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You can't win this argument through logic less mere rhetoric. You need scientific evidence. Hint: There isn't. Edit: Ok, let me be less harsh and play with you

You can't win this argument through logic less mere rhetoric. You need scientific evidence. Hint: There isn't. Edit: Ok, let me be less harsh and play with your argument. Can an LLM have an acid/psilocybin/ketamine trip, distort its view of self and reality, then rewire some of its internal connections and come a little different based on the experience? I guess not, there are more examples and they all show that as far as we know LLMs are not minds/brains and viceversa even if they seem similar in a chat interface. (If you don't empathise with that example remove the drugs and change them for a near-death experience). I strongly argue humans are not (just) LLMs, but I think we're far from getting evidence*. I think we will get to AGI before we know how the brain works and there is no dicotomy in that, if anything the tech is showing us that we can get at least some intelligence in other substrates. *PS: fwiw ausence of evidence does not support any sides. I shouldn't remark that, but here we are.

ben_w 2y ago
> You need scientific evidence This, while true, is putting the cart before the horse. One needs to define what the question is before it is possible to seek evidence. I see many things different between Transformer models and brains, but I do not know which, if any, matters. > Can an LLM have an acid/psilocybin/ketamine trip, distort its view of self and reality, then rewire some of its internal connections and come a little different based on the experience? Specifically those chemicals? No, not even during training when the weights aren't frozen, as nobody bothered to simulate the relevant receptors*. Can LLMs experience anything, in the way we mean it? Nobody even knows. We don't know what the question means well enough to more than merely guess what to look for. Do the inputs to an LLM, a broader idea of "experience" without needing to solve the question of which definition of consciousness everyone should be using, rewire some of its internal connections? All the time. * caveat: it doesn't, at first glance, seem totally impossible that the structure of these models is sufficiently complicated for them to create the simulation of those things in the weights themselves in order to better model the behaviour of humans generating text from experiencing those things. But I also don't have any positive reason to expect this any more than I would expect an actor portraying a near-death-experience to have any idea what that's like on the inside.
- mrbungie 2y ago
  The question/argument was well defined by parent-grandparent posts: people reason as LLMs, including a suggestion that people discussing here are not being self-conscious of said similarity (i.e. people parroting/regurgitating). You can check it above. I won't continue with these discussions as I feel people are being just obtuse about this and it is becoming more emotional than rational.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    > The question/argument was well defined by parent-grandparent posts: people reason as LLMs, including a suggestion that people discussing here are not being self-conscious of said similarity (i.e. people parroting/regurgitating). You can check it above. With a lack of precision necessary when the phrase "You need scientific evidence" is invoked. It's very easy to trip over "common sense" reasoning and definitions — even Newton did so with calculus, and Euclid did so with geometry. > I won't continue with these discussions as I feel people are being just obtuse about this and it is becoming more emotional than rational. As you wish. I am relatively unemotional on this.

ben_w 2y ago

> You need scientific evidence This, while true, is putting the cart before the horse. One needs to define what the question is before it is possible to seek evidence. I see many things different between Transformer models and brains, but I do not know which, if any, matters. > Can an LLM have an acid/psilocybin/ketamine trip, distort its view of self and reality, then rewire some of its internal connections and come a little different based on the experience? Specifically those chemicals? No, not even during training when the weights aren't frozen, as nobody bothered to simulate the relevant receptors*. Can LLMs experience anything, in the way we mean it? Nobody even knows. We don't know what the question means well enough to more than merely guess what to look for. Do the inputs to an LLM, a broader idea of "experience" without needing to solve the question of which definition of consciousness everyone should be using, rewire some of its internal connections? All the time. * caveat: it doesn't, at first glance, seem totally impossible that the structure of these models is sufficiently complicated for them to create the simulation of those things in the weights themselves in order to better model the behaviour of humans generating text from experiencing those things. But I also don't have any positive reason to expect this any more than I would expect an actor portraying a near-death-experience to have any idea what that's like on the inside.

mrbungie 2y ago
The question/argument was well defined by parent-grandparent posts: people reason as LLMs, including a suggestion that people discussing here are not being self-conscious of said similarity (i.e. people parroting/regurgitating). You can check it above. I won't continue with these discussions as I feel people are being just obtuse about this and it is becoming more emotional than rational.
- ben_w 2y ago
  > The question/argument was well defined by parent-grandparent posts: people reason as LLMs, including a suggestion that people discussing here are not being self-conscious of said similarity (i.e. people parroting/regurgitating). You can check it above. With a lack of precision necessary when the phrase "You need scientific evidence" is invoked. It's very easy to trip over "common sense" reasoning and definitions — even Newton did so with calculus, and Euclid did so with geometry. > I won't continue with these discussions as I feel people are being just obtuse about this and it is becoming more emotional than rational. As you wish. I am relatively unemotional on this.