5 ms·

> they don't feel intelligence but rather an attempt at mimicking it Because that's exactly what they are. An LLM is just a big optimization function with the

by Gazoche 9mo ago

> they don't feel intelligence but rather an attempt at mimicking it Because that's exactly what they are. An LLM is just a big optimization function with the objective "return the most probabilistically plausible sequence of words in a given context". There is no higher thinking. They were literally built as a mimicry of intelligence.

azan_ 9mo ago
> Because that's exactly what they are. An LLM is just a big optimization function with the objective "return the most probabilistically plausible sequence of words in a given context". > There is no higher thinking. They were literally built as a mimicry of intelligence. Maybe real intelligence also is a big optimization function? Brain isn't magical, there are rules that govern our intelligence and I wouldn't be terribly surprised if our intelligence in fact turned out to be kind of returning the most plausible thoughs. Might as well be something else of course - my point is that "it's not intelligence, it's just predicting next token" doesn't make sense to me - it could be both!
encyclopedism 9mo ago
I don't understand why this point is NOT getting across to so many on HN. LLM's do not think, understand, reason, reflect, comprehend and they never shall. I have commented elsewhere but this bears repeating If you had enough paper and ink and the patience to go through it, you could take all the training data and manually step through and train the same model. Then once you have trained the model you could use even more pen and paper to step through the correct prompts to arrive at the answer. All of this would be a completely mechanical process. This really does bear thinking about. It's amazing the results that LLM's are able to acheive. But let's not kid ourselves and start throwing about terms like AGI or emergence just yet. It makes a mechanical process seem magical (as do computers in general). I should add it also makes sense as to why it would, just look at the volume of human knowledge (the training data). It's the training data with the mass quite literally of mankind's knowledge, genius, logic, inferences, language and intellect that does the heavy lifting.
- myrmidon 9mo ago
  > If you had enough paper and ink and the patience to go through it, you could take all the training data and manually step through and train the same model. But you could make the exact same argument for a human mind? (could just simulate all those neural interactions with pen and paper) The only way to get out of it is to basically admit magic (or some other metaphysical construct with a different name).
  - encyclopedism 9mo ago
    > But you could make the exact same argument for a human mind? It would be an argument and you are free to make it. What the human mind is, is an open scientific and philosophical problem many are working on. The point is that LLM's are NOT the same because we DO know that LLM's are. Please see the myriad of tutorials 'write an LLM from scratch'
    - myrmidon 9mo ago
      We do know that they are different, and that there are some systematic shortcomings in LLMs for now (e.g. no mechanism for online learning). But we have no idea how many "essential" differences there are (if any!). Dismissing LLMs as avenues toward intelligence just because they are simpler and easier to understand than our minds is a bit like looking at a modern phone from a 19th century point of view and dismissing the notion that it could be "just a Turing machine": Sure, the phone is infinitely more complex, but at its core those things are the same regardless.
  - cess11 9mo ago
    I'm not so sure "a human mind" is the kind of newtonian clockwork thingiemabob you "could just simulate" within the same degree of complexity as the thing you're simulating, at least not without some sacrifices.
- Zababa 9mo ago
  Can you give examples of how that "LLM's do not think, understand, reason, reflect, comprehend and they never shall" or that "completely mechanical process" helps you understand better when LLM works and when they don't? Many people are throwing around that they don't "think", that they aren't "conscious", that they don't "reason", but I don't see those people sharing interesting heuristics to use LLMs well. The "they don't reason" people tend to, in my opinion/experience, underestimate them by a lot, often claiming that they will never be able to do <thing that LLMs have been able to do for a year>. To be fair, the "they reason/are conscious" people tend to, in my opinion/experience, overestimate how much a LLM being able to "act" a certain way in a certain situation says about the LLM/LLMs as a whole ("act" is not a perfect word here, another way of looking at it is that they visit only the coast of a country and conclude that the whole country must be sailors and have a sailing culture).
clbrmbr 9mo ago
Life is more fun as a scruffie. [0] http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/N/neats-vs--scruffies.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/N/neats-vs--scruffies.h...

