A non-anthropomorphized view of LLMs

Anthropomorphizing LLMs is just because half the stock market gains are dependent on it, we have absurd levels of debt we will either have to have insane growth out of or default, and every company and "person" is trying to hype everyone up to get access to all of this liquidity being thrown into it.

I agree with the author, but people acting like they are conscious or humans isn't weird to me, it's just fraud and liars. Most people basically have 0 understanding of what technology or minds are philosophically so it's an easy sale, and I do think most of these fraudsters also likely buy into it themselves because of that.

The really sad thing is people think "because someone runs an ai company" they are somehow an authority on philosophy of mind which lets them fall for this marketing. The stuff these people say about this stuff is absolute garbage, not that I disagree with them, but it betrays a total lack of curiosity or interest in the subject of what llms are, and the possible impacts of technological shifts as those that might occur with llms becoming more widespread. It's not a matter of agreement it's a matter of them simply not seeming to be aware of the most basic ideas of what things are, technology is, it's manner of impacting society etc.

I'm not surprised by that though, it's absurd to think because someone runs some AI lab or has a "head of safety/ethics" or whatever garbage job title at an AI lab they actually have even the slightest interest in ethics or any even basic familiarity with the major works in the subject.

The author is correct if people want to read a standard essay articulating it more in depth check out https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/Is%20the%2... (the full extrapolation requires establishing what things are and how causality in general operates and how that relates to artifacts/technology but that's obvious quite a bit to get into).

The other note would be something sharing an external trait means absolutely nothing about causality and suggesting a thing is caused by the same thing "even to a way lesser degree" because they share a resemblance is just a non-sequitur. It's not a serious thought/argument.

I think I addressed the why of why this weirdness comes up though. The entire economy is basically dependent on huge productivity growth to keep functioning so everyone is trying to sell they can offer that and AI is the clearest route, AGI most of all.