[HN Gopher] Secondary school maths showing that AI systems don't...
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Secondary school maths showing that AI systems don't think
Author : zdw
Score : 84 points
Date : 2025-12-12 16:32 UTC (6 hours ago)
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| causal wrote:
| I love the idea of educating students on the math behind AI to
| demystify them. But I think it's a little weird to assert "AI is
| not magic and AI systems do not think. It's just maths."
| Equivalent statements could be made about how human brains are
| not magic, just biology - yet I think we still think.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Thinking is undefined so all statements about it are
| unverifiable.
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| Is this some self refuting sentence?
| d-lisp wrote:
| I think they meant "Cannot evaluate : (is <undefined> like
| x ?), argument missing"
|
| edit : Thinking is undefined, statements about undefined
| cannot be verified.
| ux266478 wrote:
| is a meta-level grammar the same as an object-level
| grammar?
| random9749832 wrote:
| Is reasoning undefined? That's what usually meant by
| "thinking".
| nutjob2 wrote:
| Formal reasoning is defined, informal reasoning very much
| isn't.
| random9749832 wrote:
| At the end of the day most people would agree that if
| something is able to solve a problem without a lookup
| table / memorisation that it used reasoning to reach the
| answer. You are really just splitting hairs here.
| gowld wrote:
| What do "most" people thinking about LLMs, then?
|
| The "hair-splitting" underlies the whole GenAI debate.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| The difference between thinking and reasoning is that I can
| "think" that Elvis is still alive, Jewish space lasers are
| responsible for California wildfires, and Trump was re-
| elected president in 2020, but I cannot "reason" myself
| into those positions.
|
| It ties into another aspect of these perennial threads,
| where it is somehow OK for humans to engage in deluded or
| hallucinatory thought, but when an AI model does it, it
| proves they don't "think."
| d-lisp wrote:
| Do you think that thinking is undefinable ? If thinking is
| definable, then all statements about it aren't unverifiable.
| ablob wrote:
| Caveat: if thinking is definable, then not all statements
| about it are unverifiable.
| d-lisp wrote:
| Yes, that's a problem of me not being a native english
| speaker. "All x aren't y" may mean "not all x are y" in
| my tongue. Not a single x is y is more what we would say
| in the previous case. But in our case we would say there
| are x that aren't y.
|
| If thinking is definable, it is wrong that all statements
| about it are unverifiable (i.e. there are statements
| about it that are verifiable.)
|
| Well, basic shit.
| terminalshort wrote:
| Statements like "it is bound by the laws of physics" are not
| "verifiable" by your definition, and yet we safely assume it
| is true of everything. Everything except the human brain,
| that is, for which wild speculation that it may be
| supernatural is seemingly considered rational discussion so
| long as it satisfies people's needs to believe that they are
| somehow special in the universe.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| True. You need to define "it" before you can verify physics
| bounds it.
|
| Unicorns are not bound by the laws of physics - because
| they do not exist.
| cwmoore wrote:
| They are, apparently, proscribed by the totality of the
| laws of physics. For now.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| But every unicorn _is_ bound by the laws of physics.
| gowld wrote:
| > it satisfies people's needs to believe that they are
| somehow special in the universe.
|
| Is it only humans that have this need? That makes the need
| special, so humans are special in the universe.
| terminalshort wrote:
| It is bound by the same laws of physics as everything
| else, so no, not special.
| sublinear wrote:
| I think what many are saying is that of all the things we
| know best, it's going to be the machines we build and their
| underlying principles.
|
| We don't fully understand how brains work, but we know
| brains don't function like a computer. Why would a computer
| be assumed to function like a brain in any way, even in
| part, without evidence and just hopes based on marketing?
| And I don't just mean consumer marketing, but marketing
| within academia as well. For example, names like "neural
| networks" have always been considered metaphorical at best.
| ben_w wrote:
| I would say a different problem:
|
| There's many definitions of "thinking".
|
| AI and brains can do some, AI and brains definitely provably
| cannot do others, some others are untestable at present, and
| nobody really knows enough about what human brains do to be
| able to tell if or when some existing or future AI can do
| whatever is needed for the stuff we find special about
| ourselves.
|
| A lot of people use different definitions, and respond to
| anyone pointing this out by denying the issue and claiming
| their own definition is the only sensible one and "obviously"
| everyone else (who isn't a weird pedant) uses it.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| This is not a meta-question.
|
| The definition of "thinking" in any of the parent comments
| or TFA is actually not defined. Like literally no
| statements are made about what is being tested.
|
| So, if we had that we could actually discuss it. Otherwise
| it's just opinions about what a person believes thinking
| is, combined with what LLMs are doing + what the person
| believes they themselves do + what they believe others do.
| It's entirely subjective with very low SNR b/c of those
| confounding factors.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| What's a definition of thinking that brains definitely
| provably can't do?
| _alternator_ wrote:
| Computing the Kolmorgorov constant?
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| I don't know that I agree that computation is a variety
| of thinking. It's certainly influenced by thinking, but I
| think of thinking as more the thing you do before, after,
| and in-between the computation, not the actual
| computation itself.
| ben_w wrote:
| Halting problem.
|
| There are people who insist that the halting problem
| "proves" that machines will never be able to think. That
| this means they don't understand the difference between
| writing down the halting problem and the implications of
| the halting problem, does not stop them from using it.
| ux266478 wrote:
| It's just provencial nonsense, there's no sound reasoning to
| it. Reductionism being taken and used as a form of refutation
| is a pretty common cargo culting behavior I've found.
|
| Overwhelmingly, I just don't think the majority of human beings
| have the mental toolset to work with ambiguous philosophical
| contexts. They'll still try though, and what you get out of
| that is a 4th order baudrillardian simulation of reason.
| bruntofsaurus wrote:
| "Just" is used here as a reductive device. You reduce others
| to a few sentences.
|
| Sentences constructed of words and representations of ideas
| defined long before you existed. I question whether you can
| work with ambiguous contexts as you have had the privilege of
| them being laid out in language for you already by the time
| you were born.
|
| From my reference frame you appear to merely be
| circumlocuting from memory, and become the argument you make
| about others.
| qsort wrote:
| I agree saying "they don't think" and leaving it at that isn't
| particularly useful or insightful, it's like saying "submarines
| don't swim" and refusing to elaborate further. It can be useful
| if you extend it to "they don't think like you do". Concepts
| like finite context windows, or the fact that the model is
| "frozen" and stateless, or the idea that you can transfer
| conversations between models are trivial if you know a bit
| about how LLMs work, but extremely baffling otherwise.
