4 ms·

It’s no joke, it’s a very sensible critique from a very grumpy dutch man. https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/EWD936.html https://www.cs

It’s no joke, it’s a very sensible critique from a very grumpy dutch man. https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/EWD936.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/E... But the blur continues to linger on, and has a much wider impact than you might suspect. You see, it is not only that the question “Can machines think?” is regularly raised; we can —and should— deal with that by pointing out that it is just as relevant as the equally burning question “Can submarines swim?” A more serious byproduct of the tendency to talk about machines in anthropomorphic terms is the companion phenomenon of talking about people in mechanistic terminology. The critical reading of articles about computer-assisted learning —excuse me: CAL for the intimi— leaves you no option: in the eyes of their authors, the educational process is simply reduced to a caricature, something like the building up of conditional reflexes. For those educationists, Pavlov’s dog adequately captures the essence of Mankind —while I can assure you, from intimate observations, that it only captures a minute fraction of what is involved in being a dog—. 1985

mdp2021 4y ago
Interesting: I thought that Edsger Dijkstra's reference to the submarines were that of "The threats to computing science" ( https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD898.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/E... ), earlier, of 1984 - where he mentioned it in the context of the initial uncertainty of the scope of Computer Science, with reference to Turing's question "Can Machines Think?": > The Fathers of the field had been pretty confusing: John von Neumann speculated about computers and the human brain in analogies sufficiently wild to be worthy of a medieval thinker and Alan M. Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether Machines Can Think, a question of which we now know that it is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim But that next speech warns against anthropomorphism. It remains that we sometimes metaphors are useful. Only, we have to be normally wary not to jump outside the intersection (between described and description).
rolandog 4y ago
Can planes fly? Can computers play chess? If by flying we mean traverse from point A to point B without touching the ground... And by thinking we mean to conjure up a set of concepts (thoughts) that can be exported to a standardized lossy format (explaining oneself) and satisfy a set of requirements (conditions from a question)... then I'd be careful to say that, yes, LLMs can think... Even if it's by a different method than we do ourselves. It would be interesting to take the same analogy to the feelings domain... but I'm afraid that coffeeshops are not open at the moment.
- patmcc 4y ago
  Is that what we mean by thinking? Imagine you interact with a program that can answer any question you have, explains itself well, seems perfectly intelligent. But then you get to read the source code and it's just petabytes of if/else statements with every question you asked and every other one you can imagine. A practically infinite list. But nothing more complex than that. Is that program "thinking"?
  - darepublic 4y ago
    The Chinese room in other words

mdp2021 4y ago

Interesting: I thought that Edsger Dijkstra's reference to the submarines were that of "The threats to computing science" ( https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD898.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/E... ), earlier, of 1984 - where he mentioned it in the context of the initial uncertainty of the scope of Computer Science, with reference to Turing's question "Can Machines Think?": > The Fathers of the field had been pretty confusing: John von Neumann speculated about computers and the human brain in analogies sufficiently wild to be worthy of a medieval thinker and Alan M. Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether Machines Can Think, a question of which we now know that it is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim But that next speech warns against anthropomorphism. It remains that we sometimes metaphors are useful. Only, we have to be normally wary not to jump outside the intersection (between described and description).

rolandog 4y ago

Can planes fly? Can computers play chess? If by flying we mean traverse from point A to point B without touching the ground... And by thinking we mean to conjure up a set of concepts (thoughts) that can be exported to a standardized lossy format (explaining oneself) and satisfy a set of requirements (conditions from a question)... then I'd be careful to say that, yes, LLMs can think... Even if it's by a different method than we do ourselves. It would be interesting to take the same analogy to the feelings domain... but I'm afraid that coffeeshops are not open at the moment.

patmcc 4y ago
Is that what we mean by thinking? Imagine you interact with a program that can answer any question you have, explains itself well, seems perfectly intelligent. But then you get to read the source code and it's just petabytes of if/else statements with every question you asked and every other one you can imagine. A practically infinite list. But nothing more complex than that. Is that program "thinking"?
- darepublic 4y ago
  The Chinese room in other words