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Does it though? I feel like there's a whole epistemological debate to be had, but if someone says "My toaster knows when the bread is burning", I don't think it
by gameman144 1y ago
Does it though? I feel like there's a whole epistemological debate to be had, but if someone says "My toaster knows when the bread is burning", I don't think it's implying that there's cognition there.
Or as a more direct comparison, with the VW emissions scandal, saying "Cars know when they're being tested" was part of the discussion, but didn't imply intelligence or anything.
I think "know" is just a shorthand term here (though admittedly the fact that we're discussing AI does leave a lot more room for reading into it.)
- bediger4000 1y agoThe toaster thing is more as admission that the speaker doesn't know what the toaster does to limit charring the bread. Toasters with timers, thermometers and light sensors all exist. None of them "know" anything.
- gameman144 1y agoYeah, I agree, but I think that's true all the way up the chain -- just like everything's magic until you know how it works, we may say things "know" information until we understand the deterministic machinery they're using behind the scenes.
- timschmidt 1y agoI'm in the same camp, with the addition that I believe it applies to us as well since we're part of the system too, and to societies and ecologies further up the scale.
- lamename 1y agoI agree with your point except for scientific papers. Let's push ourselves to use precise, non-shorthand or hand waving in technical papers and publications, yes? If not there, of all places, then where?
- fenomas 1y ago"Know" doesn't have any rigorous precisely-defined senses to be used! Asking for it not to be used colloquially is the same as asking for it never to be used at all. I mean - people have been saying stuff like "grep knows whether it's writing to stdout" for decades. In the context of talking about computer programs, that usage for "know" is the established/only usage, so it's hard to imagine any typical HN reader seeing TFA's title and interpreting it as an epistemological claim. Rather, it seems to me that the people suggesting "know" mustn't be used about LLMs because epistemology are the ones departing from standard usage.
- random3 1y agocolloquial use of "know" implies anthropomorphisation. Arguing that usign "knowing" in the title and "awarness" and "superhuman" in the abstract is just colloquial for "matching" is splitting hairs to an absurd degree.
- fenomas 1y agoYou missed the substance of my comment. Certainly the title is anthropomorphism - and anthropomorphism is a rhetorical device, not a scientific claim. The reader can understand that TFA means it non-rigorously, because there is no rigorous thing for it to mean. As such, to me the complaint behind this thread falls into the category of "I know exactly what TFA meant but I want to argue about how it was phrased", which is definitely not my favorite part of the HN comment taxonomy.
- random3 1y agoI see. Thanks for clarifying. I did want to argue about how it was phrased and what is alluding to. Implying increased risk from "knowing" the eval regime is roughly as weak as the definition of "knowing". It can be equaly a measure of general detection capability, as it can about evaluation incapability - i.e. unlikely news worthy, unless it reached top HN because of the "know" in the title.
- viccis 1y agoI think you should be more precise and avoid anthropomorphism when talking about gen AI, as anthropomorphism leads to a lot of shaky epistemological assumptions. Your car example didn't imply intelligence, but we're talking about a technology that people misguidedly treat as though it is real intelligence.
- exe34 1y agoWhat does "real intelligence" mean? I fear that any discussion that starts with the assumption such a thing exists will only end up as "oh only carbon based humans (or animals if you happen to be generous) have it".
- viccis 1y agoAny intelligence that can synthesize knowledge with or without direct experience.
- exe34 1y agoSo ChatGPT? Or maybe that can't "really synthesize"?
- viccis 1y agoHow would ChatGPT come up with something truly novel, not related to anything it's ever seen before?
- exe34 1y agoHas a human ever done that?
- viccis 1y agoWe obviously can, otherwise where do our myriad of complex concepts, many of which aren't empirical, come from? How could we have modern mathematics unless some thinker had devised the various ways of conceptualizing and manipulating numbers? This is a very old question [1] with a number of good answers as to how a human can [2]. 1: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/#CopyPrin https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/#CopyPrin 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic%E2%80%93synthetic_distinction#The_ease_of_knowing_analytic_propositions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic%E2%80%93synthetic_dis...