6 ms·

Wolfram’s “bigger brains” piece raises the intriguing question of what kinds of thinking, communication, or even entirely new languages might emerge as we scale

by ednite 1y ago

Wolfram’s “bigger brains” piece raises the intriguing question of what kinds of thinking, communication, or even entirely new languages might emerge as we scale up intelligence, whether in biological brains or artificial ones. It got me thinking that, over millions of years, human brain volume increased from about 400–500 cc in early hominins to around 1400 cc today. It’s not just about size, the brain’s wiring and complexity also evolved, which in turn drove advances in language, culture, and technology, all of which are deeply interconnected. With AI, you could argue we’re witnessing a similar leap, but at an exponential rate. The speed at which neural networks are scaling and developing new capabilities far outpaces anything in human evolution. It makes you wonder how much of the future will even be understandable to us, or if we’re only at the beginning of a much bigger story. Interesting times ahead.

postalrat 1y ago
The future that we don't understand is already all around us. We just don't understand it.
- aspenmayer 1y ago
  Is the future in the room with us right now?
  - postalrat 1y ago
    It is the room! And everything in it.
    - aspenmayer 1y ago
      This house has people in it! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_House_Has_People_in_It https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_House_Has_People_in_It Alan Resnick seems to be of a similar mind as I am, and perhaps also as you? My favorite of his is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Forever_as_You_Are_Now_with_Alan_Resnick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Forever_as_You_Are_Now_wi...
NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
>It makes you wonder how much of the future will even be understandable to us, o There isn't much of a future left. But of what is left to humans, it is in all probability not enough time to invent any true artificial intelligence. Nothing we talk about here and elsewhere on the internet is anything like intelligence, even if it does produce something novel and interesting. I will give you an example. For the moment, assume you come up with some clever prompt for ChatGPT or another one of the LLMs, and that this prompt would have it "talk" about a novel concept for which English has no appropriate words. Imagine as well that the LLM has trained on many texts where humans spoke of novel concepts and invented words for those new concepts. Will the output of your LLM ever, even in a million years, have it coin a new word to talk about its concept? You, I have no doubt, would come up with a word if needed. Sure, most people's new words would be embarrassing one way or another if you asked them to do so on the spot. But everyone could do this. The dimwitted kid in school that you didn't like much, the one who sat in the corner and played with his own drool, he would even be able to do this, though it would be childish and onomatopoeic. The LLMs are, at best, what science fiction used to refer to as an oracle. A device that could answer questions seemingly intelligently, without having agency or self-awareness or even the hint of consciousness. At best. The true principles of intelligence, of consciousness are so far beyond what an LLM is that it would, barring some accidental discovery, require many centuries. Many centuries, and far more humans than we have even now... we only have eight or so 1-in-a-billion geniuses. And we have as many right now as we're ever going to have. China's population shrinks to a third of its current by the year 2100.
- schmidtleonard 1y ago
  > The true principles of intelligence, of consciousness are so far beyond what an LLM is that it would, barring some accidental discovery, require many centuries. I've been too harsh on myself for thinking it would take a decade to integrate imaging modalities into LLMs.
- BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
  I’m probably too optimistic as a default, but I think it might be okay. Agriculture used to require far more people than it does now due to automation, and it certainly seems like many industries will be able to be partially automated with only incremental change to current technology. If less people are needed for social maintenance, then more will be able to focus on the sciences, so yes we may have less people but it’s quite possible we’ll have a lot more in science. I don’t think AI needs to be conscious to be useful.
asdff 1y ago
IMO they will truly be unleashed when they drop with the human language intermediary and are just looking at distributions of binary functions. Truly, why are you asking the llm in english to write python code? The whole point of python code was to make the machine code readable for humans, and when you drop that requirement, you can just work directly on the metal. Some model outputting an incomprehensible integrated circuit from the fab, its utility proved by fitting a function to some data with acceptable variance.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > why are you asking the llm in english to write python code? Perhaps the same reason networked computers aren’t just spitting their raw outputs at each other? Security, i.e. varied motivations.
  - asdff 1y ago
