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KPTN25 t1_j91q5hn wrote

Reply to comment by Optimal-Asshole in [D] Please stop by [deleted]

Yeah, that quote is completely irrelevant.

The bottom line is that LLMs are technically and completely incapable of producing sentience, regardless of 'intent'. Anyone claiming otherwise is fundamentally misunderstanding the models involved.

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Metacognitor t1_j92wykk wrote

Oh yeah? What is capable of producing sentience?

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KPTN25 t1_j92yfz4 wrote

None of the models or frameworks developed to date. None are even close.

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the320x200 t1_j93a7sy wrote

Given our track record of mistreating animals and our fellow people, treating them as just objects, it's very likely when the day does come we will cross the line first and only realize it afterwards.

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Metacognitor t1_j941yl1 wrote

My question was more rhetorical, as in, what would be capable of producing sentience? Because I don't believe anyone actually knows, which makes any definitive statements of the nature (like yours above) come across as presumptuous. Just my opinion.

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KPTN25 t1_j94a1y0 wrote

Nah. Negatives are a lot easier to prove than positives in this case. LLMs aren't able to produce sentience for the same reason a peanut butter sandwich can't produce sentience.

Just because I don't know positively how to achieve eternal youth, doesn't invalidate the fact that I'm quite confident it isn't McDonalds.

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Metacognitor t1_j94ois4 wrote

That's a fair enough point, I can see where you're coming from on that. Although my perspective is perhaps as the models become increasingly large, to the point of being almost entirely a "black box" from a dev perspective, maybe something resembling sentience could emerge spontaneously as a function of some type of self-referential or evaluative model within the primary. It would obviously be a more limited form of sentience (not human-level) but perhaps.

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overactor t1_j95hrop wrote

I really don't think you can say that with such confidence. If you were saying they no existing LLMs have achieved sentience and they can't at the scale we're working today, I'd agree, but I really don't see how you can be so sure that increasing the size and training data couldn't result in sentience somewhere down the line.

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KPTN25 t1_j95kx5j wrote

Reproducing language is a very different problem than true thought or self-awareness, is why.

LLMs are no more likely to become sentient than a linear regression or random forest model. Frankly, they're no more likely than a peanut butter sandwich to achieve sentience.

Is it possible that we've bungled our study of peanut butter sandwiches so badly that we may have missed some incredible sentience-granting mechanism? I guess, but it's so absurd and infinitesimal it's not worth considering or entertaining practically.

The black box argument is intellectually lazy. We have a better understanding of what is happening in LLMs and other models than most clickbaity headlines imply.

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overactor t1_j95oem0 wrote

Your ridiculous hyperbole is not helping your argument. It's entirely possible that sentience is an instrumental goal for achieving a certain level of text prediction. And I don't see why a sufficiently large LLM definitely couldn't achieve it. It could be that another few paradigm shifts will be needed, but it could also be an we need to do is scaling up. I think anyone who claims to know if LLMs can achieve sentience is either ignorant or lying.

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