| gowld wrote:
| > Concepts like
|
| > finite context windows
|
| like a human has
|
| > or the fact that the model is "frozen" and stateless,
|
| much like a human adult. Models get updated at a slower
| frequency than humans. AI systems have access to fetch new
| information and store it for context.
|
| > or the idea that you can transfer conversations between
| models are trivial
|
| because computers are better-organized than humanity.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| > much like a human adult.
|
| I do hope you're able to remember what you had for lunch
| without incessantly repeating it to keep it in your context
| window
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| A lot of people genuinely can't remember what they did an
| hour ago, but to be very clear you're implying that an
| LLM can't "remember" something from an hour, or three
| hours ago, when it's the opposite.
|
| I can restart a conversation with an LLM 15 days later
| and the state is exactly as it was.
|
| Can't do that with a human.
|
| The idea that humans have a longer, more stable context
| window than LLM's, CAN or is even LIKELY to be true given
| certain activities but please let's be honest about this.
|
| If you talk to someone for an hour about a technical
| conversation I would guesstimate that 90% of humans would
| immediately start to lose track of details in about 10
| minutes. So they write things down, or they mentally
| repeat things to themselves they know or have recognized
| they keep forgetting.
|
| I know this because it's happened continually in tech
| companies decade after decade.
|
| LLM's have already passed the Turing test. They continue
| to pass it. They fool and outsmart people day after day.
|
| I'm no fan of the hype AI is receiving, especially around
| overstating its impact in technical domains, but
| pretending that LLM's can't or don't consistently perform
| better than most human adults on a variety of different
| activities is complete non-sense.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Wouldn't context be comparable to human short term
| memory, which could be neurons firing in a certain
| pattern repeatedly to keep it there?
|
| How would you say human short term memory works if not by
| repeated firing (similar to repeatedly putting same
| tokens in over and over)?
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| I do hope you're able to remember what buttons you just
| pressed without staring at your hands while doing so to
| keep it in your working memory
|
| I do hope you're able to remember what was your browser
| tab 5 tab switches ago without keeping track of it...
| snickerbockers wrote:
| >Equivalent statements could be made about how human brains are
| not magic, just biology - yet I think we still think.
|
| They're not equivalent at all because the AI is by no means
| biological. "It's just maths" could _maybe_ be applied to
| humans but this is backed entirely by supposition and would
| ultimately just be an assumption of its own conclusion - that
| human brains work on the same underlying principles as AI
| because it is assumed that they 're based on the same
| underlying principles as AI.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| > that human brains work on the same underlying principles as
| AI
|
| That wasn't the assumption though, it was only that human
| brains work by some "non-magical" electro-chemical process
| which could be described as a mechanism, whether that
| mechanism followed the same principles of AI or not.
| ikrenji wrote:
| Human brains might not be explained by the same type of math
| AI is explained with, but it will be _some_ kind of math...
| Mehvix wrote:
| There's no reason to believe this to be the case. Godel
| says otherwise.
| gowld wrote:
| Please explain, because this interpetation of "Godel" is
| highly nonstandard.
| Mehvix wrote:
| you may consider reading I am a strange loop for that,
| which can do far better justification than myself
|
| if there's surely no algo to solve the halting problem,
| why would there be maths that describes consciousness?
| josh-sematic wrote:
| Can _you_ look at any arbitrary program and tell if it
| halts without running it indefinitely? If so, you should
| explain how and collect your Nobel. Telling everybody
| whether the Collatz conjecture is correct is a good warm
| up. If not, you can't solve the halting program either.
| What does that have to do with consciousness though?
|
| Having read "I Am a Strange Loop" I do not believe
| Hofstadter indicates that the existence of Godel's
| theorem precludes consciousness being realizable on a
| Turing machine. Rather if I recall correctly he points
| out that as a possible argument and then attempts to
| refute it.
|
| On the other hand Penrose is a prominent believer that
| human's ability to understand Godel's theorem indicates
| consciousness can't be realized on a Turing machine but
| there's far from universal agreement on that point.
| squidbeak wrote:
| Brain damage? If thought was outside physics, it would be
| a bit more durable than Humpty Dumpty.
| _alternator_ wrote:
| Human brains and experiences seem to be constrained by
| the laws of quantum physics, which can be simulated to
| arbitrary fidelity on a computer. Nit sure where Godel's
| incompleteness theory would even come in here...
| hnfong wrote:
| Well, a better retort would be "Human brains are not magic,
| just physics. Protons, neutrons and electrons don't think".
|
| But I think most people get what GP means.
| criddell wrote:
| Until you can define what thinking is, you can't assert
| that particles don't think (panpsychism).
| _alternator_ wrote:
| Panpsychism is actually quite reasonable in part because
| it changes the questions you ask. Instead of "does it
| think" you need to ask "in what ways can it think, and in
| what ways is it constrained? What types of
| 'experience/qualia' can this system have, and what can't
| it have?"
|
| When you think in these terms, it becomes clear that LLMs
| can't have certain types of experiences (eg see in color)
| but could have others.
|
| A "weak" panpsychism approach would just stop at ruling
| out experience or qualia based on physical limitations.
| Yet I prefer the "strong" pansychist theory that whatever
| is not forbidden is required, which begins to get really
| interesting (would imply that for example an LLM actually
| experiences the interaction you have with it, in some
| way).
| mcswell wrote:
| Straw man. The person who you're responding to talked about
| "equivalent _statements_ " (emphasis added), whereas you
| appear to be talking about equivalent _objects_ (AIs vs.
| brains), and pointing out the obvious flaw in this argument,
| that AIs aren 't biology. The obvious flaw in the wrong
| argument, that is.
| pegasus wrote:
| But parent didn't try to apply "it's just maths" to humans.
| He said one could just as easily say, as some do: "Humans are
| just biology, hence they're not magic". Our understanding of
| mathematics, including the maths of transformer models is
| limited, just as our understanding of biology. Some behaviors
| of these models have taken researches by surprise, and future
| surprises are not at all excluded. We don't know exactly how
| far they will evolve.
|
| As for applying the word thinking to AI systems, it's already
| in common usage and this won't change. We don't have any
| other candidate words, and this one is the closest existing
| word for referencing a computational process which, one must
| admit, is in many ways (but definitely not in all ways)
| analogous to human thought.
