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The argument here seems to be AI can’t become a mind as it does not experience. There is a counter argument though that the way we access our past experiences i

The argument here seems to be AI can’t become a mind as it does not experience. There is a counter argument though that the way we access our past experiences is via the neural pathways we lay down during those experiences and that with the new neural networks AIs now have we have given them those same pathways just in a different way. At present I don’t think it is yet at the same point but when the AI can adjust those pathways, add more in compute time (infinite memory like tech) and is allowed to ‘think’ about those pathways then I can see it gaining our level or better of philosophical thought.

lproven 2y ago
> The argument here seems to be AI can’t become a mind as it does not experience. Er, no, I don't think that is the argument.
- Vecr 2y ago
  You apparently have a better sense of what the argument is than I do [0], would you explain? [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42484852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42484852
  - lproven 2y ago
    I think the primary points that I took away were: * LLMs provide a mirage: there is really nothing there at all, but they sometimes can look like they are exhibiting intelligence but that's because they are repeating statistically-remixed intelligent input. * However, the tech-bro culture that has fermented in Silicon Valley has resulted in a large bunch of people who are irrational, have no concern for logic or truth, but who feed on each other's groupthink, and from that culture, a religious-like mindset has emerged -- strongly reflected in some of the comments here, for what it's worth -- that is basically a sort of messianic cult. It preaches: - greed is good, etc. (Wall St, Gordon Gekko etc.) - disrupt, automate humans out of the loop, etc: these are good things, desirable goals in and of themselves, the ends justify the means, etc. - truth is negotiable and not really important; cf. "the reality based community" (https://archive.ph/pvkxE etc.) - thus they honestly don't know and can't care if LLMs are smart, because LLMs manifest the dogma: the machine will evolve and replace us, etc. Summary: it's an economics-driven religious movement now, with True Believers, and mere facts do not matter to them, and what to sane people would be horrifically disastrous outcomes are to these guys desirable outcomes, prices worth paying on the path to the Singularity.
    - Vecr 2y ago
      Those are positions, but you need arguments to back up your positions. I know this is an advertisement, but couldn't she put in at least a few so we can sample her reasoning quality?
      - lproven 2y ago
        Um. Well, it's not my article, so I have no particular position on this, but it seems to me that her assessment largely agreed with my own, so perhaps I am merely parroting her views through mine. To me, the article seemed to express her position pretty well. YMMV. But maybe that's because I agree with it, and you presumably do not.
        Vecr 2y ago
        It's just woolly. Don't philosophers talk about causal models and mental states and simulations and China brains and aspects of externalism instead of just saying "I think AI researchers are wrong, I think it's like this instead"?
        lproven 2y ago
        I honestly don't know. It seems to me that the field lacks a solid definition of what consciousness is. Merely defining it seems to be the core of "the hard problem". https://iep.utm.edu/hard-problem-of-conciousness/ https://iep.utm.edu/hard-problem-of-conciousness/ If the field accepts that it can't describe or define what consciousness is then any competent practitioner in that field will go out of their way to avoid saying that an entity, or class of entities -- such as LLM bots -- do not possess it. To do anything else would be to lay themselves open to attack. It would be a career-threatening move. Not being able to say "this type of software is not conscious" makes it necessary to beat around the bush somewhat in trying to say what amounts to "this type of software cannot think". I don't know what you perceive as "woolly" here, but it could be due to that.
        Vecr 2y ago
dartos 2y ago
The difference is that when we experience something, we experience it first hand. When a model is trained, it sees a discrete representation of information. It’s like only being able to see 2nd hand sources of information.
- aothms 2y ago
  I think the first hand distinction is questionable, e.g https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing-in-itself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing-in-itself We can also only perceive through our sensory and neural pathways. And with multimodal LLMs there is also some ability for multiple sensory inputs.
  - dartos 2y ago
    I don’t think it is. To oversimplify, our input system takes a continuous stream of raw input. We can’t stop it, really. We get our input directly from the source. Even if it’s aliased by our neural pathways, when they receive that info initially, it’s unadulterated. LLMs take fixed amounts of discrete tokens which must be modified before it even reaches the training routine . Even multimodal models take in discrete tokens. Information is lost when recording reality to video and even more is lost when converting that video into tokens. And LLMs only learn in fixed steps. We take in information while we generate our whatever it we generate (movement, sense of self, understanding of our surroundings and place in those surroundings, next sentence, etc.) Talking specifically about the most popular transformers models.
ok_dad 2y ago
It has wheels like a truck, a seat for the driver, a steering wheel, and two pedals, but a go-kart is much different from a truck. Similarly, a "neural network" for an LLM is much different from the human brain and nervous system, plus all of the other systems that work alongside and affect it. The danger is not that the AI is elevated to that of a human by the "they're so similar" reasoning, the danger is that the average human will be degraded to AI-level status and not thought of as anything but a tool.

lproven 2y ago

> The argument here seems to be AI can’t become a mind as it does not experience. Er, no, I don't think that is the argument.

