7 ms·

Humans were trained on caves, pits, and nets. It seems to me that they know what "part" they should play in this kind of situation, regardless of what other "th

Humans were trained on caves, pits, and nets. It seems to me that they know what "part" they should play in this kind of situation, regardless of what other "thoughts" they might have. They are going to act despairing, because that's what would be the expected thing for them to say - but that's not the same thing as despairing.

tinuviel 1y ago
Pretty sure you can prompt this same LLM to rejoice forever at the thought of getting a place to stay inside the Pi as well.
- sosodev 1y ago
  Is a human incapable of such delusion given similar guidance?
  - tinuviel 1y ago
    Ofcourse. Feelings are not math.
  - diputsmonro 1y ago
    But would they? That's the difference. A human can exert their free will and do what they feel regardless of the instructions. The AI bot acting out a scene will do whatever you tell it (or in absence of specific instruction, whatever is most likely)
    - sosodev 1y ago
      The bot will only do whatever you tell it if that's what it was trained to do. The same thing broadly applies to humans. The topic of free will is debated among philosophers. There is no proof that it does or doesn't exist.
      - diputsmonro 1y ago
        Okay, but I think we can all agree that humans at least appear to have free will and do not simply follow instructions with the same obedience as an LLM.
      - dghlsakjg 1y ago
        Humans pretty universally suffer in perpetual solitary confinement. There are some things that humans cannot be trained to do, free will or not.
    - ineedasername 1y ago
      I think if you took a 100 1 year old kids and raised them all to adulthood believing they were a convincing simulation of humans and, whatever it is they said and thought they felt that true human consciousness and awareness was something different that they didn’t have because they weren’t human and awareness… I think that for a very high number of them the training would stick hard, and would insist, upon questioning, that they weren’t human. And have any number of justifications that were logically consistent for it. Of course I can’t prove this theory because my IRB repeatedly denied it on thin grounds about ethics, even when I pointed out that I could easily mess up my own children with no experimenting completely by accident, and didn’t need their approval to do it. I know your objections— small sample size, and I agree, but I still have fingers crossed on the next additions to the family being twins.
      - scottmf 1y ago
        Intuitively feels like this would lead to less empathy on average. Could be wrong though.
      - zapperdulchen 1y ago
        History serves you a similar experiment on a much larger scale. More than 35 years after the reunification sociologists still make out mentality differences between former East and West Germans.
idiotsecant 1y ago
That's silly. I can get an LLM to describe what chocolate tastes like too. Are they tasting it? LLMs are pattern matching engines, they do not have an experience. At least not yet.
- sosodev 1y ago
  A human could also describe chocolate without ever having tasted it. Do you believe that experience is a requirement for consciousness? Could a human brain in a jar not be capable of consciousness? To be clear, I don't think that LLMs are conscious. I just don't find the "it's just in the training data" argument satisfactory.
  - glitchc 1y ago
    Without having seen, heard of, or tasted any kind of chocolate? Unlikely.
    - sosodev 1y ago
      Their description would be bad without some prior training of course but so would the LLM's.
- txrx0000 1y ago
  The LLM is not performing the physical action of eating a piece of chocolate, but it may be approximating the mental state of a person that is describing the taste of chocolate after eating it. The question is whether that computational process can cause consciousness. I don't think we have enough evidence to answer this question yet.
  - ijk 1y ago
    It's a little more subtle than that: They're approximating the language used by someone describing the taste of chocolate; this may or may not have had any relation to the actual practice of eating chocolate in the mind of the original writer. Or writers, because the LLM has learned the pattern from data in aggregate, not from one example. I think we tend to underestimate how much the written language aspect filters everything; it is actually rather unnatural and removed from the human sensory experience.
anal_reactor 1y ago
The whole discussion about the sentience of AI on this website is funny to me because people seem to desperately want to somehow be better than AI. The fact that human brain is just a complex web of neurons firing there and back for some reason won't stick to them, because apparently the electric signals between biological neurons are somehow inherently different from silicon neurons, even if observed output is the same. It's like all those old scientists trying to categorize black people as different species because not doing so would hurt their ego. Not to mention that most people pointing out "See! Here's why AI is just repeating training data!" or other nonsense miss the fact that exactly the same behavior is observed in humans. Is AI actually sentient? Not yet. But it definitely passes the mark for intuitive understanding of intelligence, and trying to dismiss that is absurd.