| observationist wrote:
| Unless you're supposing something mystical or supernatural
| about how brains work, then yes, it is "just" math, there is
| nothing else it could be. All of the evidence we have shows
| it's an electrochemical network of neurons processing
| information. There's no evidence that suggests anything
| different, or even the need for anything different. There's
| no missing piece or deep mystery to it.
|
| It's on those who want alternative explanations to
| demonstrate even the slightest need for them exists - there
| is no scientific evidence that exists which suggests the
| operation of brains as computers, as information processors,
| as substrate independent equivalents to Turing machines, are
| insufficient to any of the cognitive phenomena known across
| the entire domain of human knowledge.
|
| We are brains in bone vats, connected to a wonderful and
| sophisticated sensorimotor platform, and our brains create
| the reality we experience by processing sensor data and
| constructing a simulation which we perceive as subjective
| experience.
|
| The explanation we have is sufficient to the phenomenon.
| There's no need or benefit for searching for unnecessarily
| complicated alternative interpretations.
|
| If you aren't satisfied with the explanation, it doesn't
| really matter - to quote one of Neil DeGrasse Tyson's best
| turns of phrase: "the universe is under no obligation to make
| sense to you"
|
| If you can find evidence, any evidence whatsoever, and that
| evidence withstands scientific scrutiny, and it demands more
| than the explanation we currently have, then by all means,
| chase it down and find out more about how cognition works and
| expand our understanding of the universe. It simply doesn't
| look like we need anything more, in principle, to fully
| explain the nature of biological intelligence, and
| consciousness, and how brains work.
|
| Mind as interdimensional radios, mystical souls and spirits,
| quantum tubules, none of that stuff has any basis in a
| ruthlessly rational and scientific review of the science of
| cognition.
|
| That doesn't preclude souls and supernatural appearing
| phenomena or all manner of "other" things happening. There's
| simply no need to tie it in with cognition -
| neurotransmitters, biological networks, electrical activity,
| that's all you need.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Math is a superset of both processes (can model/implement
| both), but that doesn't imply that they are equivalent.
| johnsmith1840 wrote:
| AI operates alot like trees do as they are both using maths
| under the hood.
|
| This is the point, we don't know the delta between brains
| and AI any assumption is equivalent to my statement.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| That's where these threads always end up. Someone asserts,
| almost violently, that AI does not and/or cannot "think." When
| asked how to falsify their assertion, perhaps by explaining
| what exactly is unique about the human brain that cannot and/or
| will not be possible to emulate, that's the last anyone ever
| hears from them. At least until the next "AI can't think" story
| gets posted.
|
| The same arguments that appeared in 2015 inevitably get trotted
| out, almost verbatim, ten years later. It would be amusing on
| other sites, but it's just pathetic here.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Someone asserts, almost religiously, that LLMs _do_ and /or
| _can_ "think." When asked how to falsify their assertion,
| perhaps by explaining what exactly is "thinking" in the human
| brain that can and/or will be possible to emulate...
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _When asked how to falsify their assertion, perhaps by
| explaining what exactly is "thinking" in the human brain
| that can and/or will be possible to emulate..._
|
| ... someone else points out that the same models that can't
| "think" are somehow turning in gold-level performance at
| international math and programming competitions, making
| Fields Medalists sit up and take notice, winning art
| competitions, composing music indistinguishable from human
| output, and making entire subreddits fail the Turing test.
| Terr_ wrote:
| A couple decades of chess programs nods knowingly: "First
| time?"
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _A couple decades of chess programs nods knowingly:
| "First time?"_
|
| Uh huh. Good luck getting Stockfish to do your math
| homework while Leela works on your next waifu.
|
| LLMs play chess poorly. Chess engines do nothing else at
| all. That's kind of a big difference, wouldn't you say?
| ben_w wrote:
| > That's kind of a big difference, wouldn't you say?
|
| To their utility.
|
| Not sure if it matters on the question "thinking?"; even
| if for the debaters "thinking" requires
| consciousness/qualia (and that varies), there's nothing
| more than guesses as to where that emerges from.
| gowld wrote:
| Terr_ was agreeing with you and highlighting how old the
| debate is.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Highlighting, yes, agreeing, no.
|
| For my original earlier reply, the main subtext would be:
| "Your complaint is ridiculously biased."
|
| For the later reply about chess, perhaps: "You're
| asserting that tricking, amazing, or beating a human is a
| reliable sign of human-like intelligence. We already know
| that is untrue from decades of past experience."
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _You 're asserting that tricking, amazing, or beating a
| human is a reliable sign of human-like intelligence._
|
| I don't know who's asserting that (other than Alan
| Turing, I guess); certainly not me. Humans are, if
| anything, easier to fool than our current crude AI models
| are. Heck, ELIZA was enough to fool non-specialist
| humans.
|
| In any case, nobody was "tricked" at the IMO. What
| happened there required legitimate reasoning abilities.
| The burden of proof falls decisively on those who assert
| otherwise.
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| god of the gaps
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Exactly. As soon as a model does something it "wasn't
| supposed to be able to do," two gaps open up on either
| side.
| nutjob2 wrote:
| Computers can perform math and numerous other tasks
| billions of times faster than humans, whats your point?
|
| This is exactly the problem. Claims about AI are
| unfalsifiable, thus your various non-sequiturs about AI
| 'thinking'.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Err, no, that's not what's happening. Nobody, at least in
| this thread (and most others like it I've seen), is
| confidently claiming LLMs can think.
|
| There are people confidently claiming they _can't_ and then
| other people expressing skepticism at their confidence and
| /or trying to get them to nail down what they mean.
| jayveeone wrote:
| This entire debate over the years is because so many
| confidently assert that AI can think, or that AI will
| soon be our God, or our ruler, etc.
| gfdvgfffv wrote:
| One mostly sees people aggressively claiming they can't,
| ever. On the other side people seem to simply allow that
| they might, or might eventually.
| superkuh wrote:
| Or they just point to the turing test which was the defacto
| standard test for something so nebulous. And behold: LLM
| can pass the turing test. So they think. Can you come up
| with something better (than the turing test)?