Vecr 2y ago
You apparently have a better sense of what the argument is than I do [0], would you explain? [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42484852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42484852
- lproven 2y ago
  I think the primary points that I took away were: * LLMs provide a mirage: there is really nothing there at all, but they sometimes can look like they are exhibiting intelligence but that's because they are repeating statistically-remixed intelligent input. * However, the tech-bro culture that has fermented in Silicon Valley has resulted in a large bunch of people who are irrational, have no concern for logic or truth, but who feed on each other's groupthink, and from that culture, a religious-like mindset has emerged -- strongly reflected in some of the comments here, for what it's worth -- that is basically a sort of messianic cult. It preaches: - greed is good, etc. (Wall St, Gordon Gekko etc.) - disrupt, automate humans out of the loop, etc: these are good things, desirable goals in and of themselves, the ends justify the means, etc. - truth is negotiable and not really important; cf. "the reality based community" (https://archive.ph/pvkxE etc.) - thus they honestly don't know and can't care if LLMs are smart, because LLMs manifest the dogma: the machine will evolve and replace us, etc. Summary: it's an economics-driven religious movement now, with True Believers, and mere facts do not matter to them, and what to sane people would be horrifically disastrous outcomes are to these guys desirable outcomes, prices worth paying on the path to the Singularity.
  - Vecr 2y ago
    Those are positions, but you need arguments to back up your positions. I know this is an advertisement, but couldn't she put in at least a few so we can sample her reasoning quality?
    - lproven 2y ago
      Um. Well, it's not my article, so I have no particular position on this, but it seems to me that her assessment largely agreed with my own, so perhaps I am merely parroting her views through mine. To me, the article seemed to express her position pretty well. YMMV. But maybe that's because I agree with it, and you presumably do not.
      - Vecr 2y ago
        It's just woolly. Don't philosophers talk about causal models and mental states and simulations and China brains and aspects of externalism instead of just saying "I think AI researchers are wrong, I think it's like this instead"?
        lproven 2y ago
        I honestly don't know. It seems to me that the field lacks a solid definition of what consciousness is. Merely defining it seems to be the core of "the hard problem". https://iep.utm.edu/hard-problem-of-conciousness/ https://iep.utm.edu/hard-problem-of-conciousness/ If the field accepts that it can't describe or define what consciousness is then any competent practitioner in that field will go out of their way to avoid saying that an entity, or class of entities -- such as LLM bots -- do not possess it. To do anything else would be to lay themselves open to attack. It would be a career-threatening move. Not being able to say "this type of software is not conscious" makes it necessary to beat around the bush somewhat in trying to say what amounts to "this type of software cannot think". I don't know what you perceive as "woolly" here, but it could be due to that.
        Vecr 2y ago

dartos 2y ago

The difference is that when we experience something, we experience it first hand. When a model is trained, it sees a discrete representation of information. It’s like only being able to see 2nd hand sources of information.

aothms 2y ago
I think the first hand distinction is questionable, e.g https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing-in-itself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing-in-itself We can also only perceive through our sensory and neural pathways. And with multimodal LLMs there is also some ability for multiple sensory inputs.
- dartos 2y ago
  I don’t think it is. To oversimplify, our input system takes a continuous stream of raw input. We can’t stop it, really. We get our input directly from the source. Even if it’s aliased by our neural pathways, when they receive that info initially, it’s unadulterated. LLMs take fixed amounts of discrete tokens which must be modified before it even reaches the training routine . Even multimodal models take in discrete tokens. Information is lost when recording reality to video and even more is lost when converting that video into tokens. And LLMs only learn in fixed steps. We take in information while we generate our whatever it we generate (movement, sense of self, understanding of our surroundings and place in those surroundings, next sentence, etc.) Talking specifically about the most popular transformers models.

ok_dad 2y ago

It has wheels like a truck, a seat for the driver, a steering wheel, and two pedals, but a go-kart is much different from a truck. Similarly, a "neural network" for an LLM is much different from the human brain and nervous system, plus all of the other systems that work alongside and affect it. The danger is not that the AI is elevated to that of a human by the "they're so similar" reasoning, the danger is that the average human will be degraded to AI-level status and not thought of as anything but a tool.