←back to thread

A non-anthropomorphized view of LLMs

(addxorrol.blogspot.com)
475 points zdw | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.44s | source
Show context
mewpmewp2 ◴[] No.44485205[source]
My question: how do we know that this is not similar to how human brains work. What seems intuitively logical to me is that we have brains evolved through evolutionary process via random mutations yielding in a structure that has its own evolutionary reward based algorithms designing it yielding a structure that at any point is trying to predict next actions to maximise survival/procreation, of course with a lot of sub goals in between, ultimately becoming this very complex machinery, but yet should be easily simulated if there was enough compute in theory and physical constraints would allow for it.

Because, morals, values, consciousness etc could just be subgoals that arised through evolution because they support the main goals of survival and procreation.

And if it is baffling to think that a system could rise up, how do you think it is possible life and humans came to existence in the first place? How could it be possible? It is already happened from a far unlikelier and strange place. And wouldn't you think the whole World and the timeline in theory couldn't be represented as a deterministic function. And if not then why should "randomness" or anything else bring life to existence.

replies(4): >>44485240 #>>44485258 #>>44485273 #>>44488508 #
ants_everywhere ◴[] No.44485240[source]
> My question: how do we know that this is not similar to how human brains work.

It is similar to how human brains operate. LLMs are the (current) culmination of at least 80 years of research on building computational models of the human brain.

replies(3): >>44487857 #>>44488009 #>>44496588 #
seadan83 ◴[] No.44487857[source]
> It is similar to how human brains operate.

Is it? Do we know how human brains operate? We know the basic architecture of them, so we have a map, but we don't know the details.

"The cellular biology of brains is relatively well-understood, but neuroscientists have not yet generated a theory explaining how brains work. Explanations of how neurons collectively operate to produce what brains can do are tentative and incomplete." [1]

"Despite a century of anatomical, physiological, and molecular biological efforts scientists do not know how neurons by their collective interactions produce percepts, thoughts, memories, and behavior. Scientists do not know and have no theories explaining how brains and central nervous systems work." [1]

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10585277/

replies(2): >>44488447 #>>44490070 #
1. Timwi ◴[] No.44488447[source]
> > It is similar to how human brains operate.

> Is it?

This is just a semantic debate on what counts as “similar”. It's possible to disagree on this point despite agreeing on everything relating to how LLMs and human brains work.