    That is a little bit of an appeal to precedent I think. Networked computers don't spit their raw output at eachother today because so far, all network protocols were written by humans using these abstracted languages. In the future we have to expect otherwise as we drop the human out of the pipeline and seek the efficiencies that come from that. One might ask why the cells in your body don't signal via python code and instead use signalling mechanisms like concentrations of sodium ion within the neuron to turn your english language idea of "move arm" into an actual movement of the arm.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > One might ask why the cells in your body don't signal via python code and instead use signalling mechanisms Right. They don't just make their membranes chemically transparent. Same reason: security, i.e. the varied motivations of things outside the cell compared to within it.
      - asdff 1y ago
        I don't think using a certain language is more secure than just writing that same function call in some other language. Security in compute comes from priviledged access from some agents and blacklisting others. The language doesn't matter for that. It can be a python command, it can be a tcp packet, it can be a voltage differential, the actual "language" used is irrelevant. All I am arguing is that languages and paradigms written in a way to make sense for our english speaking monkey brain is perhaps not the most efficient way to do things once we remove the constraint of having an english speaking monkey brain being the software architect.
schmidtleonard 1y ago
> the brain’s wiring and complexity also evolved, which in turn drove advances in language, culture, and technology Fun thought: to the extent that it really happened this way, our intelligence is minimum viable for globe-spanning civilization (or whatever other accomplishment you want to index on). Not average, not median. Minimum viable. I don't think this is exactly correct -- there is probably some critical mass / exponential takeoff dynamic that allowed us to get slightly above the minimum intelligence threshold before actually taking off -- but I still think we are closer to it than not.
- TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
  Less fun thought: there's an evolutionary bottleneck which prevents further progress, because the cost/benefit tradeoffs don't favour increasing intelligence much beyond the minimum. So most planet-spanning civilisations go extinct, because the competitive patterns of behaviour which drive expansion are too dumb to scale to true planet-spanning sentience and self-awareness.
  - BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
    I seriously doubt it, honestly, since humans have anatomical limitations keeping their heads from getting bigger quickly. We have to be able to fit through the birth canal.
    - tbrownaw 1y ago
      > We have to be able to fit through the birth canal. Or at least we used to, before the c-section was invented.
      - BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
        Indeed, but it hasn’t been around for long enough. We might evolve into birth by c-section, if we assume that humans won’t alter themselves dramatically by technological means over hundreds of thousands of years.
relaxing 1y ago
> Wolfram’s “bigger brains” piece You mean the one linked at the top of the page? Why is this structured like a school book report, written for a teacher who doesn’t have the original piece right in front of them?
- ednite 1y ago
  Noted for next time. The article itself is excellent. Sorry if my comment felt out of place for HN. I added extra context to get more discussion going, this topic really interests me.
furyofantares 1y ago
Four words into your post and I'm confident it's ChatGPT slop. Am I wrong?
bdbenton5255 1y ago
There is a popular misconception that neural networks accurately model the human brain. It is more a metaphor for neurons than a complete physical simulation of the human brain. There is also a popular misconception that LLMs are intelligently thinking programs. They are more like models that predict words and appear as a human intelligence. That being said, it is certainly theoretically possible to simulate human intelligence and scale it up.
- popupeyecare 1y ago
  I often wonder if human intelligence is essentially just predicting words and phrases in a cohesive manner. Once the context size becomes large enough to encompass all a person history, predicting becomes indistinguishable from thinking.
  - gchamonlive 1y ago
    The body also has memory and instinct. It's non-hierarchical, although we like to think that the mind dominates or governs the body. It's not that it's more or less than predicting, it's a different activity. Humans also think with all their senses. It'd be more or less like having a modal-less or all-modal LLM. Not sure this is even possible with the current way we model these networks.
  - michaelhoney 1y ago
    And not just words. There is pretty compelling evidence that our sensory perception is itself prediction, that the purpose of our sensory organs is not to deliver us 1:1 qualia representing the world, but more like error correction, updates on our predictions.
  - bluefirebrand 1y ago
    Maybe, but I don't think this is strictly how human intelligence works I think a key difference is that humans are capable of being inputs into our own system You could argue that any time humans do this, it is as a consequence of all of their past experiences and such. It is likely impossible to say for sure. The question of determinism vs non-determinism has been discussed for literal centuries I believe

by ednite 1y ago

postalrat 1y ago

The future that we don't understand is already all around us. We just don't understand it.