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| But the Turing test (which I concede, LLMs do pass)
| doesn't test if some system is thinking; it tests if the
| system can convince an unbiased observer that it is
| thinking. I cannot come up with a better "is this thing
| thinking" test, but that doesn't mean that such a test
| can't exist; I'm sure there are much smarter people then
| me trying to solve this problem.
| ablob wrote:
| Usually it is the work of the one claiming something to prove
| it. So if you believe that AI does "think" you are expected
| to show me that it really does. Claiming it "thinks - prove
| otherwise" is just bad form and also opens the discussion up
| for moving the goalposts just as you did with your brain
| emulation statement. Or you could just not accept any
| argument made or circumvent it by stating the one trying to
| disprove your assertion got the definition wrong. There are
| countless ways to start a bad faith argument using this
| methodology, hence: Define property -> prove property.
|
| Conversely, if the one asserting something doesn't want to
| define it there is no useful conversation to be had. (as in:
| AI doesn't think - I won't tell you what I mean by think)
|
| PS: Asking someone to falsify their own assertion doesn't
| seem a good strategy here.
|
| PPS: Even if everything about the human brain can be
| emulated, that does not constitute progress for your
| argument, since now you'd have to assert that AI emulates the
| human brain perfectly before it is complete. There is no
| direct connection between "This AI does not think" to "The
| human brain can be fully emulated". Also the difference
| between "does not" and "can not" is big enough here that
| mangling them together is inappropriate.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| Then prove to me _you_ are thinking, lest we assume you are
| a philosophical zombie and need no rights or protections.
|
| Sometimes, because of the consequences of otherwise, the
| order gets reversed
| ablob wrote:
| Well first of all I never claimed that I was capable of
| thinking (smirk). We also haven't agreed on a definition
| of "thinking" yet, so as you can read in my previous
| comment, there is no meaningful conversation to be had. I
| also don't understand how your oddly aggresive phrasing
| adds to the conversation, but if it helps you: my rights
| and protections do not depend on whether I'm able to
| prove to you that I am thinking. (It also derails the
| conversation for what it's worth - it's a good strategy
| in the debating club, but these are about winning or
| loosing and not about fostering and obtaining knowledge)
|
| Whatever you meant to say with "Sometimes, because of the
| consequences of otherwise, the order gets reversed"
| eludes me as well.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _So if you believe that AI does "think" you are expected to
| show me that it really does._
|
| A lot of people seemingly haven't updated their priors
| after some of the more interesting results published
| lately, such as the performance of Google's and OpenAI's
| models at the 2025 Math Olympiad. Would you say that
| includes yourself?
|
| If so, what do the models still have to do in order to
| establish that they are capable of all major forms of
| reasoning, and under what conditions will you accept such
| proof?
| pegasus wrote:
| Consider that you might have become polarized yourself. I
| often encounter good arguments against current AI systems
| emulating all essential aspects of human thinking. For
| example, the fact that they can't learn from few examples,
| that they can't perform simple mathematical operations
| without access to external help (via tool calling) or that
| they have to expend so much more energy to do their magic
| (and yes, to me they are a bit magical), which makes some
| wonder if what these models do is a form of refined brute-
| force search, rather than ideating.
|
| Personally, I'm ok with reusing the word "thinking", but
| there are dogmatic stances on both sides. For example, lots
| of people decreeing that biology in the end can't but reduce
| to maths, since "what else could it be". The truth is we
| don't actually know if it is possible, for _any_ conceivable
| computational system, to emulate all essential aspects of
| human thought. There are good arguments for this
| (in)possibility, like those presented by Roger Penrose in
| "the Emperor's new Mind" and "Shadows of the Mind".
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _For example, the fact that they can 't learn from few
| examples_
|
| For one thing, yes, they can, obviously [1] -- when's the
| last time you checked? -- and for another, there are plenty
| of humans who seemingly cannot.
|
| The only real difference is that with an LLM, when the
| context is lost, so is the learning. That will obviously
| need to be addressed at some point.
|
| _that they can 't perform simple mathematical operations
| without access to external help (via tool calling)_
|
| But yet you are fine with humans requiring a calculator to
| perform similar tasks? _Many_ humans are worse at basic
| arithmetic than an unaided transformer network. And,
| tellingly, we make the same kinds of errors.
|
| _or that they have to expend so much more energy to do
| their magic (and yes, to me they are a bit magical), which
| makes some wonder if what these models do is a form of
| refined brute-force search, rather than ideating._
|
| Well, of course, all they are doing is searching and curve-
| fitting. To me, the magical thing is that they have shown
| us, more or less undeniably (Penrose notwithstanding), that
| that is all _we_ do. Questions that have been asked for
| thousands of years have now been answered: there 's nothing
| special about the human brain, except for the ability to
| form, consolidate, consult, and revise long-term memories.
|
| 1: E.g., https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165 from 2020
| nutjob2 wrote:
| AI systems compute and humans think. One is math and the other
| biology.
|
| But they are two different things with overlapping qualities.
|
| It's like MDMA and falling in love. They have many overlapping
| quantities but no one would claim one is the other.
| terminalshort wrote:
| I have yet to hear any plausible definition of "thought" that
| convincingly places LLMs and brains on opposite sides of it
| without being obviously contrived for that purpose.
| __loam wrote:
| We don't know how brains work.
| mbg721 wrote:
| We _really_ don 't know how consciousness works. The popular
| theories that it's emergent might be proven correct, or might
| be proven to be like the idea that phlogiston built up in a
| vacuum, putting out flames.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| Yeah. This whole AI situation has really exposed how bad most
| people are at considering the ontological and semantic content
| of the words they use.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| Lot's of assumptions about humanity and how unique we are
| constantly get paraded in this conversation. Ironically, the
| people who tout those perspectives are the least likely to
| understand why we're really not all that "special" from a
| very factual and academic perspective.
|
| You'd think it would unlock certain concepts for this class
| of people, but ironically, they seem unable to digest the
| information and update their context.
| lisbbb wrote:
| A large number of adults I encounter are functionally
| illiterate, including business people in very high up
| positions. They are also almost 100% MATHEMATICALLY
| illiterate, not only unable to solve basic algebra and
| geometry problems, but completely unable to reason about
| statistical and probabilistic situations encountered in every
| day life. This is why gambling is so popular and why people
| are constantly fooled by politicians. It's bad enough to be
| without words in the modern world, but being without numbers
| makes you vulnerable to all manner of manipulations.
| omnicognate wrote:
| Indeed, people confidently assert as established fact things
| like "brains are bound by the laws of physics" and therefore
| "there can't be anything special" about them, so
| "consciousness is an illusion" and "the mind is a computer",
| all with absolute conviction but with very little
| understanding of what physics and maths really do and do not
| say about the universe. It's a quasi-religious faith in a
| thing not fully comprehended. I hope in the long run some
| humility in the face of reality will eventually be
| (re)learned.
| sounds wrote:
| A college level approach could look at the line between
| Math/Science/Physics and Philosophy. One thing from the article
| that stood out to me was that the introduction to their
| approach started with a problem about classifying a traffic
| light. Is it red or green?
