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A non-anthropomorphized view of LLMs

(addxorrol.blogspot.com)
475 points zdw | 5 comments | | HN request time: 1.132s | source
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quotemstr ◴[] No.44485158[source]
> I am baffled that the AI discussions seem to never move away from treating a function to generate sequences of words as something that resembles a human.

And I'm baffled that the AI discussions seem to never move away from treating a human as something other than a function to generate sequences of words!

Oh, but AI is introspectable and the brain isn't? fMRI and BCI are getting better all the time. You really want to die on the hill that the same scientific method that predicts the mass of an electron down to the femtogram won't be able to crack the mystery of the brain? Give me a break.

This genre of article isn't argument: it's apologetics. Authors of these pieces start with the supposition there is something special about human consciousness and attempt to prove AI doesn't have this special quality. Some authors try to bamboozle the reader with bad math. Other others appeal to the reader's sense of emotional transcendence. Most, though, just write paragraph after paragraph of shrill moral outrage at the idea an AI might be a mind of the same type (if different degree) as our own --- as if everyone already agreed with the author for reasons left unstated.

I get it. Deep down, people want meat brains to be special. Perhaps even deeper down, they fear that denial of the soul would compel us to abandon humans as worthy objects of respect and possessors of dignity. But starting with the conclusion and working backwards to an argument tends not to enlighten anyone. An apology inhabits the form of an argument without edifying us like an authentic argument would. What good is it to engage with them? If you're a soul non-asserter, you're going to have an increasingly hard time over the next few years constructing a technical defense of meat parochialism.

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dgfitz ◴[] No.44485328[source]
“ Determinism, in philosophy, is the idea that all events are causally determined by preceding events, leaving no room for genuine chance or free will. It suggests that given the state of the universe at any one time, and the laws of nature, only one outcome is possible.”

Clearly computers are deterministic. Are people?

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quotemstr ◴[] No.44485343[source]
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bkr9BozFuh7ytiwbK/my-hour-of...

> Clearly computers are deterministic. Are people?

Give an LLM memory and a source of randomness and they're as deterministic as people.

"Free will" isn't a concept that typechecks in a materialist philosophy. It's "not even wrong". Asserting that free will exists is _isomorphic_ to dualism which is _isomorphic_ to assertions of ensoulment. I can't argue with dualists. I reject dualism a priori: it's a religious tenet, not a mere difference of philosophical opinion.

So, if we're all materialists here, "free will" doesn't make any sense, since it's an assertion that something other than the input to a machine can influence its output.

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1. dgfitz ◴[] No.44485535[source]
As long as you realize you’re barking up a debate as old as time, I respect your opinion.
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2. mewpmewp2 ◴[] No.44485621[source]
What I don't get is, why would true randomness give free will, shouldn't it be random will then?
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3. dgfitz ◴[] No.44485720[source]
In the history of mankind, true randomness has never existed.
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4. bravesoul2 ◴[] No.44488194{3}[source]
How do you figure?
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5. dgfitz ◴[] No.44497181{4}[source]
I’d flip the question. Show me something truly random.