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And often it does not really take effort. I believe LLM's would be more useful if they'd less "agreeable". Albeit they'd be much more annoying for humans to us
by weinzierl 2y ago
And often it does not really take effort. I believe LLM's would be more useful if they'd less "agreeable".
Albeit they'd be much more annoying for humans to use, because feelings.
- jqpabc123 2y agoI believe LLM's would be more useful if they'd less "agreeable". I believe LLMs would be more useful if they actually had intelligence and principals and beliefs --- more like people. Unfortunately, they don't. Any output is the result of statistical processes. And statistical results can be coerced based on input. The output may sound good and proper but there is nothing absolute or guaranteed about the substance of it. LLMs are basically bullshit artists. They don't hold concrete beliefs or opinions or feelings --- and they don't really "care".
- adastra22 2y agoYour brain is also a statistical process.
- jqpabc123 2y agoYour brain is a lot of things --- much of which is not well understood. But from our limited understanding, it is definitely not strictly digital and statistical in nature.
- ben_w 2y agoAt different levels of approximation it can be many things, including digital and statistical. Nobody knows what the most useful level of approximation is.
- jqpabc123 2y agoNobody knows what the most useful level of approximation is. The first step to achieving a "useful level of approximation" is to understand what you're attempting to approximate. We're not there yet. For the most part, we're just flying blind and hoping for a fantastical result. In other words, this could be a modern case of alchemy --- the desired result may not be achievable with the processes being employed. But we don't even know enough yet to discern if this is the case or not.
- ben_w 2y agoWe're doing a bit more than flying blind — that's why we've got tools that can at least approximate the right answers, rather than looking like a cat walking across a keyboard or mashing auto-complete suggestions. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if if the state of the art in AI is to our minds as a hot air balloon is to flying, with FSD and Optimus being the AI equivalent of E.P. Frost's steam powered ornithopters wowing tech demos but not actually solving real problems.
- ImHereToVote 2y agoYour brain isn't a truth machine. It can't be, it has to create an inner map that relates to the outer world. You have never seen the real world. You are calculating the angular distance between signals just like Claude is. It's more of a question of degree than category.
- ImHereToVote 2y agoClaude hasn't been trained with skin in the game. That is one of the reasons it confabulates so readily. The weights and biases are shaped by an external classification. There isn't really a way to train consequences into the model like natural selection has been able to train us.
- ben_w 2y agoI would say that consequences are exactly the modification of weights and biases when models make a mistake. How many of us take a Machiavellian approach to calculate the combined chance of getting caught and the punishment if we are, instead of just going with gut feelings based on our internalised model from a lifetime of experience? Some, but not most of us. What we get from natural selection is instinct, which I think includes what smiles look like, but that's just a fast way to get feedback.
- svieira 2y agoIs this statement of yours just a calculated angular distance between signals or does it have some relation to the real world?
- ImHereToVote 2y agoIt is formed inside a simulation. That simulation is based on information gathered by my sensors.
- nkrisc 2y agoThat’s a meaningless statement, regardless of veracity.
- adastra22 2y agoAll the same objections to AI in that comment could be applied to the human brain. But we find (some) people to be useful as truth-seeking machines as well as skilled conversationalists and moral guides. There is no objection there that can't also be applied to people, so the objection itself must be false or incomplete.
- svieira 2y agoIs this statement a product of statistics as well and therefore unreliable? If so, what if his brain is more than a statistical process?
- staticman2 2y ago>>>Your brain is also a statistical process. Assuming this statement is made in good faith and isn't just something tech bros say to troll people, what neuroscience textbooks describe the brain as a "statistical process" that you would recommend.
- literature_bot 2y agoPage 12: https://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/inst/ag-ki/rojas_home/documents/1996/NeuralNetworks/neuron.pdf https://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/inst/ag-ki/rojas_home/documents... "However, we should be careful with the metaphors and paradigms commonly introduced when dealing with the nervous system. It seems to be a constant in the history of science that the brain has always been compared to the most complicated contemporary artifact produced by human industry [297]. In ancient times the brain was compared to a pneumatic machine, in the Renaissance to a clockwork, and at the end of the last century to the telephone network. There are some today who consider computers the paradigm par excellence of a nervous system. It is rather paradoxical that when John von Neumann wrote his classical description of future universal computers, he tried to choose terms that would describe computers in terms of brains, not brains in terms of computers."
- ryao 2y agoThere have been episodes of Star Trek that used brains as computers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spock's_Brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spock's_Brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Stop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Stop
- adastra22 2y agoThe word "computer" itself used to be the name of a human profession.
- ryao 2y agoIt still was long afterward, with all remaining human computers being called accountants. These days, they appear to just punch numbers into a digital computer, so perhaps even the last bastion of human computing has fallen.
- exe34 2y ago> more useful if they actually had intelligence and principals and beliefs --- more like people. that's a nice bit of anthropomorphising humans, but it's not how humans work.
- falcor84 2y agoThis is the first time I ever saw the lovely phrase "anthropomorphising humans" and I want to thank you for giving me the first of my six impossible things before breakfast today
- nonrandomstring 2y ago> anthropomorphising humans Only on HN.
- adastra22 2y agoWe wouldn't want to anthropomorphize humans, no.