|
| But the accompanying XY plot showed samples that overlapped or
| at least were ambiguous. I immediately lost a lot of my
| interest in their approach, because traffic lights by design
| are very clearly red, or green. There aren't mauve or taupe
| lights that the local populace laughs at and says, "yes, that's
| mostly red."
|
| I like the idea of studying math by using ML examples. I'm
| guessing this is a first step and future education will have
| better examples to learn from.
| krisoft wrote:
| > traffic lights by design are very clearly red, or green
|
| I suspect you feel this because you are observing the output
| of a very sophisticated image processing pipeline in your own
| head. When you are dealing with raw matrixes of rgb values it
| all becomes a lot more fuzzy. Especially when you encounter
| different illuminations, exposures and the cropping of the
| traffic light has noise on it. Not saying it is some
| intractably hard machine vision problem, because it is not.
| But there is some variety and fuzzyness there in the raw
| sensor measurements.
| bruntofsaurus wrote:
| Define "think".
|
| We observe through our senses geometric relationships.
|
| Syntax is exactly that; letters, sentences, paragraphs
| organized in spatial/geometric relationships.
|
| At best thought is recreation of neural networks in the brain
| which only exist as spatial relationships.
|
| Our senses operate on spatial relationships; enough light to
| work by, and food relative to stomach to satisfy our biological
| impetus to survive (which is spatial relationships of
| biochemistry).
|
| The idea of "thought" as anything but biology makes little
| sense to me then as a root source is clearly observable.
| Humanity, roughly, repeats the same social story. All that
| thought does not seem to be all that useful as we end up in the
| same place; the majority as serfs of aristocracy.
|
| Personally would prefer less "thought" role-play and more
| people taking the load of the labor they exploit to enable them
| to sit and "think".
| cwmoore wrote:
| The human mind is not just biology in the same way that LLMs
| are just math.
| smallerize wrote:
| There's a huge amount of money going to convincing people that
| AI is magic or better than people. The reprogramming is
| necessary.
| croemer wrote:
| Don't think this is very good - more of a report of their
| activities. Underdelivers on the headline.
| terminalshort wrote:
| > the team wants to tackle a major and common misconception: that
| students think that ANN systems learn, recognise, see, and
| understand, when really it's all just maths
|
| This is completely idiotic. Do these people actually believe that
| showing it can't be actual thought because it is described by
| math?
| nomel wrote:
| Wait until they hear about the physics/maths related to neurons
| firing!
| frozenlettuce wrote:
| You can replicate all calculations done by LLMs with pen and
| paper. It would take ages to calculate anything, but it's
| possible. I don't think that pen and paper will ever "think",
| regardless of how complex the calculations involved are.
| umanwizard wrote:
| You can simulate a human brain on pen and paper too.
| andrepd wrote:
| It's an open problem whether you can or not.
| space_fountain wrote:
| It's not that open. We can simulate smaller system of
| neurons just fine, we can simulate chemistry. There might
| be something beyond that in our brains for some reason, but
| it sees doubtful right now
| phantasmish wrote:
| Our brains _actually do something_ , may be the
| difference. They're a thing happening, not a description
| of a thing happening.
|
| Whatever that _something_ that it actually does in the
| real, physical world is produces the _cogito_ in _cogito,
| ergo sum_ and I doubt you can get it just by describing
| what all the subatomic particles are doing, any more than
| a computer or pen-and-paper simulated hurricane can knock
| your house down, no matter how perfectly simulated.
| thrance wrote:
| You're arguing for the existence of a _soul_ , for
| _dualism_. Nothing wrong with that, except we have never
| been able to measure it, and have never had to use it to
| explain any phenomenon of the brain 's working. The brain
| follows the rules of physics, like any other objects of
| the material world.
|
| A pen and paper simulation of a brain would also be "a
| thing happening" as you put it. You have to explain
| _what_ is the magical ingredient that makes the brain 's
| computations impossible to replicate.
|
| You could connect your brain simulation to an actual
| body, and you'd be unable to tell the difference with a
| regular human, unless you crack it open.
| phantasmish wrote:
| > You're arguing for the existence of a soul, for
| dualism.
|
| I'm not. You might want me to be, but I'm very, very much
| not.
| terminalshort wrote:
| Why are the electric currents moving in a GPU any less of
| a "thing happening" than the firing of the neurons in
| your brain? What you are describing here is a claim that
| the brain is fundamentally supernatural.
| phantasmish wrote:
| Thinking that making scribbles that _we interpret_ (!!!)
| as perfectly describing a functioning consciousness and
| its operation, on a huge stack of paper, would manifest
| consciousness in any way whatsoever (hell, let's say we
| make it an automated flip-book, too, so it "does
| something"), but if you made the scribbles slightly
| different it wouldn't work(!?!? why, exactly, not ?!?!),
| is what's fundamentally supernatural. It's straight-up
| Bronze Age religion kinds of stuff (which fits--the tech
| elite is _full_ of that kind of shit, like
| mummification-- _er, I mean_ --"cryogenic preservation",
| millenarian cults _er, I mean_ The Singularity, et c)
|
| Of course a GPU involves things happening. No amount of
| using it to describe a brain operating gets you an
| operating brain, though. It's not _doing_ what a brain
| does. It 's describing it.
|
| (I think this is actually all somewhat tangential to
| whether LLMs "can think" or whatever, though--but the
| "well of course they _might_ think because if we could
| perfectly describe an operating brain, that would also be
| thinking " line of argument often comes up, and I think
| it's about as wrong-headed as a thing can possibly be, a
| kind of deep "confusing the map for the territory" error;
| see also comments floating around this thread offhandedly
| claiming that the brain "is just physics"--like, what?
| That's the cart leading the horse! No! Dead wrong!)
| ehsanu1 wrote:
| Doing something merely requires I/O. Brains wouldn't be
| doing much without that. A sufficiently accurate
| simulation of a fundamentally computational process is
| really just the same process.
| phantasmish wrote:
| The simulation isn't an operating brain. It's a description
| of one. What it "means" is imposed by us, what it actually
| is, is a shitload of graphite marks on paper or relays
| flipping around or rocks on sand or (pick your medium).
|
| An arbitrarily-perfect simulation of a burning candle will
| never, ever melt wax.
|
| An LLM is always a description. An LLM operating on a
| computer is _identical to_ a description of it operating on
| paper (if much faster).
| gnull wrote:
| What makes the simulation we live in special compared to
| the simulation of a burning candle that you or I might be
| running?
