> You're just assuming that mimicry of a thing is not equivalent to the thing itself.

I'm not assuming that, that's literally the definition of mimicry: to imitate closely.

You might say I'm assuming that it is mimicking and not actually thinking, but there's no evidence it's actually thinking, and we know exactly what is IS doing because we created the code that we used to build the model. They're not thinking, it's doing math, mathematical transformations of data.

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naasking 2 days ago | parent [-]

> They're not thinking, it's doing math, mathematical transformations of data

Whatever thinking fundamentally is, it also has an equivalence as a mathematical transformation of data. You're assuming the conclusion by saying that the two mathematical transformations of data are not isomorphic.

A simulation of information processing is still information processing, just like running Windows in a QEMU VM is still running Windows.

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burnte 2 days ago | parent [-]

> Whatever thinking fundamentally is, it also has an equivalence as a mathematical transformation of data.

Do not confuse the mathematical description of physical processes as the world being made of math.

> You're assuming the conclusion by saying that the two mathematical transformations of data are not isomorphic.

Correct. They're not isomorphic. One is simple math that runs on electrified sand, and one is an unknown process that developed independently across a billion years. Nothing we're doing with AI today is even close to real thought. There are a billion trivial proofs that make the rounds as memes, like one R in strawberry, or being unable to count, etc.

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naasking 2 days ago | parent [-]

> Do not confuse the mathematical description of physical processes as the world being made of math.

Again, this doesn't apply to information. A simulation of a computation really is equivalent to that computation.

> One is simple math that runs on electrified sand, and one is an unknown process that developed independently across a billion years.

Right, so you admit that it's an unknown process, which means you literally cannot conclude that it is different to what LLMs are doing.

> There are a billion trivial proofs that make the rounds as memes, like one R in strawberry, or being unable to count, etc.

No, none of these are definitive proofs that they are not thinking. LLM "perceptions" are tokens, the strawberry question is basically asking it to figure out something that's below it's perceptual range. This has literally nothing to do with whether the way it processes information is or is not thinking.

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burnte 2 days ago | parent [-]

> Right, so you admit that it's an unknown process, which means you literally cannot conclude that it is different to what LLMs are doing.

If you truly feel human thinking and LLMs share more than a cocktail napkin's worth of similarity, I don't know what to say. Just treating it like a black box I can prove in minutes it's not thinking. Come on. I really don't get why people are so emotionally involved in this stuff.

It's not thinking. It's ok that it's not thinking. Maybe someday we'll get there, but it's not today.

	▲	naasking 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		No you can't. You're just not proving what you think you're proving.