4 ms·

How do you know you’re not an extremely advanced forecasting tool?

evantbyrne 3y ago
If you're trying to claim that humans are just advanced LLMs, then say it and justify it. Edgy quips are a cop out and not a respectful way to participate in technical discussions.
- chpatrick 3y ago
  You can make a human do the same task as an LLM: given what you've received (or written) so far, output one character. You would be totally capable of intelligent communication like this (it's pretty much how I'm talking to you now), so just the method of generating characters isn't proof of whether you're intelligent or not, and it doesn't invalidate LLMs either. This "LLMs are just fancy autocomplete so they're not intelligent" is just as bad an argument as saying "LLMs communicate with text instead of making noises by flapping their tongues so they're not intelligent". Sufficiently advanced autocomplete is indistinguishable from intelligence.
  - evantbyrne 3y ago
    The question isn't whether LLMs can simulate human intelligence, I think that is well-established. Many aspects of human nature are a mystery, but a technology that by design produces random outputs based on a seed number does not meet the criteria of human intelligence.
    - chpatrick 3y ago
      Why? People also produce somewhat random outputs, so?
      - evantbyrne 3y ago
        A lot of things are going to look the same when you aren't wearing your glasses. You don't even appear to be trying to describe these things in a realistic fashion. There is nothing of substance in this argument.
        chpatrick 3y ago
        Look, let's say you have a black box that outputs one character at a time in a semi-random way and you don't know if there's a person sitting inside or if it's an LLM. How can you decide if it's intelligent or not?
        evantbyrne 3y ago
        I appreciate the philosophical direction you're trying to take this conversation, but I just don't find discussing the core subject matter in such an overly generalized manner to be stimulating.
        chpatrick 3y ago
        The original argument by vineyardmike was "LLMs are a next character predictor, therefore they are not intelligent". I'm saying that as a human you can restrict yourself to a being a next character predictor, yet you can still communicate intelligently. What part do you disagree with?
        evantbyrne 3y ago
        I'm not sure what point you think you are making by arguing with the worst possible interpretations of our comments. Clearly intelligence refers to more than just being able to put unicode to paper in this context. The subject matter of this thread was a LLM's inability to perform basic tasks involving analytical reasoning.
        chpatrick 3y ago
        No, that's shifting the goalposts. The original claim was that LLMs cannot possibly be intelligent due to some detail of how they output the result ("smarter autocorrect").
- coffeemug 3y ago
  I am definitely not making this claim. I was replying to this: > People assume there's some level of "intelligence" in them, but they're just extremely advanced "forecasting" tools. My question wasn't meant as a quip. Rather it was literal-- how do you know your intelligence capabilities aren't "just extremely advanced forecasting"? We don't know for sure, and the answer is far from obvious. That doesn't mean humans are advanced LLMs-- we feel emotions, for instance. My comment was restricted to intelligence specifically.

If you're trying to claim that humans are just advanced LLMs, then say it and justify it. Edgy quips are a cop out and not a respectful way to participate in technical discussions.

chpatrick 3y ago
You can make a human do the same task as an LLM: given what you've received (or written) so far, output one character. You would be totally capable of intelligent communication like this (it's pretty much how I'm talking to you now), so just the method of generating characters isn't proof of whether you're intelligent or not, and it doesn't invalidate LLMs either. This "LLMs are just fancy autocomplete so they're not intelligent" is just as bad an argument as saying "LLMs communicate with text instead of making noises by flapping their tongues so they're not intelligent". Sufficiently advanced autocomplete is indistinguishable from intelligence.
- evantbyrne 3y ago
  The question isn't whether LLMs can simulate human intelligence, I think that is well-established. Many aspects of human nature are a mystery, but a technology that by design produces random outputs based on a seed number does not meet the criteria of human intelligence.
  - chpatrick 3y ago
    Why? People also produce somewhat random outputs, so?
    - evantbyrne 3y ago
      A lot of things are going to look the same when you aren't wearing your glasses. You don't even appear to be trying to describe these things in a realistic fashion. There is nothing of substance in this argument.
      - chpatrick 3y ago
        Look, let's say you have a black box that outputs one character at a time in a semi-random way and you don't know if there's a person sitting inside or if it's an LLM. How can you decide if it's intelligent or not?
        evantbyrne 3y ago
        I appreciate the philosophical direction you're trying to take this conversation, but I just don't find discussing the core subject matter in such an overly generalized manner to be stimulating.
        chpatrick 3y ago
        The original argument by vineyardmike was "LLMs are a next character predictor, therefore they are not intelligent". I'm saying that as a human you can restrict yourself to a being a next character predictor, yet you can still communicate intelligently. What part do you disagree with?
        evantbyrne 3y ago
        I'm not sure what point you think you are making by arguing with the worst possible interpretations of our comments. Clearly intelligence refers to more than just being able to put unicode to paper in this context. The subject matter of this thread was a LLM's inability to perform basic tasks involving analytical reasoning.
        chpatrick 3y ago
        No, that's shifting the goalposts. The original claim was that LLMs cannot possibly be intelligent due to some detail of how they output the result ("smarter autocorrect").
coffeemug 3y ago
I am definitely not making this claim. I was replying to this: > People assume there's some level of "intelligence" in them, but they're just extremely advanced "forecasting" tools. My question wasn't meant as a quip. Rather it was literal-- how do you know your intelligence capabilities aren't "just extremely advanced forecasting"? We don't know for sure, and the answer is far from obvious. That doesn't mean humans are advanced LLMs-- we feel emotions, for instance. My comment was restricted to intelligence specifically.