| The output method is a probability distribution of the next token. But that tells you nothing about what's going on on the inside You could take a human and give them an interface restricted to the same shape as an LLM: an input stream of tokens, and an output of token probabilities. Even if you don't allow them to assign any probability that's too high, they could still effectively communicate. And I don't think that'd make them any less intelligent. You could even swap out the human after every token, to simulate the effect of having no internal memory beyond the past output. The result would still be more than just statistical probabilities, it would still be the result of intelligent thought I'm not saying AI models are intelligent or conscious or whatever. Personally I'm more on the "probably not, how would you proof either way" camp |
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| ▲ | lolakutty 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | >But that tells you nothing about what's going on on the inside It does not have to tell us anything. Because we built it..We know what is going on the inside. There is nothing more to it.. | | |
| ▲ | hardbass 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Why do security bugs in Linux exist? We built Linux, we know everything that is going on inside. | | |
| ▲ | lolakutty 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, we can explain the bugs by looking at the code that we put in and the data it bugs out on. In a similar way, we can explain the behavior of LLMs by look at their code and the data the code operates upon. There is no mystery anywhere... | | |
| ▲ | hardbass 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You said you know everything about it. Then you should not have written bugs in the first place. How are you sure a system we wrote didn't emerge consciousness, if you can't even prove a system you wrote doesn't have classic logic bugs? | | |
| ▲ | lolakutty an hour ago | parent [-] | | >You said you know everything about it. Yes, we know everything we put there. But we cannot consider all the possible inputs and all the possible state that the code should handle. Bugs come from that limitation. > How are you sure a system we wrote didn't emerge consciousness, Sure, as I said elsewhere, rocks could be conscious for all we know. Keep believing that if it makes you feel good. |
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| ▲ | hardbass 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | And why do you think we can't do the same for brains? | | |
| ▲ | lolakutty an hour ago | parent [-] | | Because we didn't build the brain.. | | |
| ▲ | hardbass an hour ago | parent [-] | | We didn't build most things in nature. We didn't build hills for example, but we can pile earth and make a hill. Why are brains special? Again, no progress is possible unless you define what consciousness is in your view. I shall have to halt any conversation otherwise. | | |
| ▲ | lolakutty 36 minutes ago | parent [-] | | >Why are brains special? They are not special. You can pile brains too, if that is your thing.. > I shall have to halt any conversation otherwise. Hey, it is easy. Just don't press the reply button... |
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| ▲ | vhantz 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | How would that process be the result of intelligent thought? Presumably everyone in the chain would have their own idea of what the next word/token should be. They would each try to push it in that direction using their only lever, that single token. None of that guarantees that the output is syntactically correct, nor grammatically correct. Note that LLMs at least by the way they draw their tokens have that pretty much guaranteed. So that would be a regression even from what LLMs are capable of right now. But beyond that, even if it ends up being a correct sentence, it would not be a result of intelligent thought. Even if every agent in the process was intelligent, the process is not itself a use of that intelligence. Human beings can be part of purely mechanical processes, that doesn't make the mechanisms suddenly an exhibition of intelligent thought. This also applies to society and human history itself as processes:
“History is made in such a way that the final result always arises from conflicts between many individual wills, of which each in turn has been made what it is by a host of particular conditions of life. Thus there are innumerable intersecting forces, an infinite series of parallelograms of forces which give rise to one resultant — the historical event. This may again itself be viewed as the product of a power which works as a whole unconsciously and without volition. For what each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed. Thus history has proceeded hitherto in the manner of a natural process and is essentially subject to the same laws of motion. But from the fact that the wills of individuals — each of whom desires what he is impelled to by his physical constitution and external, in the last resort economic, circumstances (either his own personal circumstances or those of society in general) — do not attain what they want, but are merged into an aggregate mean, a common resultant, it must not be concluded that they are equal to zero. On the contrary, each contributes to the resultant and is to this extent included in it." https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_... | | |
| ▲ | vanuatu 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | But deciding the next token is not a merely mechanical process. Even if the string of tokens from our swapped out humans ends up being syntactically incorrect, it's due to the combination of intelligently selected tokens. (Presumably intelligent human programmers seem to make syntactic errors) | |
| ▲ | vhantz 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | In short, even in the case of humans, which are universally (by humans) recognized as intelligent, such a process would not exhibit intelligent thought. |
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