4 ms·

> LLMs are a more complex and expensive trick The more I think about this, the more I think the same is true for our own intelligence. Consciousness is a tric

by qudat 1y ago

> LLMs are a more complex and expensive trick The more I think about this, the more I think the same is true for our own intelligence. Consciousness is a trick and AI development is lifting the veil of our vanity. I'm not claiming that LLMs are conscious or intelligent or whatever. I'm suggesting that next token prediction has scaled so well and cover so many use cases that the next couple breakthroughs will show us how simple intelligence is once you remove the complexity of biological systems from the equation. https://bower.sh/who-will-understand-consciousness https://bower.sh/who-will-understand-consciousness

bobson381 1y ago
I'm with you on this. We, the conscious I having experiences, I vent explanations with language after the fact. It's fun.
- shwaj 1y ago
  I think you meant to respond to @noduerme, not @qudat. If so, I agree with both of you, otherwise I’m confused by what you’re saying.
noduerme 1y ago
I'm also attracted to the idea of reducing rule sets to simple algorithms and axioms, in every case you can. But I'm skeptical that consciousness can be reduced that way. I think if it can be, we'll see it in the distillation and quantizing of smaller and smaller scale models converging on similar adaptations, as opposed to the need for greater scale (at least in inference). I still believe language processing is the wrong task to train to that point. I'd like to see AIs that model thought process, logic, tool construction, real-world tasks without language. Maybe even those that model vocal chords and neurological processes instead of phonemes. Most animals don't use language, and as a result we can't ask if they're conscious, but they probably are. Navigating and manipulating the physical world from the cellular level up to swinging from trees is far more complex - language is a very late invention, and is not in and of itself intelligence - it may just be a lagging indicator. To the extent that we vainly consider ourselves intelligent for our linguistic abilities, sure. But this underrates the other types of spatial and procedural reasoning that humans possess, or even the type that spiders possess.
ffsm8 1y ago
Animals are conscious, (somewhat) intelligent and have no verbal language. It is an entirely different thing to language,which was created by humans to communicate between us. Language is the baseline to collaboration - not intelligence
- vlovich123 1y ago
  > and have no verbal language How do you define verbal language? Many animals emit different sounds that others in their community know how to react to. Some even get quite complex in structure (eg dolphins and whales) but I wouldn’t also rule out some species of birds, and some primates to start with. And they can collaborate; elephants, dolphins, and wolves for example collaborate and would die without it. Also it’s completely myopic in terms of ignoring humans who have non verbal language (eg sign language) perfectly capable of cooperation. TLDR: just because you can’t understand an animal doesn’t mean it lacks the capability you failed to actually define properly.
  - ozgung 1y ago
    This is one of the last bastions of anthropocentric thinking. I hope this will change in this century. I believe even plants are capable of communication. Everything that changes over time or space can be a signal. And most organisms can generate or detect signals. Which means they do communicate. The term “language” has traditionally been defined from an anthropocentric perspective. Like many other definitions about the intellect (consciousness, reasoning etc.). That’s like a bird saying planes can’t fly because they don’t flap their wings. LLMs use human language mainly because they need to communicate with humans. Their inputs and outputs are human language. But in between, they don’t think in human language.
    - ffsm8 1y ago
      > LLMs use human language mainly because they need to communicate with humans. Their inputs and outputs are human language. But in between, they don’t think in human language. You seem to fundamentally misunderstand what llms are and how they work, honestly. Remove the human language from the model and you end up with nothing. That's the whole issue. Your comment would only make sense if we had real artificial intelligence, but LLMs are quite literally working by predicting the next token - which works incredibly well for a fascimlie of intelligence because there is an incredible amount of written content on the Internet which was written by intelligent people
tremon 1y ago
Consciousness is a trick That's not how I view it. Consciousness is the result of various feedback structures in the brain, similar to how self-awareness stems from the actuator-sensor feedback loop of the interaction between the nervous system and the skeletomuscular system. Neither of those two definitions have anything to do with language ability -- and it bothers me that many people are so eager to reduce consciousness to programmed language responses only.

by qudat 1y ago

bobson381 1y ago

I'm with you on this. We, the conscious I having experiences, I vent explanations with language after the fact. It's fun.

shwaj 1y ago
I think you meant to respond to @noduerme, not @qudat. If so, I agree with both of you, otherwise I’m confused by what you’re saying.

noduerme 1y ago

I'm also attracted to the idea of reducing rule sets to simple algorithms and axioms, in every case you can. But I'm skeptical that consciousness can be reduced that way. I think if it can be, we'll see it in the distillation and quantizing of smaller and smaller scale models converging on similar adaptations, as opposed to the need for greater scale (at least in inference). I still believe language processing is the wrong task to train to that point. I'd like to see AIs that model thought process, logic, tool construction, real-world tasks without language. Maybe even those that model vocal chords and neurological processes instead of phonemes. Most animals don't use language, and as a result we can't ask if they're conscious, but they probably are. Navigating and manipulating the physical world from the cellular level up to swinging from trees is far more complex - language is a very late invention, and is not in and of itself intelligence - it may just be a lagging indicator. To the extent that we vainly consider ourselves intelligent for our linguistic abilities, sure. But this underrates the other types of spatial and procedural reasoning that humans possess, or even the type that spiders possess.

ffsm8 1y ago

Animals are conscious, (somewhat) intelligent and have no verbal language. It is an entirely different thing to language,which was created by humans to communicate between us. Language is the baseline to collaboration - not intelligence

vlovich123 1y ago
> and have no verbal language How do you define verbal language? Many animals emit different sounds that others in their community know how to react to. Some even get quite complex in structure (eg dolphins and whales) but I wouldn’t also rule out some species of birds, and some primates to start with. And they can collaborate; elephants, dolphins, and wolves for example collaborate and would die without it. Also it’s completely myopic in terms of ignoring humans who have non verbal language (eg sign language) perfectly capable of cooperation. TLDR: just because you can’t understand an animal doesn’t mean it lacks the capability you failed to actually define properly.
- ozgung 1y ago
  This is one of the last bastions of anthropocentric thinking. I hope this will change in this century. I believe even plants are capable of communication. Everything that changes over time or space can be a signal. And most organisms can generate or detect signals. Which means they do communicate. The term “language” has traditionally been defined from an anthropocentric perspective. Like many other definitions about the intellect (consciousness, reasoning etc.). That’s like a bird saying planes can’t fly because they don’t flap their wings. LLMs use human language mainly because they need to communicate with humans. Their inputs and outputs are human language. But in between, they don’t think in human language.
  - ffsm8 1y ago
    > LLMs use human language mainly because they need to communicate with humans. Their inputs and outputs are human language. But in between, they don’t think in human language. You seem to fundamentally misunderstand what llms are and how they work, honestly. Remove the human language from the model and you end up with nothing. That's the whole issue. Your comment would only make sense if we had real artificial intelligence, but LLMs are quite literally working by predicting the next token - which works incredibly well for a fascimlie of intelligence because there is an incredible amount of written content on the Internet which was written by intelligent people

tremon 1y ago

Consciousness is a trick That's not how I view it. Consciousness is the result of various feedback structures in the brain, similar to how self-awareness stems from the actuator-sensor feedback loop of the interaction between the nervous system and the skeletomuscular system. Neither of those two definitions have anything to do with language ability -- and it bothers me that many people are so eager to reduce consciousness to programmed language responses only.