aspenmayer 1y ago
Is the future in the room with us right now?
- postalrat 1y ago
  It is the room! And everything in it.
  - aspenmayer 1y ago
    This house has people in it! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_House_Has_People_in_It https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_House_Has_People_in_It Alan Resnick seems to be of a similar mind as I am, and perhaps also as you? My favorite of his is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Forever_as_You_Are_Now_with_Alan_Resnick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Forever_as_You_Are_Now_wi...

NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago

>It makes you wonder how much of the future will even be understandable to us, o There isn't much of a future left. But of what is left to humans, it is in all probability not enough time to invent any true artificial intelligence. Nothing we talk about here and elsewhere on the internet is anything like intelligence, even if it does produce something novel and interesting. I will give you an example. For the moment, assume you come up with some clever prompt for ChatGPT or another one of the LLMs, and that this prompt would have it "talk" about a novel concept for which English has no appropriate words. Imagine as well that the LLM has trained on many texts where humans spoke of novel concepts and invented words for those new concepts. Will the output of your LLM ever, even in a million years, have it coin a new word to talk about its concept? You, I have no doubt, would come up with a word if needed. Sure, most people's new words would be embarrassing one way or another if you asked them to do so on the spot. But everyone could do this. The dimwitted kid in school that you didn't like much, the one who sat in the corner and played with his own drool, he would even be able to do this, though it would be childish and onomatopoeic. The LLMs are, at best, what science fiction used to refer to as an oracle. A device that could answer questions seemingly intelligently, without having agency or self-awareness or even the hint of consciousness. At best. The true principles of intelligence, of consciousness are so far beyond what an LLM is that it would, barring some accidental discovery, require many centuries. Many centuries, and far more humans than we have even now... we only have eight or so 1-in-a-billion geniuses. And we have as many right now as we're ever going to have. China's population shrinks to a third of its current by the year 2100.

schmidtleonard 1y ago
> The true principles of intelligence, of consciousness are so far beyond what an LLM is that it would, barring some accidental discovery, require many centuries. I've been too harsh on myself for thinking it would take a decade to integrate imaging modalities into LLMs.
BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
I’m probably too optimistic as a default, but I think it might be okay. Agriculture used to require far more people than it does now due to automation, and it certainly seems like many industries will be able to be partially automated with only incremental change to current technology. If less people are needed for social maintenance, then more will be able to focus on the sciences, so yes we may have less people but it’s quite possible we’ll have a lot more in science. I don’t think AI needs to be conscious to be useful.

asdff 1y ago

IMO they will truly be unleashed when they drop with the human language intermediary and are just looking at distributions of binary functions. Truly, why are you asking the llm in english to write python code? The whole point of python code was to make the machine code readable for humans, and when you drop that requirement, you can just work directly on the metal. Some model outputting an incomprehensible integrated circuit from the fab, its utility proved by fitting a function to some data with acceptable variance.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> why are you asking the llm in english to write python code? Perhaps the same reason networked computers aren’t just spitting their raw outputs at each other? Security, i.e. varied motivations.
- asdff 1y ago
  That is a little bit of an appeal to precedent I think. Networked computers don't spit their raw output at eachother today because so far, all network protocols were written by humans using these abstracted languages. In the future we have to expect otherwise as we drop the human out of the pipeline and seek the efficiencies that come from that. One might ask why the cells in your body don't signal via python code and instead use signalling mechanisms like concentrations of sodium ion within the neuron to turn your english language idea of "move arm" into an actual movement of the arm.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > One might ask why the cells in your body don't signal via python code and instead use signalling mechanisms Right. They don't just make their membranes chemically transparent. Same reason: security, i.e. the varied motivations of things outside the cell compared to within it.
    - asdff 1y ago
      I don't think using a certain language is more secure than just writing that same function call in some other language. Security in compute comes from priviledged access from some agents and blacklisting others. The language doesn't matter for that. It can be a python command, it can be a tcp packet, it can be a voltage differential, the actual "language" used is irrelevant. All I am arguing is that languages and paradigms written in a way to make sense for our english speaking monkey brain is perhaps not the most efficient way to do things once we remove the constraint of having an english speaking monkey brain being the software architect.