|
| That simulated candle is perfectly melting wax in its own
| simulation. Duh, it won't melt any in ours, because our
| arbitrary notions of "real" wax are disconnected between
| the two simulatons.
| hnfong wrote:
| They do have a valid subtle point though.
|
| If we don't think the candle in a simulated universe is a
| "real candle", why do we consider the intelligence in a
| simulated universe possibly "real intelligence"?
|
| Being a functionalist ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fun
| ctionalism_(philosophy_of_m... ) myself, I don't know the
| answer on the top of my head.
| phantasmish wrote:
| I think the core trouble is that it's rather difficult to
| simulate anything at all without requiring a human in the
| loop before it "works". The simulation isn't anything
| (well, it's something, but it's definitely not what it's
| simulating) until we _impose_ that meaning on it. (We
| could, of course, levy a similar accusation at reality,
| but folks tend to avoid that because it gets uselessly
| solipsistic in a hurry)
|
| A simulation of a tree growing (say) is a lot more like
| _the idea of love_ than it is... a real tree growing.
| Making the simulation more accurate changes that not a
| bit.
| cibyr wrote:
| It seems to me that the distinction becomes irrelevant as
| soon as you connect inputs and outputs to the real world.
| You wouldn't say that a 737 autopilot can never, ever fly a
| real jet and yet it behaves exactly the same whether it's
| up in the sky or hooked up to recorded/simulated signals on
| a test bench.
| amelius wrote:
| > An arbitrarily-perfect simulation of a burning candle
| will never, ever melt wax.
|
| It might if the simulation includes humans observing the
| candle.
| penteract wrote:
| I believe that the important part of a brain is the
| computation it's carrying out. I would call this
| computation thinking and say it's responsible for
| consciousness. I think we agree that this computation would
| be identical if it were simulated on a computer or paper.
| If you pushed me on what exactly it means for a computation
| to physically happen and create consciousness, I would have
| to move to statements I'd call dubious conjectures rather
| than beliefs - your points in other threads about relying
| on interpretation have made me think more carefully about
| this.
|
| Thanks for stating your views clearly. I have some
| questions to try and understand them better:
|
| Would you say you're sure that you aren't in a simulation
| while acknowledging that a simulated version of you would
| say the same?
|
| What do you think happens to someone whose neurons get
| replaced by small computers one by one (if you're happy to
| assume for the sake of argument that such a thing is
| possible without changing the person's behavior)?
| an0malous wrote:
| Parent said replicate, as in deterministically
| pton_xd wrote:
| So the brain is a mathematical artifact that operates
| independently from time? It just happens to be implemented
| using physics? Somehow I doubt it.
| thrance wrote:
| The brain follows the laws of physics. The laws of physics
| can be closely approximated by mathematical models. Thus,
| the brain can be closely approximated by mathematical
| models.
| palmotea wrote:
| > You can simulate a human brain on pen and paper too.
|
| That's an assumption, though. A plausible assumption, but
| still an assumption.
|
| We know you can execute an LLM on pen and paper, because
| people built them and they're understood well enough that we
| could list the calculations you'd need to do. We don't know
| enough about the human brain to create a similar list, so I
| don't think you can reasonably make a stronger statement than
| "you could _probably_ simulate... " without getting ahead of
| yourself.
| hnfong wrote:
| This is basically the Church-Turing thesis and one of the
| motivations of using tape(paper) and an arbitrary alphabet
| in the Turing machine model.
|
| It's been kinda discussed to oblivion in the last century,
| interesting that it seems people don't realize the
| "existing literature" and repeat the same arguments (not
| saying anyone is wrong).
| terminalshort wrote:
| I can make a claim much stronger than "you could probably"
| The counterclaim here is that the brain may not obey
| physical laws that can be described by mathematics. This is
| a "5G causes covid" level claim. The overwhelming burden of
| proof is on you.
| kipchak wrote:
| Consider for example Orch OR theory. If it or something
| like it were to be accurate, the brain would not "obey
| physical laws that can be described by mathematics".
| bondarchuk wrote:
| > _Consider for example Orch OR theory_
|
| Yes, or what about leprechauns?
| frozenlettuce wrote:
| There are some quantum effects in the brain (for some
| people, that's a possible source of consciousness). We
| can simulate quantum effects, but here comes the tricky
| part: even if our simulation matches the probability, say
| 70/30 of something happening, what guarantees that our
| simulation would take the same path as the object being
| simulated?
| daedrdev wrote:
| We don't have to match the quantum state since the brain
| still produces an valid output regardless of what each
| random quantum state ended up on. After all we can
| include random entropy in a LLM too.
| gus_massa wrote:
| The official name is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
|
| The opinions are exactly the same than about LLM.
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| And the counter argument is also exactly the same. Imagine
| you take one neuron from a brain and replace it with an
| artificial piece of electronics (e.g. some transistors) that
| only generates specific outputs based on inputs, exactly like
| the neuron does. Now replace another neuron. And another.
| Eventually, you will have the entire brain replaced with a
| huge set of fundamentally super simple transistors. I.e. a
| computer. If you believe that consciousness or the ability to
| think disappears somewhere during this process, then you are
| essentially believing in some religious meta-physics or soul-
| like component in our brains that can not be measured. But if
| it can not be measured, it fundamentally can not affect you
| in any way. So it doesn't matter for the experiment in the
| end, because the outcome would be exactly the same. The only
| reason you might think that you are conscious and the
| computer is not is because you _believe_ so. But to an
| outsider observer, belief is all it is. Basically religion.
| danaris wrote:
| But you are now arguing against a strawman, namely, "it is
| not possible to construct a computer that thinks".
|
| The argument that was actually _made_ was "LLMs do not
| think".
| umanwizard wrote:
| A: X, because Y
|
| B: But Y would also imply Z
|
| C: A was never arguing for Z! This is a strawman!
| danaris wrote:
| "LLMs cannot think like brains" does not imply "no
| computer it will ever be possible to construct could
| think like a brain".
| umanwizard wrote:
| "LLMs cannot think like brains" is "X".
| kipchak wrote:
| It seems like the brain "just" being a giant number of
| neurons is an assumption. As I understand it's still an
| area of active research, for example the role of glial
| cells. The complete function may or may not be pen and
| paper-able.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| > The complete function may or may not be pen and paper-
| able.
|
| Would you mind expanding on this? At a base read, it
| seems you implying magic exists.
