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>Many of them claim that there isn't anything to emerge that hasn't already emerged. Their claim is often that there is no "intelligence" or "sentience" or "und

>Many of them claim that there isn't anything to emerge that hasn't already emerged. Their claim is often that there is no "intelligence" or "sentience" or "understanding" or "consciousness" distinct from the behaviors already displayed by existing statistical models. Woah boy, I detect mischief in this portrayal of who is claiming what. Two questions to separate out here. (1) Can computers ever, in principle, do the all the special kinds of things that human minds can do and (2) do LLM's as of 2024 do any of those truly special things? But also a separate thing to untangle, which is whether (A) LLMs do anything intelligently given the various possible meanings of the term, and (B) whether they are conscious or sentient or are AGI, which is a whole other ballgame entirely. I think there's mischief here because I do think it's nuts to say LLMs right now have any special spark, but you seem to want to make proponents of (1) answer for that belief, which I think is not very fair to that argument. I think it's rare to find people in the wild who are considered respectable proponents of (1), who would say that. More often you find people like that Google engineer who got fired. And I think there's mischief here because it's one thing to say LLMs do (A) and another to say they do (B), and I think you can reasonably say (A) without going off the deep end. And I think blending A and B together is again trying to make (1) answer for a crazy argument.

omnicognate 2y ago
I'm talking about the people one encounters on hackernews, who are the ones I personally am most likely to actually debate these things with. I gave a specific example, the "and so are you" rejoinder to "it's just a stastical model" which, pithy though it is, implies all that I said. There are numerous examples of much lengthier and more explicit statements of that position to be found in any topic related to AI, consciousness, the recent death of Daniel Dennett, etc. If you don't hold that position then don't consider yourself among those I'm referring to, but its prevalence (or at least loudness) on HN can't be denied. There's no "mischief" and I somewhat resent the suggestion. I haven't attempted to even argue with the viewpoint I describe, only to point out that it (and therefore also softer positions related to it) cannot currently be disproved so attempting to argue with it from a position of assuming it's irrefutably wrong is a non-starter, not that that stops many people from trying to argue with it in exactly that way. I was trying to point out why it seems difficult and tiring to have a grown up discussion about this stuff, not misrepresent anyone's opinion.

omnicognate 2y ago

I'm talking about the people one encounters on hackernews, who are the ones I personally am most likely to actually debate these things with. I gave a specific example, the "and so are you" rejoinder to "it's just a stastical model" which, pithy though it is, implies all that I said. There are numerous examples of much lengthier and more explicit statements of that position to be found in any topic related to AI, consciousness, the recent death of Daniel Dennett, etc. If you don't hold that position then don't consider yourself among those I'm referring to, but its prevalence (or at least loudness) on HN can't be denied. There's no "mischief" and I somewhat resent the suggestion. I haven't attempted to even argue with the viewpoint I describe, only to point out that it (and therefore also softer positions related to it) cannot currently be disproved so attempting to argue with it from a position of assuming it's irrefutably wrong is a non-starter, not that that stops many people from trying to argue with it in exactly that way. I was trying to point out why it seems difficult and tiring to have a grown up discussion about this stuff, not misrepresent anyone's opinion.