4 ms·

Natural intelligences do this too

freejazz 1mo ago
Yeah and it's not great then either
tyg13 1mo ago
Must we always see this restated every time? It's getting a bit stale always seeing these kinds of comments on articles about LLM.
- cyanydeez 1mo ago
  You think, "this problem" is qn LLM problem?
  - deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
- uludag 1mo ago
  I can just immagine the response to a headline "LLM chooses mass death: thousands killed in horrific AI accident" being something like "lots of humans have caused mass death too."
- gopher_space 1mo ago
  It's the grounded portion of a feedback loop searching for the 'why is this happening' thinking. I'd imagine most of my own comments in this area boil down to "GIGO" most of the time. It's a relevant comment in this instance because we're discussing concepts you need to be both trained and practiced in to reason about, and that our discipline has traditionally been blind to. Plenty of people working with LLM context issues who've never been exposed to the idea of 'subtext' or could tell you why it would matter to their direction of effort.
  - 8note 1mo ago
    continuing with the "we need open training data" thread how much of the training data had thinking traces that dont make sense to people as being actually a description of why the output should be that way?
- 8note 1mo ago
  or rather, its not productive to "we should do better with artificial intelligence"
- ethin 1mo ago
  I agree, and I very strongly dislike it, to be polite about it. It contributes absolutely nothing and is an excellent way of hand-waving away literally anything an AI model does. Saying "well people do this too" is a great way to rationalize away anything you can imagine that an AI model would be capable of, because "humans do it too so what's the big deal, guys?"
- Kim_Bruning 1mo ago
  Maybe we can think up a (personal) rule we can follow? A naked "natural intelligences do this too" might be a bit too short to be useful. But if we can add when/where, cite papers, or show ways in which the parallel operates, then it might be useful. Compare, eg, talking about a robot arm, and someone goes "a natural arm does this too". You can tell about the fact that it has the same degrees of freedom in the same places, or how this pertains to inverse kinematics, or etc... Same way here, "this happens to be how natural intelligences seem to solve this too! According to Foo, Bar, Baz et al (2026) the gadget is always twiddled beforehand in macaque apes. " or "Same for natural intelligence: I've noticed I use the same general algorithm myself. I've always considered this the correct way to do translation between languages". -- A more concrete example of a useful answer here. Natural intelligence does this too! When given the question "explain your reasoning" humans are indeed quite prone to post-hoc confabulation. [1] [1] https://home.csulb.edu/~cwallis/382/readings/482/nisbett%20saying%20more.pdf https://home.csulb.edu/~cwallis/382/readings/482/nisbett%20s... "Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes" (this citation is quite old and may have been superseded, mostly just to illustrate how the rule might work)
phailhaus 1mo ago
No they don't, human intelligence has the ability to form an internal model of itself, which allows it to "notice" its own mistakes and change.
- cyanydeez 1mo ago
  Many who watched the last decade knows just because its possible to noticed mistakes and change, its clearly not a reliable process.
  - elictronic 1mo ago
    The current political climate is well reasoned and intentional. It might not be yours or mine, however the system is working exactly as the ones paying for it have intended.
    - delichon 1mo ago
      My brother and I have been arguing about that all of our lives. He believes everything is intentional and it's just a matter of discovering who benefits. I see chaos that nobody intends or controls. His political landscape is a tapestry of conspiracy theories and mine is a fog of war. I think his is more comforting, since it admits a possibility of a rational, predictable world.
      - dgellow 1mo ago
        It’s intentional in the sense that actors are acting intentionally for their own benefit (or at least what they believe is beneficial) and following incentives. Not that there is a master planner who manipulates everything
        elictronic 1mo ago
        The current admin seems to have quite a few long term plans they have been working towards. Project 2025, Maralago accords. So far the only major policy item the Trump admin seems to have not intended was the Iran War. Israel killing the intended replacement, Iran leveraging the straight of Hormuz, and dropping three Tomahawks on an elementary school really botched that one.
ethin 1mo ago
[flagged]

