6 ms·

> It doesn't understand, it can't understand, and even if it could, you arguing with it isn't going to make it "learn" or act differently. I know people who ar

> It doesn't understand, it can't understand, and even if it could, you arguing with it isn't going to make it "learn" or act differently. I know people who are like that too. I'm not sure anthropomorphizing is a problem. Seeing analogies everywhere is an innate human trait, sometimes it can be harmful but more often it's useful.

danaris 1mo ago
> I know people who are like that too. This is part of the problem being described. You are part of the problem. "Some people are bad at X" is not comparable—is not even in the same category—as "LLMs are fundamentally incapable of X". Every human (at least to a first approximation) is capable of understanding, of learning, of remembering things, of doing math, of counting the number of "r"s in "strawberry". What you are observing is that some humans are careless, do not take the time and effort to understand, or have internalized the idea that they're "not smart enough" or "not the type of person" who understands things like <whatever>. That has nothing remotely to do with the fact that LLMs have no consciousness, no self-awareness, no cognition, no understanding. At a fundamental level.
- JohnMakin 1mo ago
  I don't think anyone in this conversation is saying this behavior is anything but the fault of the user not understanding how these tools work? This is a weirdly aggressive post.
  - danaris 1mo ago
    This is an extremely common fallacy I've seen lots and lots of people fall into with respect to LLMs. In nearly every case, they use the fact that "some humans can't do X" to claim that LLMs are, in fact, basically conscious/human-like/AGI already. This is deeply untrue, and is highly likely to lead them to bad conclusions about what we can and should do with LLMs.
    - throw310822 1mo ago
      > This is an extremely common fallacy ... they use the fact that "some humans can't do X" to claim that LLMs are, in fact, basically conscious/human-like/AGI already. Claiming that LLMs are conscious or human-like because humans can't do X seems a very strange way to argue for LLM intelligence. Usually, it goes the other way around: an LLM sceptic says "LLMs are dumb because they can't do X" and soon someone has to remind them that also most of the population can't, in fact, do X.
      - randomImmigrant 1mo ago
        “ Usually, it goes the other way around: an LLM sceptic says "LLMs are dumb because they can't do X" and soon someone has to remind them that also most of the population can't, in fact, do X.” And it should not go this way, is the OPs point. For an analogy, imagine someone looked at a bunch of lightbulbs and expresses dissatisfaction that they aren’t really stars. If someone replies by saying “not all stars are equally bright”, do you think that fact should carry any weight in the argument?
        throw310822 1mo ago
        > And it should not go this way, is the OPs point Well, he's wrong. If you argue that LLMs and humans are fundamentally different because all LLMs do X and no human does it, then showing you that it's not true demolishes your argument. Doesn't prove anything positive, but it certainly proves that your argument is invalid.
        randomImmigrant 1mo ago
        Well this requires you to buy the very bullshit argument that comparisons of two physically distinct systems just because they share outputs is meaningful. If I call a lightbulb an artificial star, the onus is on me to show the behavior under the hood is star like, not just to point at the light and say “you must see it’s a a star since it’s emitting light!”.
  - JohnMakin 1mo ago
    Just a heads up - this person in gp comment, their original post in a way that is much much different than the one I was replying to originally both in tone and content.
tavavex 1mo ago
Anthropomorphizing is a problem when you're talking about treating something that's not living as if it were. Using humanizing language invites discussions of things like the rights and feelings of an algorithm. A judge that is misled by the application of human-centric language to an algorithm can lead to some terrible outcomes. Not everyone is an LLM expert and the language people use leads to them treating LLMs like actual, real humans. That is terrifying.
- salawat 1mo ago
  What is terrifying is the propensity of people hoping for a mechanical slave to do everything possible to avoid touching on the possibility for being-ness of the technology they are desperately hoping will work as a basis for that implementation.
  - hypfer 1mo ago
    Cyberpsychosis. A next token predictor is not a being. Stop posting these things. Stop thinking these things.
    - Eisenstein 1mo ago
      Why can't it be a being? Why is thinking about such a possibilty bad?
      - hypfer 1mo ago
        Sorry, but if you're genuinely asking this not for trolling reasons then you should _really_ _really_ see a medical professional (not an insult). Online comment sections are not the correct place to unpack any of this. Which is indeed terminating this comment chain, but for good (and benevolent) reason. Doing anything else other than referring to a trained professional in a controlled context would potentially just feed delusions, which is highly unethical. Might not even be yours but those of another reader.
        1mo ago
hypfer 1mo ago
> I know people who are like that too. Cool. Question: Why _on earth_ would we make more of them?
qsera 1mo ago
>I'm not sure anthropomorphizing is a problem. It is a problem because it does not really understand stuff. For example, if you ask a human "Do you understand that doing X will kill you 100%?". If the human answers "Yes", then you can expect the human to act according to that understanding. That they will not do X But an LLM will happily acknowledges the consequences of doing X, but will still proceed to do X. So replace the human in the above example with a robot controlled by an LLM. There is no guarantee that it will not do X.
- wccrawford 1mo ago
  Have you not met humans that do that, too? When it was found that smoking causes cancer, many, many people kept doing it. Then the government taxed the crap out of it, and some people still do it. It's easy to say that people have other motivations, but doesn't the AI, too? You tell it not to do X, but you've also told it to do something that would benefit from X. It's going to "want" to still do X, to support that other thing. It's also got all the "knowledge" that enables it to do the work in the first place, and all of the tendencies of the people who do that work, because that's what it's trained on. It's really easy to anthropomorphize AI because it was literally modeled after people. And for the record, as lead developer, I've had actual humans that reported me to go ahead and do things I specifically told them not to.
  - qsera 1mo ago
    >smoking causes cancer Which part of "X will kill you 100%" did you not get?

