4 ms·

How are LLMs intelligent? Point me to the intelligence? Literally it’s a black box of statistics. Tokens in, Next token probabilities out

okasaki 2y ago
How are humans intelligent? Point me to the intelligence? Literally they're just meat. Sensory inputs in, electrical signals out.
- card_zero 2y ago
  How is the I Ching intelligent, etc.
mindcrime 2y ago
Literally it’s a black box of statistics. Tokens in, Next token probabilities out You literally just repeated the exact same mistake, albeit in different words. This is tantamount to speaking of airplanes: "It's not flight, it's just a bunch of fluid mechanics". You're focusing on the internal implementation details, not the expressed behavior. I don't know if people do this out of some sort of "biological chauvinism" or what, but it strikes me as rather odd. I can (to pick one random example out of many) ask ChatGPT "Who is the current Prime Minister of Japan and what is the largest prime number smaller than their age?" and get a correct answer. To say that a system that can pull that feat off isn't intelligent boggles the imagination IMO. Token prediction? Who cares. Hallucinations? Humans hallucinate also. Perhaps less frequently, but all that says is that we aren't "all the way there" yet with AI.
- lupire 2y ago
  LLM is intelligent like a human, book, cat, thermostat, or grasshopper is intelligent. But it's not a human intelligence, and it's creepy when its creators dress it up to pretend it is. It's an extremely superficial imitation of a human, and it doesn't behave like a human. It's like when a human furry claims to really be a dog or an otherkin.
  - myaccountonhn 2y ago
    The conspiracist in me believes that they want people to think it’s human like and actually sentient so they can argue that what they’re doing is fair use. It’s just learning like humans learn!
  - satvikpendem 2y ago
    Humans aren't the only intelligence though. Just because we "dress it up" to, well, interact with us humans doesn't mean it's not intelligent. I mean, what else would you expect them to do, make it emit binary?
  - sdwr 2y ago
    "LLM is intelligent like a human, but it's not, and don't pretend it is" is probably the best summary I've read on the topic
- az09mugen 2y ago
  As you said, it boggles imagination, because it feels like chatting with a human. But "having knowledge" does not equal "be intelligent". Would you say a dictionary is intelligent? GPT is just a human-friendly way to access, condensate and present to you information already present on the web. It saves you hours of web search and good old notes taking. That's cool, but that's not intelligence.
satvikpendem 2y ago
Point me to human intelligence. Not a mimicry of intelligence, actual intelligence. No, solipsism doesn't count.
- RaftPeople 2y ago
  Humans learn dynamically and can apply patterns to problems across domains. I think these are a couple key capabilities we have that LLM's don't have (for example).
  - satvikpendem 2y ago
    Why do you think only LLMs are the pinnacle of AI today?
    - RaftPeople 2y ago
      > Why do you think only LLMs are the pinnacle of AI today? I don't think that but you're right that I was partially countering a pro-LLM argument that was not there. It was a bit of a knee jerk reaction due to the number of people overstating current LLM's capabilities here on HN.
  - SgtBastard 2y ago
    >Humas learn dynamically In-context learning (Few Shot Prompting) is absolutely demonstrable by LLMs since GPT 3.5 at least.
    - RaftPeople 2y ago
      Yes, ICL demonstrates some capability, but is still extremely limited compared to a human's ability. It's an interesting baby step at this point.
erichocean 2y ago
> Literally it’s a black box of statistics. Tokens in, Next token probabilities out You just described an extremely accurate model of people.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
illuminant 2y ago
Intelligence is the mitigation of uncertainty. If you have a challenge (question) and the subject reduced the unknown qualities of that challenge in a deterministic way then some degree of intelligence has been achieved.

okasaki 2y ago

How are humans intelligent? Point me to the intelligence? Literally they're just meat. Sensory inputs in, electrical signals out.

card_zero 2y ago
How is the I Ching intelligent, etc.

mindcrime 2y ago

Literally it’s a black box of statistics. Tokens in, Next token probabilities out You literally just repeated the exact same mistake, albeit in different words. This is tantamount to speaking of airplanes: "It's not flight, it's just a bunch of fluid mechanics". You're focusing on the internal implementation details, not the expressed behavior. I don't know if people do this out of some sort of "biological chauvinism" or what, but it strikes me as rather odd. I can (to pick one random example out of many) ask ChatGPT "Who is the current Prime Minister of Japan and what is the largest prime number smaller than their age?" and get a correct answer. To say that a system that can pull that feat off isn't intelligent boggles the imagination IMO. Token prediction? Who cares. Hallucinations? Humans hallucinate also. Perhaps less frequently, but all that says is that we aren't "all the way there" yet with AI.

lupire 2y ago
LLM is intelligent like a human, book, cat, thermostat, or grasshopper is intelligent. But it's not a human intelligence, and it's creepy when its creators dress it up to pretend it is. It's an extremely superficial imitation of a human, and it doesn't behave like a human. It's like when a human furry claims to really be a dog or an otherkin.
- myaccountonhn 2y ago
  The conspiracist in me believes that they want people to think it’s human like and actually sentient so they can argue that what they’re doing is fair use. It’s just learning like humans learn!
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  Humans aren't the only intelligence though. Just because we "dress it up" to, well, interact with us humans doesn't mean it's not intelligent. I mean, what else would you expect them to do, make it emit binary?
- sdwr 2y ago
  "LLM is intelligent like a human, but it's not, and don't pretend it is" is probably the best summary I've read on the topic
az09mugen 2y ago
As you said, it boggles imagination, because it feels like chatting with a human. But "having knowledge" does not equal "be intelligent". Would you say a dictionary is intelligent? GPT is just a human-friendly way to access, condensate and present to you information already present on the web. It saves you hours of web search and good old notes taking. That's cool, but that's not intelligence.

satvikpendem 2y ago

Point me to human intelligence. Not a mimicry of intelligence, actual intelligence. No, solipsism doesn't count.

RaftPeople 2y ago
Humans learn dynamically and can apply patterns to problems across domains. I think these are a couple key capabilities we have that LLM's don't have (for example).
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  Why do you think only LLMs are the pinnacle of AI today?
  - RaftPeople 2y ago
    > Why do you think only LLMs are the pinnacle of AI today? I don't think that but you're right that I was partially countering a pro-LLM argument that was not there. It was a bit of a knee jerk reaction due to the number of people overstating current LLM's capabilities here on HN.
- SgtBastard 2y ago
  >Humas learn dynamically In-context learning (Few Shot Prompting) is absolutely demonstrable by LLMs since GPT 3.5 at least.
  - RaftPeople 2y ago
    Yes, ICL demonstrates some capability, but is still extremely limited compared to a human's ability. It's an interesting baby step at this point.

erichocean 2y ago

> Literally it’s a black box of statistics. Tokens in, Next token probabilities out You just described an extremely accurate model of people.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

illuminant 2y ago

Intelligence is the mitigation of uncertainty. If you have a challenge (question) and the subject reduced the unknown qualities of that challenge in a deterministic way then some degree of intelligence has been achieved.