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But whilst tokens in the form of pixel values might actually map quite well to sensory input from rods and cones, why on earth would we assume that everything t

But whilst tokens in the form of pixel values might actually map quite well to sensory input from rods and cones, why on earth would we assume that everything that goes on in there maps neatly to the concept of "predict future tokens"? And where are the analogues for stuff like emotions, evolutionarily useful chemical processes which actually make us worse at prediction?

ben_w 3y ago
> why on earth would we assume that everything that goes on in there maps neatly to the concept of "predict future tokens"? I have no reason to assume anything, positively or negatively, about the underlying mechanisms in the moist fatty ball of electrochemistry that is a brain. There is no reason at all, when reading such a reductive description, to expect the qualia of emotion to arise even within my own brain — that it does is known to me, but to all others the question "is Ben a P-zombie?" is outside the realm of the scientific method as we have not yet determined a way to test for the presence/absence of qualia. Even without making assumptions about mechanisms, "predict future experience and generated signals to maximise what you regard as goodness" seems to be a fundamental task for all brains of all species to perform, and one can map the concept of a token to this — though it may be as wrong as the mapping of any of the other time-series prediction machine learning systems that came before Transformer models (these models are certainly not as sample-efficient as we are). > And where are the analogues for stuff like emotions, evolutionarily useful chemical processes which actually make us worse at prediction? Similarly, the value proposition of emotion can be easily simulated by an LLM even if any given model does not[0] possess the qualia. But this is a statement that we don't know, it definitely isn't a yes or a no — it isn't even as good as being an "it depends". [0] my guess is that none have qualia; but as I say, I have no reason to be confident of this guess, as nobody knows how to test for it or why we ourselves may possess it.
exe34 3y ago
> And where are the analogues for stuff like emotions, My mental model for emotions is an arena of competing monomaniacal agents each trained over evolutionary time. Whether it's lust or jealousy or greed, each one at some point <insert just-so story just like we do for genes>. The prediction from each emotion is the next action that will result in more resources, more offsprings surviving to reproductive age, etc.

ben_w 3y ago

> why on earth would we assume that everything that goes on in there maps neatly to the concept of "predict future tokens"? I have no reason to assume anything, positively or negatively, about the underlying mechanisms in the moist fatty ball of electrochemistry that is a brain. There is no reason at all, when reading such a reductive description, to expect the qualia of emotion to arise even within my own brain — that it does is known to me, but to all others the question "is Ben a P-zombie?" is outside the realm of the scientific method as we have not yet determined a way to test for the presence/absence of qualia. Even without making assumptions about mechanisms, "predict future experience and generated signals to maximise what you regard as goodness" seems to be a fundamental task for all brains of all species to perform, and one can map the concept of a token to this — though it may be as wrong as the mapping of any of the other time-series prediction machine learning systems that came before Transformer models (these models are certainly not as sample-efficient as we are). > And where are the analogues for stuff like emotions, evolutionarily useful chemical processes which actually make us worse at prediction? Similarly, the value proposition of emotion can be easily simulated by an LLM even if any given model does not[0] possess the qualia. But this is a statement that we don't know, it definitely isn't a yes or a no — it isn't even as good as being an "it depends". [0] my guess is that none have qualia; but as I say, I have no reason to be confident of this guess, as nobody knows how to test for it or why we ourselves may possess it.

exe34 3y ago

> And where are the analogues for stuff like emotions, My mental model for emotions is an arena of competing monomaniacal agents each trained over evolutionary time. Whether it's lust or jealousy or greed, each one at some point <insert just-so story just like we do for genes>. The prediction from each emotion is the next action that will result in more resources, more offsprings surviving to reproductive age, etc.