I want to say then that probably counts as intelligence, as you can converse with LLMs and have really insightful discussions with them, but I personally just can't agree that they are "intelligent" given that they do not understand anything they say.
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I want to say then that probably counts as intelligence, as you can converse with LLMs and have really insightful discussions with them, but I personally just can't agree that they are "intelligent" given that they do not understand anything they say.
I'm unsure if you've read of the Chinese Room but Wikipedia has a good article on it
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I want to say then that probably counts as intelligence, as you can converse with LLMs and have really insightful discussions with them, but I personally just can't agree that they are "intelligent" given that they do not understand anything they say.
I'm unsure if you've read of the Chinese Room but Wikipedia has a good article on it
I think what you are describing is "agency" and not necessarily intelligence.
A gold fish has agency, but no amount if exposure to linear algebra will give them the ability to transpose a matrix.
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I think what you are describing is "agency" and not necessarily intelligence.
A gold fish has agency, but no amount if exposure to linear algebra will give them the ability to transpose a matrix.
What I tried to say is that if the LLM doesn't actually understand anything it says, it's not actually intelligent is it? Inputs get astonishingly good outputs, but it's not real AI.
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What I tried to say is that if the LLM doesn't actually understand anything it says, it's not actually intelligent is it? Inputs get astonishingly good outputs, but it's not real AI.
LLM doesn’t actually understand anything it says
Do you?
Do I?
Where do thoughts come from? Are you the thought or the thing experiencing the thought? Which holds the intelligence?
I know enough about thought to know that you aren't planning the words you are about to think next, at least not with any conscious effort. I also know that people tend to not actually know what it is they are trying to say or think until they go through the process; start talking and the words flow.
Not altogether that different than next token prediction; maybe just with a network 100x as deep...
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LLM doesn’t actually understand anything it says
Do you?
Do I?
Where do thoughts come from? Are you the thought or the thing experiencing the thought? Which holds the intelligence?
I know enough about thought to know that you aren't planning the words you are about to think next, at least not with any conscious effort. I also know that people tend to not actually know what it is they are trying to say or think until they go through the process; start talking and the words flow.
Not altogether that different than next token prediction; maybe just with a network 100x as deep...
An interesting study I recall from my neuroscience classes is that we "decide" on what to do (or in this case, what to say) slightly before we're aware of the decision, and then our brain comes up with a story about why we made that decision so that it feels like we have agency.
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An interesting study I recall from my neuroscience classes is that we "decide" on what to do (or in this case, what to say) slightly before we're aware of the decision, and then our brain comes up with a story about why we made that decision so that it feels like we have agency.
Kurzgesagt recently did an awesome video on this sort of thing!
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LLM doesn’t actually understand anything it says
Do you?
Do I?
Where do thoughts come from? Are you the thought or the thing experiencing the thought? Which holds the intelligence?
I know enough about thought to know that you aren't planning the words you are about to think next, at least not with any conscious effort. I also know that people tend to not actually know what it is they are trying to say or think until they go through the process; start talking and the words flow.
Not altogether that different than next token prediction; maybe just with a network 100x as deep...
This gets really deep into how we're all made of not alive things and atoms and yet here we are, and why is it no other planet has life like us etc. Also super philosophical!
But truly, the LLMs don't understand things they say, and Apple apparently just put out a paper saying they don't reason either (if you consider that to be different from understanding). They're claiming it's all fancy pattern recognition. (Putting link below of interested)
https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/illusion-of-thinking
Another difference between a human and an LLM is likely the ability to understand semantics within syntax, rather than just text alone.
I feel like there's more that I want to add but I can't quite think of how to say it so I'll stop here.
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This gets really deep into how we're all made of not alive things and atoms and yet here we are, and why is it no other planet has life like us etc. Also super philosophical!
But truly, the LLMs don't understand things they say, and Apple apparently just put out a paper saying they don't reason either (if you consider that to be different from understanding). They're claiming it's all fancy pattern recognition. (Putting link below of interested)
https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/illusion-of-thinking
Another difference between a human and an LLM is likely the ability to understand semantics within syntax, rather than just text alone.
I feel like there's more that I want to add but I can't quite think of how to say it so I'll stop here.
You want to make a conclusion we can't a shouldn't make. I'm going to continue to choose to not make those conclusions because we simply don't have the information to do so.
I will however offer a prediction.
We will have machines that are better than humans in all practical and observable ways, with no accessible or material way to distinguish them from humans, extending from agency to empathy to the appearance (if it even is that) of thinking. The only way you'll be able to know them as machines is their superiority domains ways non specialists should never be able to accomplish.
And in that time we still won't have a useful definition of intelligence.
