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> To them, there's no debate to have over "does it have real feelings?" and not really any debate at all. To them, these are just novel stochastic tools whose c
by cruffle_duffle 2y ago
> To them, there's no debate to have over "does it have real feelings?" and not really any debate at all. To them, these are just novel stochastic tools whose core capabilities and limitations seem pretty self-apparent and can just be accommodated by choosing suitable applications, just as with all their other tools.
Boom. This is my camp. Watching the Anthropic YouTube video in the linked article was pretty interesting. While I only managed to catch like 10 minutes, I was left with an impression that some of those dudes really think this is more than a bunch of linear algebra. Like they talk about their LLM in these dare I say, anthropic, ways that are just kind of creepy.
Guys. It’s a computer program (well, more accurately it’s a massive data model). It does pretty cool shit and is an amazing tool whose powers and weakness we have yet to fully map out. But it isn’t human nor any other living creature. Period. It has no thoughts, feelings or anything else.
I keep wanting to go work for one of these big name AI companies but after watching that video I sure hope most people there understand that what they are working on is a tool and nothing more. It’s a pile of math working over a massive set of “differently compressed” data that encompasses a large swath of human knowledge.
And calling it “just a tool” isn’t to dismiss the power of these LLM’s at all! They are both massively overhyped and hugely under hyped at the same time. But they are just tools. That’s it.
- Terr_ 2y agoIMO some of this stems from a kind of author/character confusion by human observers. The LLM can generate an engaging story from the perspective of a ravenous evil vampire, but that doesn't mean that vampires are real nor that the LLM wants to suck your blood. Re-running the same process but changing the prompt from "you are a vampire" to "you are an LLM", doesn't magically create a metaphysical connection to the real-world algorithm.
- IanCal 2y agoThe problem I have with this is it seems to rapidly assume that humans and animals are somehow magic. If you think we're physical things obeying physical laws, then unless you think there's something truly uncomputable about us then we can be replicated with maths. In which case is this just an argument about scale? > It’s a pile of math working over a massive set of “differently compressed” data that encompasses a large swath of human knowledge. So am I but over less knowledge and more interactions.
- cruffle_duffle 2y agoAll of what you said can be true but that doesn’t mean any of it applies to large language models. Large language model-like “thing” might be some component of whatever makes animals like humans conscious but it certainly isn’t the only thing. Not even close.
- IanCal 2y agoWhat it means is that the complaints about language models being "just maths" or "just code" are not sufficient.