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Humans do not _know_ the external world either. All humans have is perceptions from media like sounds, images and text! Internally we try to make a model of the

Humans do not _know_ the external world either. All humans have is perceptions from media like sounds, images and text! Internally we try to make a model of the world based on those perceptions. Any blanks are filled in by creativity ! Think about it, when we write or speak we start from some internalized model (which is mostly imperfect) and then we build text around it that feels fluent and consistent. I would argue, human reasoning is conceptually not so much different from LLMs as one might think.

pdonis 3y ago
> Humans do not _know_ the external world either. All humans have is perceptions Wrong. Human beings can act on the world as well as perceive it, and humans have rich internal models of the world that get updated continously as a result of those rich two-way interactions. > I would argue, human reasoning is conceptually not so much different from LLMs as one might think. I would argue that this is either an incredible over-estimate of LLMs, or an incredibly impoverished view of humans.
- nuancebydefault 3y ago
  > Human beings can act on the world as well as perceive it Conceptually this is the same for LLMs. Input/perceive -> human/LLM -> output/act. You might say the acting part for LLMs is not autonomous but that is only dependent on how much agency is given to LLMs. LLMs outputs are massively used, hence their outputs lead to actions. > and humans have rich internal models of the world that get updated continously as a result of those rich two-way interactions. What is different from LLMs: rich, continuous. I would argue these are quantative and qualitative traits that fall outside of what I meant with "conceptually".
  - pdonis 3y ago
    > Conceptually this is the same for LLMs. No, it isn't. LLMs don't look at the results of their actions and update a world model. Humans do.
    - nuancebydefault 3y ago
      This is indeed a difference that I overlooked, there is limited feedback on LLMs output, other than a rater primitive survival model (models that aren't popular/correct/cheap/fast enough are not used anymore over time)

pdonis 3y ago

> Humans do not _know_ the external world either. All humans have is perceptions Wrong. Human beings can act on the world as well as perceive it, and humans have rich internal models of the world that get updated continously as a result of those rich two-way interactions. > I would argue, human reasoning is conceptually not so much different from LLMs as one might think. I would argue that this is either an incredible over-estimate of LLMs, or an incredibly impoverished view of humans.

nuancebydefault 3y ago
> Human beings can act on the world as well as perceive it Conceptually this is the same for LLMs. Input/perceive -> human/LLM -> output/act. You might say the acting part for LLMs is not autonomous but that is only dependent on how much agency is given to LLMs. LLMs outputs are massively used, hence their outputs lead to actions. > and humans have rich internal models of the world that get updated continously as a result of those rich two-way interactions. What is different from LLMs: rich, continuous. I would argue these are quantative and qualitative traits that fall outside of what I meant with "conceptually".
- pdonis 3y ago
  > Conceptually this is the same for LLMs. No, it isn't. LLMs don't look at the results of their actions and update a world model. Humans do.
  - nuancebydefault 3y ago
    This is indeed a difference that I overlooked, there is limited feedback on LLMs output, other than a rater primitive survival model (models that aren't popular/correct/cheap/fast enough are not used anymore over time)