Right -- we know that LLMs cannot think, feel, or understand.

Therefore whenever they produce output that looks like the result of those things, we must either be deceived by a reasonable facsimile, or we simply misapprehended their necessity in the first place.

But, do we understand the human brain as well as we understand LLMs?

Obviously there's something different, but is it just a matter of degrees? LLMs have greater memory than humans, and lesser ability to correlate it. Correlation is powerful magic. That's pattern matching though, and I don't see a fundamental reason why LLMs won't get better at it. Maybe never as good as (smart) humans are, but with their superior memory, maybe that will often be adequate.

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CyberDildonics 2 days ago | parent [-]

> they produce output that looks like the result of those things

Is a cardboard cutout human to some degree? Is a recording a voice? What about a voice recording in a phone menu?

> LLMs have greater memory than humans,

So does a bank of hard drives by that metric.

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quesera 2 days ago | parent [-]

(Memory Access + Correlation Skills) is a decent proxy for several of the many kinds of human intelligence.

HDDs don't have correlation skills, but LLMs do. They're just not smart-human-level "good", yet.

I am not sure whether I believe AGI will happen. To be meaningful, it would have to be above the level of a smart human.

Building an army of disincorporated average-human-intelligence actors would be economically "productive" though. This is the future I see us trending toward today.

Most humans are not special. This is dystopian, of course. Not in the "machines raise humans for energy" sort of way, but probably no less socially destructive.

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CyberDildonics 2 days ago | parent [-]

HDDs don't have correlation skills, but LLMs do

So which is it, the memory or the correlation? I'll give you a hint, this is a trick question.

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quesera 2 days ago | parent [-]

I never suggested that it was one or the other.

I think it's very obviously both.

(and these two qualities are likely necessary, but not sufficient)

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CyberDildonics 2 days ago | parent [-]

So according to you there is a threshold where someone who can't remember enough or correlate things stops being human?

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quesera 2 days ago | parent [-]

Stops exhibiting human intelligence, on at least some of the many axes thereof, yes definitely.

I feel like you're trying to gotcha me into some corner, but I'm not sure you're reading my comments fully. Or perhaps I'm being less clear than I think.

I don't mean to be ungracious, but am I missing something here?

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CyberDildonics 2 days ago | parent [-]

It's not a gotcha, I just don't think you're thinking through the implications of what you're saying when you think only in terms of being able to fake thought with statistics.

	▲	quesera 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I'm saying that recall+correlation is sometimes enough to emulate some level of some forms of human intelligence. How frequently? How high? And which forms? These metrics are in flux. Today is very different from a few months ago. Enough to perform at the level of an ordinary retail service employee? I think this is probably within reach, soon. Do you think that's naive?