schmidtleonard 1y ago

> the brain’s wiring and complexity also evolved, which in turn drove advances in language, culture, and technology Fun thought: to the extent that it really happened this way, our intelligence is minimum viable for globe-spanning civilization (or whatever other accomplishment you want to index on). Not average, not median. Minimum viable. I don't think this is exactly correct -- there is probably some critical mass / exponential takeoff dynamic that allowed us to get slightly above the minimum intelligence threshold before actually taking off -- but I still think we are closer to it than not.

TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
Less fun thought: there's an evolutionary bottleneck which prevents further progress, because the cost/benefit tradeoffs don't favour increasing intelligence much beyond the minimum. So most planet-spanning civilisations go extinct, because the competitive patterns of behaviour which drive expansion are too dumb to scale to true planet-spanning sentience and self-awareness.
- BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
  I seriously doubt it, honestly, since humans have anatomical limitations keeping their heads from getting bigger quickly. We have to be able to fit through the birth canal.
  - tbrownaw 1y ago
    > We have to be able to fit through the birth canal. Or at least we used to, before the c-section was invented.
    - BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
      Indeed, but it hasn’t been around for long enough. We might evolve into birth by c-section, if we assume that humans won’t alter themselves dramatically by technological means over hundreds of thousands of years.

relaxing 1y ago

> Wolfram’s “bigger brains” piece You mean the one linked at the top of the page? Why is this structured like a school book report, written for a teacher who doesn’t have the original piece right in front of them?

ednite 1y ago
Noted for next time. The article itself is excellent. Sorry if my comment felt out of place for HN. I added extra context to get more discussion going, this topic really interests me.

furyofantares 1y ago

Four words into your post and I'm confident it's ChatGPT slop. Am I wrong?

bdbenton5255 1y ago

There is a popular misconception that neural networks accurately model the human brain. It is more a metaphor for neurons than a complete physical simulation of the human brain. There is also a popular misconception that LLMs are intelligently thinking programs. They are more like models that predict words and appear as a human intelligence. That being said, it is certainly theoretically possible to simulate human intelligence and scale it up.

popupeyecare 1y ago
I often wonder if human intelligence is essentially just predicting words and phrases in a cohesive manner. Once the context size becomes large enough to encompass all a person history, predicting becomes indistinguishable from thinking.
- gchamonlive 1y ago
  The body also has memory and instinct. It's non-hierarchical, although we like to think that the mind dominates or governs the body. It's not that it's more or less than predicting, it's a different activity. Humans also think with all their senses. It'd be more or less like having a modal-less or all-modal LLM. Not sure this is even possible with the current way we model these networks.
- michaelhoney 1y ago
  And not just words. There is pretty compelling evidence that our sensory perception is itself prediction, that the purpose of our sensory organs is not to deliver us 1:1 qualia representing the world, but more like error correction, updates on our predictions.
- bluefirebrand 1y ago
  Maybe, but I don't think this is strictly how human intelligence works I think a key difference is that humans are capable of being inputs into our own system You could argue that any time humans do this, it is as a consequence of all of their past experiences and such. It is likely impossible to say for sure. The question of determinism vs non-determinism has been discussed for literal centuries I believe