4 ms·

> I'm saying that as a human you can restrict yourself to a being a next character predictor A smart entity being able to emulate a dumber entity doesn't suppo

> I'm saying that as a human you can restrict yourself to a being a next character predictor A smart entity being able to emulate a dumber entity doesn't support in any way that the dumber entity is also smart.

chpatrick 3y ago
Sure, but the original argument was that next-character-prediction implies lack of intelligence, which is clearly not true when a human is doing it. That doesn't mean LLMs are intelligent, just that you can't claim they're unintelligent just because they generate one character at a time.
famouswaffles 3y ago
You're not emulating anything. If you're communicating with someone, you go piece by piece. Even thoughts are piece by piece.
- Jensson 3y ago
  Yeah, I am writing word by word, but I am not predicting the next word I thought about what I wanted to respond and am now generating the text to communicate that response, I didn't think by trying to predict what I myself would write to this question.
  - chpatrick 3y ago
    Your brain is undergoing some process and outputting the next word which has some reasonable statistical distribution. You're not consciously thinking about "hmm what word do I put so it's not just random gibberish" but as a whole you're doing the same thing. From my point of view as someone reading the comment I can't tell if it's written by an LLM or not, so I can't use that to conclude if you're intelligent or not.
    - evantbyrne 3y ago
      "Your brain is undergoing some process and outputting the next word which has some reasonable statistical distribution. You're not consciously thinking about "hmm what word do I put so it's not just random gibberish" but as a whole you're doing the same thing. From my point of view as someone reading the comment I can't tell if it's written by an LLM or not, so I can't use that to conclude if you're intelligent or not." There is no scientific evidence that LLMs are a close approximation to the human brain in any literal sense. It is uncouth to critique people on the basis of what appears to be nothing more than an analogy.
      - weatherlite 3y ago
        > There is no scientific evidence that LLMs are a close approximation to the human brain in any literal sense Since we don't really understand the brain that well that's not surprising
      - chpatrick 3y ago
        > There is no scientific evidence that LLMs are a close approximation to the human brain in any literal sense. I never said that, just that as a black box system that generates words it doesn't matter if it's similar or not.

chpatrick 3y ago

Sure, but the original argument was that next-character-prediction implies lack of intelligence, which is clearly not true when a human is doing it. That doesn't mean LLMs are intelligent, just that you can't claim they're unintelligent just because they generate one character at a time.

famouswaffles 3y ago

You're not emulating anything. If you're communicating with someone, you go piece by piece. Even thoughts are piece by piece.

Jensson 3y ago
Yeah, I am writing word by word, but I am not predicting the next word I thought about what I wanted to respond and am now generating the text to communicate that response, I didn't think by trying to predict what I myself would write to this question.
- chpatrick 3y ago
  Your brain is undergoing some process and outputting the next word which has some reasonable statistical distribution. You're not consciously thinking about "hmm what word do I put so it's not just random gibberish" but as a whole you're doing the same thing. From my point of view as someone reading the comment I can't tell if it's written by an LLM or not, so I can't use that to conclude if you're intelligent or not.
  - evantbyrne 3y ago
    "Your brain is undergoing some process and outputting the next word which has some reasonable statistical distribution. You're not consciously thinking about "hmm what word do I put so it's not just random gibberish" but as a whole you're doing the same thing. From my point of view as someone reading the comment I can't tell if it's written by an LLM or not, so I can't use that to conclude if you're intelligent or not." There is no scientific evidence that LLMs are a close approximation to the human brain in any literal sense. It is uncouth to critique people on the basis of what appears to be nothing more than an analogy.
    - weatherlite 3y ago
      > There is no scientific evidence that LLMs are a close approximation to the human brain in any literal sense Since we don't really understand the brain that well that's not surprising
    - chpatrick 3y ago
      > There is no scientific evidence that LLMs are a close approximation to the human brain in any literal sense. I never said that, just that as a black box system that generates words it doesn't matter if it's similar or not.