5 ms·

The question is what's different in your own "thinking?"

pennomi 1y ago
If you actually know the answer to this, you should probably publish a paper on it. The conditions that truly create intelligence is… not well understood.
- AlecSchueler 1y ago
  That's actually the point I was making. There's an assumption that the LLM is working differently because there's a statistical model but we lack the understanding of our own intelligence to be able to say this is indeed a difference.
  - freejazz 1y ago
    So? There is no more evidence to suggest they are the same than what you've already rejected here as evidencing difference.
    - AlecSchueler 1y ago
      I know but I didn't claim they were the same, I simply questioned the position that they were different. The fact is we don't know, so it seems like a poor basis for building off of
      - freejazz 1y ago
        Yeah, going either way. Let it not be mentioned at all, imo.
    - munksbeer 1y ago
      To me a more interesting observation, one that is already discussed a lot, is that if eventually we cannot tell the difference between a machine and a human in terms of output, then when do we accept that "thinking" has subjective, rather than objective?
jhedwards 1y ago
Thinking in humans is prior to language. The language apparatus is embedded in a living organism which has a biological state that produces thoughts and feelings, goals and desires. Language is then used to communicate these underlying things, which themselves are not linguistic in nature (though of course the causality is so complex that the may be _influenced_ by language among other things).
- jsdalton 1y ago
  Agreed. Many animals without language show evidence of thinking (e.g. complex problem solving skills and tool use). Language is clearly an enabler of complex thought in humans but not the entire basis of our intelligence, as it is with LLMs.
  - AlecSchueler 1y ago
    But having language as the basis doesn't mean it isn't intelligence, right? At least I see no argument for that in what's being said. Stability can come from a basis of steel but it can also have a basis of wood.
  - jibal 1y ago
    LLMs have no intelligence or problem solving skills and don't use tools. What they do is statistically pattern match a prompt against a vast set of tokenized utterances by humans, who do have intelligence and complex problem solving skills. If the LLM's training data were the writings of a billion monkeys banging on typewriters, any appearance of intelligence and problem solving skills would disappear.
- cma 1y ago
  > which themselves are not linguistic in nature (though of course the causality is so complex that the may be _influenced_ by language among other things). Its possible something like this could be said of the middle transformer layers where it gets more and more abstract, and modern models are multimodal as well through various techniques.
- kenjackson 1y ago
chasil 1y ago
The platform that we each hold is the most powerful abstract analysis machine known to exist. It may be, by the end of my life, that this will no longer be true. That would be poignant.
rollcat 1y ago
Ask a crow, or a parrot. (Really intelligent animals, by the way!)
zahlman 1y ago
I don't need to be able to qualify it. It's clearly different. I must believe this to function, because otherwise there is no reason to do anything, to make any decision - in turn because there is no justification to believe that I am actually "making decisions" in any meaningful sense. It boils down to belief in free will.
- munksbeer 1y ago
  You should read "What's Expected Of Us" by Ted Chiang. Or perhaps you already have. It explores exactly this concept. For what it's worth, I don't believe we have what people would call free will. Our brains operate either in an entirely deterministic universe, in which case everything was decided and your choices are not in any sense free, or we're in a universe with intrinsic randomness, and randomness doesn't make free will either. I'm aware of the philosophy of Compatibilism, but this is just a sleight of hand to keep believing in some undefinable concept of free will.

If you actually know the answer to this, you should probably publish a paper on it. The conditions that truly create intelligence is… not well understood.

AlecSchueler 1y ago
That's actually the point I was making. There's an assumption that the LLM is working differently because there's a statistical model but we lack the understanding of our own intelligence to be able to say this is indeed a difference.
- freejazz 1y ago
  So? There is no more evidence to suggest they are the same than what you've already rejected here as evidencing difference.
  - AlecSchueler 1y ago
    I know but I didn't claim they were the same, I simply questioned the position that they were different. The fact is we don't know, so it seems like a poor basis for building off of
    - freejazz 1y ago
      Yeah, going either way. Let it not be mentioned at all, imo.
  - munksbeer 1y ago
    To me a more interesting observation, one that is already discussed a lot, is that if eventually we cannot tell the difference between a machine and a human in terms of output, then when do we accept that "thinking" has subjective, rather than objective?

jhedwards 1y ago

Thinking in humans is prior to language. The language apparatus is embedded in a living organism which has a biological state that produces thoughts and feelings, goals and desires. Language is then used to communicate these underlying things, which themselves are not linguistic in nature (though of course the causality is so complex that the may be _influenced_ by language among other things).

jsdalton 1y ago
Agreed. Many animals without language show evidence of thinking (e.g. complex problem solving skills and tool use). Language is clearly an enabler of complex thought in humans but not the entire basis of our intelligence, as it is with LLMs.
- AlecSchueler 1y ago
  But having language as the basis doesn't mean it isn't intelligence, right? At least I see no argument for that in what's being said. Stability can come from a basis of steel but it can also have a basis of wood.
- jibal 1y ago
  LLMs have no intelligence or problem solving skills and don't use tools. What they do is statistically pattern match a prompt against a vast set of tokenized utterances by humans, who do have intelligence and complex problem solving skills. If the LLM's training data were the writings of a billion monkeys banging on typewriters, any appearance of intelligence and problem solving skills would disappear.
cma 1y ago
> which themselves are not linguistic in nature (though of course the causality is so complex that the may be _influenced_ by language among other things). Its possible something like this could be said of the middle transformer layers where it gets more and more abstract, and modern models are multimodal as well through various techniques.
kenjackson 1y ago

chasil 1y ago

The platform that we each hold is the most powerful abstract analysis machine known to exist. It may be, by the end of my life, that this will no longer be true. That would be poignant.

rollcat 1y ago

Ask a crow, or a parrot. (Really intelligent animals, by the way!)

zahlman 1y ago

I don't need to be able to qualify it. It's clearly different. I must believe this to function, because otherwise there is no reason to do anything, to make any decision - in turn because there is no justification to believe that I am actually "making decisions" in any meaningful sense. It boils down to belief in free will.

munksbeer 1y ago
You should read "What's Expected Of Us" by Ted Chiang. Or perhaps you already have. It explores exactly this concept. For what it's worth, I don't believe we have what people would call free will. Our brains operate either in an entirely deterministic universe, in which case everything was decided and your choices are not in any sense free, or we're in a universe with intrinsic randomness, and randomness doesn't make free will either. I'm aware of the philosophy of Compatibilism, but this is just a sleight of hand to keep believing in some undefinable concept of free will.