5 ms·

LLMs at this point are stateless calculators without personal experience, life goals, obligations, etc. Till recently people expected to have a character like T

LLMs at this point are stateless calculators without personal experience, life goals, obligations, etc. Till recently people expected to have a character like Terminator or HAL. Now we have intelligence separate from 'soul'. Can calculator be AGI? It can be Artificial, General, and Intelligence. We may need another word for 'creature' with some features of living being.

dcow 1y ago
The term AI has always bothered me for this reason. If the thing is intelligent, then there’s nothing artificial about it… it’s almost an oxymoron. There are two subtly different definitions in use: (1) “like intelligence in useful ways, but not actually”, and (2) “actually intelligent, but not of human wetware”. I take the A in AGI to be of type (2). LLMs are doing (1), right now. They may have the “neurological structure” required for (2), but to make a being General and Intelligent it needs to compress its context window persist it to storage every night as it sleeps. It needs memory and agency. It needs to be able to learn in real time and self-adjusting its own weights. And if it’s doing all that, then who is to say it doesn't have a soul?
- Jensson 1y ago
  > If the thing is intelligent, then there’s nothing artificial about it… it’s almost an oxymoron. Artificial means human made, if we made a thing that is intelligent, then it is artificial intelligence. It is like "artificial insemination" means a human designed system to inseminate rather than the natural way. It is still a proper insemination, artificial doesn't mean "fake", it just means unnatural/human made.
  - europeanNyan 1y ago
    > Artificial means human made, if we made a thing that is intelligent, then it is artificial intelligence. Aren't humans themselves essentially human made? Maybe a better definition would be non-human (or inorganic if we want to include intelligence like e.g. dolphins)?
    - Jensson 1y ago
      > Aren't humans themselves essentially human made? Humans evolved, but yeah the definition can be a bit hard to understand since it is hard to separate things. That is why I brought up the artificial insemination example since it deals with this. > Maybe a better definition would be non-human (or inorganic if we want to include intelligence like e.g. dolphins)? We also have artificial lakes, they are inorganic but human made.
    - butlike 1y ago
      "ii" (inorganic intelligence) has a better ring to it than AI and can also be stylized as "||" which means OR.
    - caconym_ 1y ago
      > Aren't humans themselves essentially human made? No, not in the sense in which the word "made" is being used here. > Maybe a better definition would be non-human (or inorganic if we want to include intelligence like e.g. dolphins)? Neither of these work. Calling intelligence in animals "artificial" is absurd, and "inorganic" arbitrarily excludes "head cheese" style approaches to building artificial intelligence. "Artificial" strongly implies mimicry of something that occurs naturally, and is derived from the same root as "artifice", which can be defined as "to construct by means of skill or specialized art". This obviously excludes the natural biological act of reproduction that produces a newborn human brain (and support equipment) primed to learn and grow; reportedly, sometimes people don't even know they're pregnant until they go into labor (and figure out that's what's happening).
      - kridsdale3 1y ago
        If I asked my wife if she made our son, she would say yes. It is literally called "labour". Then there is "emotional labour" that lasts for 10 years to do the post-training.
        caconym_ 1y ago
        I drove my car to work today, and while I was at work I drove a meeting. Does this mean my car is a meeting? My meeting was a car? It turns out that some (many, in fact) words mean different things in different contexts. My comment makes an explicit argument concerning the connotations and nuances of the word "made" used in this context, and you have not responded to that argument.
  - dcow 1y ago
    Well, you and I agree, but there’s an entire industry and pop culture throwing the term around rather imprecisely (calling LLMs “AI”) which makes actual discussion about what AGI is, difficult. I guess I don’t understand the technical difference between AI and AGI and consider AI to refer to the social meme of “this thing kinda seems like it did something intelligent, like magic”.

dcow 1y ago

The term AI has always bothered me for this reason. If the thing is intelligent, then there’s nothing artificial about it… it’s almost an oxymoron. There are two subtly different definitions in use: (1) “like intelligence in useful ways, but not actually”, and (2) “actually intelligent, but not of human wetware”. I take the A in AGI to be of type (2). LLMs are doing (1), right now. They may have the “neurological structure” required for (2), but to make a being General and Intelligent it needs to compress its context window persist it to storage every night as it sleeps. It needs memory and agency. It needs to be able to learn in real time and self-adjusting its own weights. And if it’s doing all that, then who is to say it doesn't have a soul?

Jensson 1y ago
> If the thing is intelligent, then there’s nothing artificial about it… it’s almost an oxymoron. Artificial means human made, if we made a thing that is intelligent, then it is artificial intelligence. It is like "artificial insemination" means a human designed system to inseminate rather than the natural way. It is still a proper insemination, artificial doesn't mean "fake", it just means unnatural/human made.
- europeanNyan 1y ago
  > Artificial means human made, if we made a thing that is intelligent, then it is artificial intelligence. Aren't humans themselves essentially human made? Maybe a better definition would be non-human (or inorganic if we want to include intelligence like e.g. dolphins)?
  - Jensson 1y ago
    > Aren't humans themselves essentially human made? Humans evolved, but yeah the definition can be a bit hard to understand since it is hard to separate things. That is why I brought up the artificial insemination example since it deals with this. > Maybe a better definition would be non-human (or inorganic if we want to include intelligence like e.g. dolphins)? We also have artificial lakes, they are inorganic but human made.
  - butlike 1y ago
    "ii" (inorganic intelligence) has a better ring to it than AI and can also be stylized as "||" which means OR.
  - caconym_ 1y ago
    > Aren't humans themselves essentially human made? No, not in the sense in which the word "made" is being used here. > Maybe a better definition would be non-human (or inorganic if we want to include intelligence like e.g. dolphins)? Neither of these work. Calling intelligence in animals "artificial" is absurd, and "inorganic" arbitrarily excludes "head cheese" style approaches to building artificial intelligence. "Artificial" strongly implies mimicry of something that occurs naturally, and is derived from the same root as "artifice", which can be defined as "to construct by means of skill or specialized art". This obviously excludes the natural biological act of reproduction that produces a newborn human brain (and support equipment) primed to learn and grow; reportedly, sometimes people don't even know they're pregnant until they go into labor (and figure out that's what's happening).
    - kridsdale3 1y ago
      If I asked my wife if she made our son, she would say yes. It is literally called "labour". Then there is "emotional labour" that lasts for 10 years to do the post-training.
      - caconym_ 1y ago
        I drove my car to work today, and while I was at work I drove a meeting. Does this mean my car is a meeting? My meeting was a car? It turns out that some (many, in fact) words mean different things in different contexts. My comment makes an explicit argument concerning the connotations and nuances of the word "made" used in this context, and you have not responded to that argument.
- dcow 1y ago
  Well, you and I agree, but there’s an entire industry and pop culture throwing the term around rather imprecisely (calling LLMs “AI”) which makes actual discussion about what AGI is, difficult. I guess I don’t understand the technical difference between AI and AGI and consider AI to refer to the social meme of “this thing kinda seems like it did something intelligent, like magic”.