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LordDragonfang 10 hours ago

> (this is the part where somebody stumbles in to say "dOn'T hUmAnS dO ThE sAmE tHiNg????")

As a frequent "your stated reasoning for why llms can't/don't/will-never <X> applies to humans because they do the same thing" annoying commentor, I usually invoke it to point out that

a) the differences are ones of degree/magnitude rather than ones of category (i.e. is still likely to be improved by scaling, even if there are diminishing returns - so you can't assume LLMs are fundamentally unable to <X> because their architecture) or

b) the difference is primarily just in the poster's perception, because the poster is unconsciously arguing from a place of human exceptionalism (that all cognitive behaviors must somehow require the circumstances of our wetware).

I wouldn't presume to know how to scale furbies, but the second point is both irrelevant and extra relevant because the thing in question is human perception. Furbies don't seem alive because they have a simple enough stimuli-behavior map for us to fully model. Shoggoth mini seems alive since you can't immediately model it, but is simple enough that you can eventually construct that full stimuli-behavior map. Presumably, with a complex enough internal state, you could actually pass that threshold pretty quickly.