by Gazoche 9mo ago

azan_ 9mo ago

> Because that's exactly what they are. An LLM is just a big optimization function with the objective "return the most probabilistically plausible sequence of words in a given context". > There is no higher thinking. They were literally built as a mimicry of intelligence. Maybe real intelligence also is a big optimization function? Brain isn't magical, there are rules that govern our intelligence and I wouldn't be terribly surprised if our intelligence in fact turned out to be kind of returning the most plausible thoughs. Might as well be something else of course - my point is that "it's not intelligence, it's just predicting next token" doesn't make sense to me - it could be both!

encyclopedism 9mo ago

I don't understand why this point is NOT getting across to so many on HN. LLM's do not think, understand, reason, reflect, comprehend and they never shall. I have commented elsewhere but this bears repeating If you had enough paper and ink and the patience to go through it, you could take all the training data and manually step through and train the same model. Then once you have trained the model you could use even more pen and paper to step through the correct prompts to arrive at the answer. All of this would be a completely mechanical process. This really does bear thinking about. It's amazing the results that LLM's are able to acheive. But let's not kid ourselves and start throwing about terms like AGI or emergence just yet. It makes a mechanical process seem magical (as do computers in general). I should add it also makes sense as to why it would, just look at the volume of human knowledge (the training data). It's the training data with the mass quite literally of mankind's knowledge, genius, logic, inferences, language and intellect that does the heavy lifting.

myrmidon 9mo ago
> If you had enough paper and ink and the patience to go through it, you could take all the training data and manually step through and train the same model. But you could make the exact same argument for a human mind? (could just simulate all those neural interactions with pen and paper) The only way to get out of it is to basically admit magic (or some other metaphysical construct with a different name).
- encyclopedism 9mo ago
  > But you could make the exact same argument for a human mind? It would be an argument and you are free to make it. What the human mind is, is an open scientific and philosophical problem many are working on. The point is that LLM's are NOT the same because we DO know that LLM's are. Please see the myriad of tutorials 'write an LLM from scratch'
  - myrmidon 9mo ago
    We do know that they are different, and that there are some systematic shortcomings in LLMs for now (e.g. no mechanism for online learning). But we have no idea how many "essential" differences there are (if any!). Dismissing LLMs as avenues toward intelligence just because they are simpler and easier to understand than our minds is a bit like looking at a modern phone from a 19th century point of view and dismissing the notion that it could be "just a Turing machine": Sure, the phone is infinitely more complex, but at its core those things are the same regardless.
- cess11 9mo ago
  I'm not so sure "a human mind" is the kind of newtonian clockwork thingiemabob you "could just simulate" within the same degree of complexity as the thing you're simulating, at least not without some sacrifices.
Zababa 9mo ago
Can you give examples of how that "LLM's do not think, understand, reason, reflect, comprehend and they never shall" or that "completely mechanical process" helps you understand better when LLM works and when they don't? Many people are throwing around that they don't "think", that they aren't "conscious", that they don't "reason", but I don't see those people sharing interesting heuristics to use LLMs well. The "they don't reason" people tend to, in my opinion/experience, underestimate them by a lot, often claiming that they will never be able to do <thing that LLMs have been able to do for a year>. To be fair, the "they reason/are conscious" people tend to, in my opinion/experience, overestimate how much a LLM being able to "act" a certain way in a certain situation says about the LLM/LLMs as a whole ("act" is not a perfect word here, another way of looking at it is that they visit only the coast of a country and conclude that the whole country must be sailors and have a sailing culture).

clbrmbr 9mo ago

Life is more fun as a scruffie. [0] http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/N/neats-vs--scruffies.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/N/neats-vs--scruffies.h...