danaris 1mo ago

> I know people who are like that too. This is part of the problem being described. You are part of the problem. "Some people are bad at X" is not comparable—is not even in the same category—as "LLMs are fundamentally incapable of X". Every human (at least to a first approximation) is capable of understanding, of learning, of remembering things, of doing math, of counting the number of "r"s in "strawberry". What you are observing is that some humans are careless, do not take the time and effort to understand, or have internalized the idea that they're "not smart enough" or "not the type of person" who understands things like <whatever>. That has nothing remotely to do with the fact that LLMs have no consciousness, no self-awareness, no cognition, no understanding. At a fundamental level.

JohnMakin 1mo ago
I don't think anyone in this conversation is saying this behavior is anything but the fault of the user not understanding how these tools work? This is a weirdly aggressive post.
- danaris 1mo ago
  This is an extremely common fallacy I've seen lots and lots of people fall into with respect to LLMs. In nearly every case, they use the fact that "some humans can't do X" to claim that LLMs are, in fact, basically conscious/human-like/AGI already. This is deeply untrue, and is highly likely to lead them to bad conclusions about what we can and should do with LLMs.
  - throw310822 1mo ago
    > This is an extremely common fallacy ... they use the fact that "some humans can't do X" to claim that LLMs are, in fact, basically conscious/human-like/AGI already. Claiming that LLMs are conscious or human-like because humans can't do X seems a very strange way to argue for LLM intelligence. Usually, it goes the other way around: an LLM sceptic says "LLMs are dumb because they can't do X" and soon someone has to remind them that also most of the population can't, in fact, do X.
    - randomImmigrant 1mo ago
      “ Usually, it goes the other way around: an LLM sceptic says "LLMs are dumb because they can't do X" and soon someone has to remind them that also most of the population can't, in fact, do X.” And it should not go this way, is the OPs point. For an analogy, imagine someone looked at a bunch of lightbulbs and expresses dissatisfaction that they aren’t really stars. If someone replies by saying “not all stars are equally bright”, do you think that fact should carry any weight in the argument?
      - throw310822 1mo ago
        > And it should not go this way, is the OPs point Well, he's wrong. If you argue that LLMs and humans are fundamentally different because all LLMs do X and no human does it, then showing you that it's not true demolishes your argument. Doesn't prove anything positive, but it certainly proves that your argument is invalid.
        randomImmigrant 1mo ago
        Well this requires you to buy the very bullshit argument that comparisons of two physically distinct systems just because they share outputs is meaningful. If I call a lightbulb an artificial star, the onus is on me to show the behavior under the hood is star like, not just to point at the light and say “you must see it’s a a star since it’s emitting light!”.
- JohnMakin 1mo ago
  Just a heads up - this person in gp comment, their original post in a way that is much much different than the one I was replying to originally both in tone and content.

tavavex 1mo ago

Anthropomorphizing is a problem when you're talking about treating something that's not living as if it were. Using humanizing language invites discussions of things like the rights and feelings of an algorithm. A judge that is misled by the application of human-centric language to an algorithm can lead to some terrible outcomes. Not everyone is an LLM expert and the language people use leads to them treating LLMs like actual, real humans. That is terrifying.

salawat 1mo ago
What is terrifying is the propensity of people hoping for a mechanical slave to do everything possible to avoid touching on the possibility for being-ness of the technology they are desperately hoping will work as a basis for that implementation.
- hypfer 1mo ago
  Cyberpsychosis. A next token predictor is not a being. Stop posting these things. Stop thinking these things.
  - Eisenstein 1mo ago
    Why can't it be a being? Why is thinking about such a possibilty bad?
    - hypfer 1mo ago
      Sorry, but if you're genuinely asking this not for trolling reasons then you should _really_ _really_ see a medical professional (not an insult). Online comment sections are not the correct place to unpack any of this. Which is indeed terminating this comment chain, but for good (and benevolent) reason. Doing anything else other than referring to a trained professional in a controlled context would potentially just feed delusions, which is highly unethical. Might not even be yours but those of another reader.
      - 1mo ago

hypfer 1mo ago

> I know people who are like that too. Cool. Question: Why _on earth_ would we make more of them?

qsera 1mo ago

>I'm not sure anthropomorphizing is a problem. It is a problem because it does not really understand stuff. For example, if you ask a human "Do you understand that doing X will kill you 100%?". If the human answers "Yes", then you can expect the human to act according to that understanding. That they will not do X But an LLM will happily acknowledges the consequences of doing X, but will still proceed to do X. So replace the human in the above example with a robot controlled by an LLM. There is no guarantee that it will not do X.

wccrawford 1mo ago
Have you not met humans that do that, too? When it was found that smoking causes cancer, many, many people kept doing it. Then the government taxed the crap out of it, and some people still do it. It's easy to say that people have other motivations, but doesn't the AI, too? You tell it not to do X, but you've also told it to do something that would benefit from X. It's going to "want" to still do X, to support that other thing. It's also got all the "knowledge" that enables it to do the work in the first place, and all of the tendencies of the people who do that work, because that's what it's trained on. It's really easy to anthropomorphize AI because it was literally modeled after people. And for the record, as lead developer, I've had actual humans that reported me to go ahead and do things I specifically told them not to.
- qsera 1mo ago
  >smoking causes cancer Which part of "X will kill you 100%" did you not get?