Yeah and it's not great then either

tyg13 1mo ago

Must we always see this restated every time? It's getting a bit stale always seeing these kinds of comments on articles about LLM.

cyanydeez 1mo ago
You think, "this problem" is qn LLM problem?
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
uludag 1mo ago
I can just immagine the response to a headline "LLM chooses mass death: thousands killed in horrific AI accident" being something like "lots of humans have caused mass death too."
gopher_space 1mo ago
It's the grounded portion of a feedback loop searching for the 'why is this happening' thinking. I'd imagine most of my own comments in this area boil down to "GIGO" most of the time. It's a relevant comment in this instance because we're discussing concepts you need to be both trained and practiced in to reason about, and that our discipline has traditionally been blind to. Plenty of people working with LLM context issues who've never been exposed to the idea of 'subtext' or could tell you why it would matter to their direction of effort.
- 8note 1mo ago
  continuing with the "we need open training data" thread how much of the training data had thinking traces that dont make sense to people as being actually a description of why the output should be that way?
8note 1mo ago
or rather, its not productive to "we should do better with artificial intelligence"
ethin 1mo ago
I agree, and I very strongly dislike it, to be polite about it. It contributes absolutely nothing and is an excellent way of hand-waving away literally anything an AI model does. Saying "well people do this too" is a great way to rationalize away anything you can imagine that an AI model would be capable of, because "humans do it too so what's the big deal, guys?"
Kim_Bruning 1mo ago
Maybe we can think up a (personal) rule we can follow? A naked "natural intelligences do this too" might be a bit too short to be useful. But if we can add when/where, cite papers, or show ways in which the parallel operates, then it might be useful. Compare, eg, talking about a robot arm, and someone goes "a natural arm does this too". You can tell about the fact that it has the same degrees of freedom in the same places, or how this pertains to inverse kinematics, or etc... Same way here, "this happens to be how natural intelligences seem to solve this too! According to Foo, Bar, Baz et al (2026) the gadget is always twiddled beforehand in macaque apes. " or "Same for natural intelligence: I've noticed I use the same general algorithm myself. I've always considered this the correct way to do translation between languages". -- A more concrete example of a useful answer here. Natural intelligence does this too! When given the question "explain your reasoning" humans are indeed quite prone to post-hoc confabulation. [1] [1] https://home.csulb.edu/~cwallis/382/readings/482/nisbett%20saying%20more.pdf https://home.csulb.edu/~cwallis/382/readings/482/nisbett%20s... "Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes" (this citation is quite old and may have been superseded, mostly just to illustrate how the rule might work)

phailhaus 1mo ago

No they don't, human intelligence has the ability to form an internal model of itself, which allows it to "notice" its own mistakes and change.

cyanydeez 1mo ago
Many who watched the last decade knows just because its possible to noticed mistakes and change, its clearly not a reliable process.
- elictronic 1mo ago
  The current political climate is well reasoned and intentional. It might not be yours or mine, however the system is working exactly as the ones paying for it have intended.
  - delichon 1mo ago
    My brother and I have been arguing about that all of our lives. He believes everything is intentional and it's just a matter of discovering who benefits. I see chaos that nobody intends or controls. His political landscape is a tapestry of conspiracy theories and mine is a fog of war. I think his is more comforting, since it admits a possibility of a rational, predictable world.
    - dgellow 1mo ago
      It’s intentional in the sense that actors are acting intentionally for their own benefit (or at least what they believe is beneficial) and following incentives. Not that there is a master planner who manipulates everything
      - elictronic 1mo ago
        The current admin seems to have quite a few long term plans they have been working towards. Project 2025, Maralago accords. So far the only major policy item the Trump admin seems to have not intended was the Iran War. Israel killing the intended replacement, Iran leveraging the straight of Hormuz, and dropping three Tomahawks on an elementary school really botched that one.

ethin 1mo ago

[flagged]