatural influence in biological organisms. The "brains are not computers" point has been moot for decades since it would require brains to be able to perform actions that cannot be mathematically described i.e. break the laws of nature. Which is to say "If a brain can do it, a Turing machine can simulate it" which pretty much everyone in the field agrees with. You can stand on a dualistic platform and hold that the brain has supernatural abilities, but in mainstream discussions of the idea has been dead for a long time. You can argue that computers aren't close to simulating a brain, sure, but that doesn't really get you anywhere, since the difference just becomes a matter of practical scale rather than something that escapes theory. Or even just a factor of efficiency, a synthetic consciousness might be able to run on current hardware if the right program is found. The brain might be grossly inefficient for consciousness, we don't know.
- Mike_12345 4y ago
  > Which is to say "If a brain can do it, a Turing machine can simulate it" which pretty much everyone in the field agrees with. There is no such consensus on the computability of consciousness. It remains an open question in cognitive science and AI.
- YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
  What does all that have to do with anything? We know how computers work and we can make computers. We can't make brains. That's the difference between brains and computers. Who every said anything about supernatural influence in biological organisms? And what biological organisms? We're talking about computers. Are you sure you're not the one who is seeing ghosts in the machine, when you're talking about "emerging behaviour"?
  - NumberWangMan 4y ago
    It's possible to understand how something works at a low level, but not at a high level. Imagine an electronic machine designed by someone else, with millions of components, completely undocumented. You might understand how the resistors and transistors and capacitors and whatnot each work, but not understand how the machine itself does what it does. You can see that you give it some input, and get some output, but if someone asked you to point at the paths in the machine that cause that to happen, you would not know. You would need a long time to study it before you could understand. We know how computers work because every part of a computer, every bit of software that runs on it, was at some point designed by a human. There's no single human that understands everything in a computer at once, but if you ask a good developer why some bit of software is not working, or what they would expect it to do given certain inputs, they can generally figure things out. With AI, we're creating systems to design other systems automatically. We understand the process works, but the systems being designed are complex enough that we don't really understand much about them, except that they work. They are just massive arrays of numbers that feed into equations and then spit out some output. They're not like systems designed by humans, which are usually intended to be understandable by other humans -- they're weird and naturally incomprehensible. The only way to know what ChatGPT will output, at this point, is to actually run it, even if you were to take the randomness part out of it. Emergent behavior isn't pseudoscience, it's a real thing. Sometimes when a system gets complex enough, it starts to behave in surprising ways. Maybe we can make a brain, using a computer, and this is how you do it.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
      What I think you're trying to say is that because we can't trace the behaviour of ChatGPT or whatever, because they are black boxes, we might as well assume they work like a brain because we don't really know they're not; and that makes no sense at all. If you don't understand how something works, you wait until you can understand how it works. You don't just start coming up with fanciful theories that have no basis in fact. If you want to say that a machine works like a brain, then you should explain how it does that. If you can't do that, then there's no reason for anyone to believe it, and there's no obvious reason for you to assume it. So at least explain why you think that ChatGPT works like a brain, if that's what you really think.

Workaccount2 4y ago

There is no difference unless you believe in some kind of supernatural influence in biological organisms. The "brains are not computers" point has been moot for decades since it would require brains to be able to perform actions that cannot be mathematically described i.e. break the laws of nature. Which is to say "If a brain can do it, a Turing machine can simulate it" which pretty much everyone in the field agrees with. You can stand on a dualistic platform and hold that the brain has supernatural abilities, but in mainstream discussions of the idea has been dead for a long time. You can argue that computers aren't close to simulating a brain, sure, but that doesn't really get you anywhere, since the difference just becomes a matter of practical scale rather than something that escapes theory. Or even just a factor of efficiency, a synthetic consciousness might be able to run on current hardware if the right program is found. The brain might be grossly inefficient for consciousness, we don't know.

Mike_12345 4y ago
> Which is to say "If a brain can do it, a Turing machine can simulate it" which pretty much everyone in the field agrees with. There is no such consensus on the computability of consciousness. It remains an open question in cognitive science and AI.
YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
What does all that have to do with anything? We know how computers work and we can make computers. We can't make brains. That's the difference between brains and computers. Who every said anything about supernatural influence in biological organisms? And what biological organisms? We're talking about computers. Are you sure you're not the one who is seeing ghosts in the machine, when you're talking about "emerging behaviour"?
- NumberWangMan 4y ago
  It's possible to understand how something works at a low level, but not at a high level. Imagine an electronic machine designed by someone else, with millions of components, completely undocumented. You might understand how the resistors and transistors and capacitors and whatnot each work, but not understand how the machine itself does what it does. You can see that you give it some input, and get some output, but if someone asked you to point at the paths in the machine that cause that to happen, you would not know. You would need a long time to study it before you could understand. We know how computers work because every part of a computer, every bit of software that runs on it, was at some point designed by a human. There's no single human that understands everything in a computer at once, but if you ask a good developer why some bit of software is not working, or what they would expect it to do given certain inputs, they can generally figure things out. With AI, we're creating systems to design other systems automatically. We understand the process works, but the systems being designed are complex enough that we don't really understand much about them, except that they work. They are just massive arrays of numbers that feed into equations and then spit out some output. They're not like systems designed by humans, which are usually intended to be understandable by other humans -- they're weird and naturally incomprehensible. The only way to know what ChatGPT will output, at this point, is to actually run it, even if you were to take the randomness part out of it. Emergent behavior isn't pseudoscience, it's a real thing. Sometimes when a system gets complex enough, it starts to behave in surprising ways. Maybe we can make a brain, using a computer, and this is how you do it.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
    What I think you're trying to say is that because we can't trace the behaviour of ChatGPT or whatever, because they are black boxes, we might as well assume they work like a brain because we don't really know they're not; and that makes no sense at all. If you don't understand how something works, you wait until you can understand how it works. You don't just start coming up with fanciful theories that have no basis in fact. If you want to say that a machine works like a brain, then you should explain how it does that. If you can't do that, then there's no reason for anyone to believe it, and there's no obvious reason for you to assume it. So at least explain why you think that ChatGPT works like a brain, if that's what you really think.