3 ms·

I agree with you about which objects are motive, ie, LLMs do just sit there unprompted. > I believe that this recurrence is where "intelligence" lives - and I

I agree with you about which objects are motive, ie, LLMs do just sit there unprompted. > I believe that this recurrence is where "intelligence" lives - and I believe it is the difference between a thinking being and a stochastic parrot. My objection was to this, on technical grounds: LLMs exhibit intelligence. 1. They reason in an internal type theory. 2. This type theory is meaningfully encoded from the actual data and not stochastic, eg, research on language geometry. 3. Intelligent and reasoning doesn’t entail self-motive; that’s merely a spurious correlation from the fact that until now, we’ve only known intelligence animals. You cannot conclude something is merely a stochastic parrot because it isn’t self-motive.

solid_fuel 2mo ago
> Intelligent and reasoning doesn’t entail self-motive I disagree. I believe that LLMs do exhibit reasoning, but not intelligence. A simple dictionary definition of intelligence from duck duck go is "the ability to acquire, understand, and use knowledge." LLMs can reason using the knowledge they already possess, but they cannot of their own accord decide to go out and acquire new knowledge. Not without being prompted to. Web searches may be added to the context but are not absorbed into the model itself, so once the context is gone so is that obtained knowledge. Fundamentally, then, intelligence is the ability and drive to understand the world by formulating theories about how it works and then taking actions to validate or invalidate those theories. Science is the formalization of that, but a cat knocking something off a counter to watch it fall is exhibiting intelligence. And indeed, I believe that is the core difference between a stochastic parrot and an intelligent being. I put forward that being self-motive is a required trait for intelligence and LLMs are not self-motive so therefore they are not intelligent.
- bottlepalm 2mo ago
  Your entire life can represent a short term context. It goes away when you do. You use your life time add to your context to do/learn whatever, but it's finite, and it ends. If you weren't prompted by your parents, schools, teachers. Then you wouldn't be acquiring knowledge either. The most you'd be acquiring without that advanced prompting would be bugs in the woods to eat.
  - solid_fuel 2mo ago
    Ah, you have some serious gaps in your understanding of how human minds work. Life experiences are not just a "short term context" - they are used to actually refine the network within the human brain. Your life experiences do not just live in a single stream with access mediated by attention. Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory as a starting point. I recommended reading through some information on development psychology too, that will help clear up these misunderstandings. Hope that helps!
    - bottlepalm 2mo ago
      By that logic engineers don't understand flying because planes don't flap their wings like birds. Not everything has to work the same to meet your arbitrary criteria for intelligence and reasoning.

solid_fuel 2mo ago

> Intelligent and reasoning doesn’t entail self-motive I disagree. I believe that LLMs do exhibit reasoning, but not intelligence. A simple dictionary definition of intelligence from duck duck go is "the ability to acquire, understand, and use knowledge." LLMs can reason using the knowledge they already possess, but they cannot of their own accord decide to go out and acquire new knowledge. Not without being prompted to. Web searches may be added to the context but are not absorbed into the model itself, so once the context is gone so is that obtained knowledge. Fundamentally, then, intelligence is the ability and drive to understand the world by formulating theories about how it works and then taking actions to validate or invalidate those theories. Science is the formalization of that, but a cat knocking something off a counter to watch it fall is exhibiting intelligence. And indeed, I believe that is the core difference between a stochastic parrot and an intelligent being. I put forward that being self-motive is a required trait for intelligence and LLMs are not self-motive so therefore they are not intelligent.

bottlepalm 2mo ago
Your entire life can represent a short term context. It goes away when you do. You use your life time add to your context to do/learn whatever, but it's finite, and it ends. If you weren't prompted by your parents, schools, teachers. Then you wouldn't be acquiring knowledge either. The most you'd be acquiring without that advanced prompting would be bugs in the woods to eat.
- solid_fuel 2mo ago
  Ah, you have some serious gaps in your understanding of how human minds work. Life experiences are not just a "short term context" - they are used to actually refine the network within the human brain. Your life experiences do not just live in a single stream with access mediated by attention. Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory as a starting point. I recommended reading through some information on development psychology too, that will help clear up these misunderstandings. Hope that helps!
  - bottlepalm 2mo ago
    By that logic engineers don't understand flying because planes don't flap their wings like birds. Not everything has to work the same to meet your arbitrary criteria for intelligence and reasoning.