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| > component in our brains that can not be measured.
|
| "Can not be measured", probably not. "We don't know how to
| measure", almost certainly.
|
| I am _capable_ of belief, and I 've seen no evidence that
| the computer is. It's also possible that I'm the _only_
| person that is conscious. It 's even possible that _you_
| are!
| circuit10 wrote:
| I don't understand why people say the Chinese Room thing
| would prove LLMs don't think, to me it's obvious that the
| person doesn't understand Chinese but the process does,
| similarly the CPU itself doesn't understand the concepts an
| LLM can work with but the LLM itself does, or a neuron
| doesn't understand concepts but the entire structure of your
| brain does
|
| The concept of understanding emerges on a higher level from
| the way the neurons (biological or virtual) are connected, or
| the way the instructions being followed by the human in the
| Chinese room process the information
|
| But really this is a philosophical/definitional thing about
| what you call "thinking"
|
| Edit: I see my take on this is listed on the page as the
| "System reply"
| thrance wrote:
| You're arguing against Functionalism [0], of which I'd
| encourage you to at least read the Wikipedia page. Why would
| doing the brain's computations on pen and paper rather than on
| wetware lead to different outcomes? And how?
|
| Connect your pen and paper operator to a brainless human body,
| and you got something indistinguishable from a regular alive
| human.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_%28philosophy_of...
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/505/
|
| You can replicate the entire universe with pen and paper (or a
| bunch of rocks). It would take an unimaginably long time, and
| we haven't discovered all the calculations you'd need to do
| yet, but presumably they exist and this could be done.
|
| Does that actually make a universe? I don't know!
|
| The comic is meant to be a joke, I think, but I find myself
| thinking about it all the time!!!
| frozenlettuce wrote:
| Even worse, as we are part of the universe, we would need to
| simulate ourselves and the very simulation that we are
| creating. You would also need to replicate the simulation of
| the simulation, leading to an eternal loop that would demand
| infinite matter and time (and would still not be enough!).
| Probably, you can't simulate something while being part of
| it.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Why doesn't need to be _our_ universe, just _a_ universe.
|
| The question is, are the people in the simulated universe
| real people? Do they think and feel like we do--are they
| conscious? Either answer seems like it can't possibly be
| right!
| mcswell wrote:
| I don't see the relevance of that argument (which other
| responders to your post have pointed out as Searle's Chinese
| Room argument). The pen and paper are of course not doing any
| thinking, but then the pen isn't doing any writing on its own,
| either. It's the system of pen + paper + human that's doing the
| thinking.
| frozenlettuce wrote:
| The idea of my argument is that I notice that people project
| some "ethereal" properties over computations that happen in
| the... computer. Probably because electricity is involved,
| making things show up as "magic" from our point of view,
| making it easier to project consciousness or thinking onto
| the device. The cloud makes that even more abstract. But if
| you are aware that the transistors are just a medium that
| replicates what we already did for ages with knots, fingers,
| and paint, it gets easier to see them as plain objects. Even
| the resulting artifacts that the machine produces are only
| something meaningful from our point of view, because you need
| prior knowledge to read the output signals. So yeah, those
| devices end up being an extension of ourselves.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| If you put a droplet of water in a warm bowl every 12 hours,
| the bowl will remain empty as the water will evaporate. That
| does not mean that if you put a trillion droplets in every
| twelve hours it will still remain empty.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| It will also not be empty if I put the bowl in the sea, which
| is a remark about the nature of thoughthat that proves
| exactly as much as your comment.
| hamdingers wrote:
| If it comes to the correct answer I don't particularly care how
| it got there.
| ares623 wrote:
| How do you know if it came to the right answer?
| mcswell wrote:
| It's not always the case, but often verifying an answer is
| far easier than coming up with the answer in the first place.
| That's precisely the principle behind the RSA algorithm for
| cryptography.
| downboots wrote:
| Sure, it's easy to check ((sqrt(x-3)+1)/(x/8)) is less than
| 4. Now do it without calculus.
|
| Very much like this effect https://www.reddit.com/r/optical
| illusions/comments/1cedtcp/s... . Shouldn't hide complexity
| under a truth value.
| emp17344 wrote:
| In most cases, you don't know if it came to the correct answer.
| hamdingers wrote:
| In every reasonable use case for LLMs verifying the answer is
| trivial. Does the code do what I wanted it to? Does it link
| to a source that corroborates the response?
|
| If you're asking for things you can't easily verify you're
| barking up the wrong tree.
| brador wrote:
| Do we think?
|
| By every scientific measure we have the answer is no. It's just
| electrical current taking the path of least resistance through
| connected neurons mixed with cell death.
|
| The fact a human brain peaks at IQ around 200 is fascinating. Can
| the scale even go higher? It would seem no since nothing has
| achieved a higher score it must not exist.
| ares623 wrote:
| 3 years ago this is the kind of posts that end up in
| /r/im14andthisisdeep
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| The IQ scale is constantly adjusted to keep the peak of the
| curve at 100 and the standard deviation around 15. To say it
| peaks around 200 is a pretty gross misunderstanding of what IQ
| means.
| TallGuyShort wrote:
| It's unfortunate that there's so little (none in the article,
| just 1 comment here as of this writing) mention of the Turing
| Test. The whole premise of the paper that introduced that was
| that "do machines think" is such a hard question to define that
| you have to frame the question differently. And it's ironic that
| we seem to talk about the Turing Test less than ever now that
| systems almost everyone can access can arguably pass it now.
| WhyOhWhyQ wrote:
| A lot of the drama here is due to the ambiguity of what the word
| 'think' is supposed to mean. One camp associates 'thinking' to
| consciousness, another does not. I personally believe it is
| possible to create an animal-like or human-like intelligence,
| without consciousness existing in the system. I personally would
| still describe whatever processing that system is doing as
| 'thinking'. Others believe in "substrate independence"; they
| think any such system must be consciousness.
|
| (Sneaking a bit of belief in here, to me "substrate independence"
| is a more extreme position than the idea that a system could be
| made which is intelligent but not conscious, hence I find it
| implausible.)
| alanuhoo wrote:
| Peak of "Mount Stupid" type article
| josefritzishere wrote:
| I think we all intuitively knew this but it's pretty cool.
| nevertoolate wrote:
| - how to prove that humans can argue endlessly like an llm?
|
| - ragebait them by saying AIs don't think
|
| - ...
| bondarchuk wrote:
| I wish I would've learned about ANNs in elementary school. It
| looks like a worthwhile and cool lesson package, if only they'd
| do away with the idiotic dogma...