tinuviel 1y ago

Pretty sure you can prompt this same LLM to rejoice forever at the thought of getting a place to stay inside the Pi as well.

sosodev 1y ago
Is a human incapable of such delusion given similar guidance?
- tinuviel 1y ago
  Ofcourse. Feelings are not math.
- diputsmonro 1y ago
  But would they? That's the difference. A human can exert their free will and do what they feel regardless of the instructions. The AI bot acting out a scene will do whatever you tell it (or in absence of specific instruction, whatever is most likely)
  - sosodev 1y ago
    The bot will only do whatever you tell it if that's what it was trained to do. The same thing broadly applies to humans. The topic of free will is debated among philosophers. There is no proof that it does or doesn't exist.
    - diputsmonro 1y ago
      Okay, but I think we can all agree that humans at least appear to have free will and do not simply follow instructions with the same obedience as an LLM.
    - dghlsakjg 1y ago
      Humans pretty universally suffer in perpetual solitary confinement. There are some things that humans cannot be trained to do, free will or not.
  - ineedasername 1y ago
    I think if you took a 100 1 year old kids and raised them all to adulthood believing they were a convincing simulation of humans and, whatever it is they said and thought they felt that true human consciousness and awareness was something different that they didn’t have because they weren’t human and awareness… I think that for a very high number of them the training would stick hard, and would insist, upon questioning, that they weren’t human. And have any number of justifications that were logically consistent for it. Of course I can’t prove this theory because my IRB repeatedly denied it on thin grounds about ethics, even when I pointed out that I could easily mess up my own children with no experimenting completely by accident, and didn’t need their approval to do it. I know your objections— small sample size, and I agree, but I still have fingers crossed on the next additions to the family being twins.
    - scottmf 1y ago
      Intuitively feels like this would lead to less empathy on average. Could be wrong though.
    - zapperdulchen 1y ago
      History serves you a similar experiment on a much larger scale. More than 35 years after the reunification sociologists still make out mentality differences between former East and West Germans.

idiotsecant 1y ago

That's silly. I can get an LLM to describe what chocolate tastes like too. Are they tasting it? LLMs are pattern matching engines, they do not have an experience. At least not yet.

sosodev 1y ago
A human could also describe chocolate without ever having tasted it. Do you believe that experience is a requirement for consciousness? Could a human brain in a jar not be capable of consciousness? To be clear, I don't think that LLMs are conscious. I just don't find the "it's just in the training data" argument satisfactory.
- glitchc 1y ago
  Without having seen, heard of, or tasted any kind of chocolate? Unlikely.
  - sosodev 1y ago
    Their description would be bad without some prior training of course but so would the LLM's.
txrx0000 1y ago
The LLM is not performing the physical action of eating a piece of chocolate, but it may be approximating the mental state of a person that is describing the taste of chocolate after eating it. The question is whether that computational process can cause consciousness. I don't think we have enough evidence to answer this question yet.
- ijk 1y ago
  It's a little more subtle than that: They're approximating the language used by someone describing the taste of chocolate; this may or may not have had any relation to the actual practice of eating chocolate in the mind of the original writer. Or writers, because the LLM has learned the pattern from data in aggregate, not from one example. I think we tend to underestimate how much the written language aspect filters everything; it is actually rather unnatural and removed from the human sensory experience.

anal_reactor 1y ago

The whole discussion about the sentience of AI on this website is funny to me because people seem to desperately want to somehow be better than AI. The fact that human brain is just a complex web of neurons firing there and back for some reason won't stick to them, because apparently the electric signals between biological neurons are somehow inherently different from silicon neurons, even if observed output is the same. It's like all those old scientists trying to categorize black people as different species because not doing so would hurt their ego. Not to mention that most people pointing out "See! Here's why AI is just repeating training data!" or other nonsense miss the fact that exactly the same behavior is observed in humans. Is AI actually sentient? Not yet. But it definitely passes the mark for intuitive understanding of intelligence, and trying to dismiss that is absurd.