There is an element of rudeness to completely ignoring what I've already written and saying "you know [basic principle that was already covered at length], right?". If you want to talk about contributing to the discussion rather than being rude, you could start by offering a reply to the points that are already made rather than making me repeat myself addressing the level 0 thought on the subject.

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JoshTriplett 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Repeating yourself doesn't make you right, just repetitive. Ignoring refutations you don't like doesn't make them wrong. Observing that something has already been refuted, in an effort to avoid further repetition, is not in itself inherently rude.

Any definition of intelligence that does not axiomatically say "is human" or "is biological" or similar is something a machine can meet, insofar as we're also just machines made out of biology. For any given X, "AI can't do X yet" is a statement with an expiration date on it, and I wouldn't bet on that expiration date being too far in the future. This is a problem.

It is, in particular, difficult at this point to construct a meaningful definition of intelligence that simultaneously includes all humans and excludes all AIs. Many motivated-reasoning / rationalization attempts to construct a definition that excludes the highest-end AIs often exclude some humans. (By "motivated-reasoning / rationalization", I mean that such attempts start by writing "and therefore AIs can't possibly be intelligent" at the bottom, and work backwards from there to faux-rationalize what they've already decided must be true.)

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anonymous908213 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> Repeating yourself doesn't make you right, just repetitive.

Good thing I didn't make that claim!

> Ignoring refutations you don't like doesn't make them wrong.

They didn't make a refutation of my points. They asserted a basic principle that I agreed with, but assume acceptance of that principle leads to their preferred conclusion. They make this assumption without providing any reasoning whatsoever for why that principle would lead to that conclusion, whereas I already provided an entire paragraph of reasoning for why I believe the principle leads to a different conclusion. A refutation would have to start from there, refuting the points I actually made. Without that you cannot call it a refutation. It is just gainsaying.

> Any definition of intelligence that does not axiomatically say "is human" or "is biological" or similar is something a machine can meet, insofar as we're also just machines made out of biology.

And here we go AGAIN! I already agree with this point!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Please, for the love of god, read the words I have written. I think machine intelligence is possible. We are in agreement. Being in agreement that machine intelligence is possible does not automatically lead to the conclusion that the programs that make up LLMs are machine intelligence, any more than a "Hello World" program is intelligence. This is indeed, very repetitive.

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JoshTriplett 4 hours ago | parent [-]

You have given no argument for why an LLM cannot be intelligent. Not even that current models are not; you seem to be claiming that they cannot be.

If you are prepared to accept that intelligence doesn't require biology, then what definition do you want to use that simultaneously excludes all high-end AI and includes all humans?

By way of example, the game of life uses very simple rules, and is Turing-complete. Thus, the game of life could run a (very slow) complete simulation of a brain. Similarly, so could the architecture of an LLM. There is no fundamental limitation there.

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anonymous908213 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> You have given no argument for why an LLM cannot be intelligent.

I literally did provide a definition and my argument for it already: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47051523

If you want to argue with that definition of intelligence, or argue that LLMs do meet that definition of intelligence, by all means, go ahead[1]! I would have been interested to discuss that. Instead I have to repeat myself over and over restating points I already made because people aren't even reading them.

> Not even that current models are not; you seem to be claiming that they cannot be.

As I have now stated something like three or four times in this thread, my position is that machine intelligence is possible but that LLMs are not an example of it. Perhaps you would know what position you were arguing against if you had fully read my arguments before responding.

[1] I won't be responding any further at this point, though, so you should probably not bother. My patience for people responding without reading has worn thin, and going so far as to assert I have not given an argument for the very first thing I made an argument for is quite enough for me to log off.

	▲	JoshTriplett 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Probabilistic prediction is inherently incompatible with deterministic deduction. Human brains run on probabilistic processes. If you want to make a definition of intelligence that excludes humans, that's not going to be a very useful definition for the purposes of reasoning or discourse. > What if 1 + 2 is 2 and 1 + 3 is 3? Then we can reason that under these constraints we just made up, 1 + 4 is 4, without ever having been programmed to consider these rules. Have you tried this particular test, on any recent LLM? Because they have no problem handling that, and much more complex problems than that. You're going to need a more sophisticated test if you want to distinguish humans and current AI. I'm not suggesting that we have "solved" intelligence; I am suggesting that there is no inherent property of an LLM that makes them incapable of intelligence.