| astrange wrote:
| I took an AI class in 2010 and even then was mostly taught that
| neural networks aren't very useful and you should use random
| forests and MCMC.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| I feel like these conversations really miss the mark: whether an
| LLM thinks or not is not a relevant question. It is a bit like
| asking "what color is an Xray?" or "what does the number 7 taste
| like?"
|
| The reason I say this is because an LLM is not a complete self-
| contained thing if you want to compare it to a human being. It is
| a building block. Your brain thinks. Your prefrontal cortex
| however is not a complete system and if you somehow managed to
| extract it and wire it up to a serial terminal I suspect you'd be
| pretty disappointed in what it would be capable of on its own.
|
| I want to be clear that I am not making an argument that once we
| hook up sensory inputs and motion outputs as well as motivations,
| fears, anxieties, desires, pain and pleasure centers, memory
| systems, sense of time, balance, fatigue, etc. to an LLM that we
| would get a thinking feeling conscious being. I suspect it would
| take something more sophisticated than an LLM. But my point is
| that even if an LLM was that building block, I don't think the
| question of whether it is capable of thought is the right
| question.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| You should take your complaints to OpenAI, who constantly write
| like LLMs think in the exact same sense as humans; here a
| random example:
|
| > Large language models (LLMs) can be dishonest when reporting
| on their actions and beliefs -- for example, they may overstate
| their confidence in factual claims or cover up evidence of
| covert actions
| tehjoker wrote:
| They have a product to sell based on the idea AGI is right
| around the corner. You can't trust Sam Altman as far as you
| can throw him.
|
| Still, the sales pitch has worked to unlock huge liquidity
| for him so there's that.
|
| Still making predictions is a big part of what brains do
| though not the only thing. Someone wise said that LLM
| intelligence is a new kind of intelligence, like how animal
| intelligence is different from ours but is still intelligence
| but needs to be characterized to understand differences.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| > Someone wise said that LLM intelligence is a new kind of
| intelligence
|
| So long as you accept the slide ruler as a "new kind of
| intelligence" everything will probably work out fine, it's
| the Altmannian insistence that _only_ the LLM is of the new
| kind that is silly.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > The reason I say this is because an LLM is not a complete
| self-contained thing if you want to compare it to a human
| being.
|
| The AI companies themselves are the ones drawing the parallels
| to a human being. Look at how any of these LLM products are
| marketed and described.
| djeastm wrote:
| Is it not within our capacity on HN to ignore whatever the
| marketers say and speak to the underlying technology?
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| There was around 500 comments on the OpenAI + Disney story,
| so the evidence points to "no".
| sublinear wrote:
| The part that's most infuriating is that we don't have to
| speculate at all. Any discussion or philosophizing beyond the
| literal computer science is simply misinformation.
|
| There's absolutely no similarity between what computer hardware
| does and what a brain does. People will twist and stretch
| things and tickle the imagination of the naive layperson and
| that's just wrong. We seriously have to cut this out already.
|
| Anthropomorphizing is dangerous even for other topics, and long
| understood to be before computers came around. Why do we allow
| this?
|
| The way we talk about computer science today sounds about as
| ridiculous as invoking magic or deities to explain what we now
| consider high school physics or chemistry. I am aware that the
| future usually sees the past as primitive, but why can't we try
| to seem less dumb at least this time around?
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Why do people call is "Artificial Intelligence" when it could
| be called "Statistical Model for Choosing Data"?
|
| "Intelligence" implies "thinking" for most people, just as
| "Learning" in machine learning implies "understanding" for most
| people. The algorithms created neither 'think' nor 'understand'
| and until you understand that, it may be difficult to
| accurately judge the value of the results produced by these
| systems.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| How do you feel about Business Intelligence as a term?
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Same way I feel about 'Military Intelligence' :-). Both of
| those phrases use the 'information gathering and analysis'
| definition of intelligence rather than the 'thinking'
| definition.
| james_marks wrote:
| If we say "artificial flavoring", we have a sense that it is
| an emulation of something real, and often a poor one.
|
| Why, when we use the term for AI, do we skip over this
| distinction and expect it to be as good as the original--- or
| better?
|
| That wouldn't be artificial intelligence, it would just be
| the original artifact: "intelligence".
| softwaredoug wrote:
| LLMs don't really think, they emulate their training data. Which
| has a lot of examples of humans walking through problems to
| arrive at an answer. So naturally, if we prompt an LLM to do the
| same, it will emulate those examples (which tend to be more
| correct).
|
| LLMs are BAD at evaluating earlier thinking errors, precisely
| because there's not copious examples of text where humans
| thinking through a problem, screwing up, going back, correcting
| their earlier statement, and continuing. (a good example catches
| these and corrects them)
| startupsfail wrote:
| <think>Ok, the user is claiming that... </think> ....
| t23414321 wrote:
| Wouldn't _' thinking'_ need to be updating the model of reality
| (LLM is not yet that, just words) - at every step doing again all
| that extensive calculations as when/to creating/approximating
| that/better model ?
|
| Expecting machines to think is.. like magical thinking (but they
| are good at calculations indeed).
|
| I wish we didn't use the word _intelligence_ in context of LLMs -
| shortly there is _Essence_ and the rest.. is only _slope_ - into
| all possible combinations of Markov Chains - may they have sense
| or not I don 't see how part of some calculation could recognize
| it, or that to be possible _from inside_ (of calculation, that
| doesn 't even consider that).
|
| Aside of _artificial knowledge_ (out of senses, experience,
| context lengths.. - confabulating but not _knowing_ that), I wish
| to see an _intelligent knowledge_ - made in kind of semantic way
| - allowed to expand using not yet obvious (but existing - not
| random) connections. I wouldn 't expect it to think (humans
| think, digitals calculate). But I would expect it to have a
| tendency to be coming closer (not further) in reflecting/modeling
| reality and expanding implications.
| Retric wrote:
| Thinking is different than forming long term memories.
|
| An LLM could be thinking in one of two ways. Either between
| adding each individual token, or collectively across multiple
| tokens. At the individual token level the physical mechanism
| doesn't seem to fit the definition being essentially reflexive
| action, but across multiple tokens that's a little more
| questionable especially as multiple approaches are used.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Provocative title with a much more reasoned lede.
|
| I'm pretty sure a set of workshops isn't ACTUALLY going to solve
| a problem that philosophers have been at each other's throats for
| for the past half century.
|
| But BOY does it get people talking!
|
| Both sides of the debate have capital-O Opinions, and _how else_
| did you want to drum up interest for a set of mathematics
| workshops. O:-)
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