phillythompson t1_jaqpaew wrote on March 3, 2023 at 10:52 AM

Isn’t the octopus example completely wrong because it was only “trained” on a small sample of text / language?

The point is — what if the octopus had seen/ heard all about situations of stranded island dwellers. All about boats, survival, etc.

With more context, it could interpret the call for help better.

And while this author might claim “it’s just parroting a reply, it doesn’t actually think”— I’ll ask how the hell she knows what human thinking actually is.

People are so confident to claim humans are special, yet we have zero idea how our own minds work.

Slow-Schedule-7725 t1_jar0w5k wrote on March 3, 2023 at 1:01 PM

“yet we have zero idea how our own minds work” (i think thats how we know humans are special, cuz we dO understand how other minds work)

phillythompson t1_jar2wew wrote on March 3, 2023 at 1:19 PM

But we don’t know how the human mind works lol

What you maybe are referring to is Theory of Mind, wherein we are aware that other people have their own experience? But we have not much to go on at all when it comes to “how does our mind actually do what it does”

Slow-Schedule-7725 t1_jar4dlp wrote on March 3, 2023 at 1:32 PM

yes we don’t know how our own mind works, but we dO know how other minds work as in dogs, cats, iguanas, anteaters, etc. which would suggest that our mind is vastly more complex than those. also, if we make the machine, it cannot become more complex than us yet perhaps when AGI or ASI is created, but we don’t even know if thats possible yet. even with my limited understanding of LLMs i can say with like 98% certainty that they cannot and will never be able to surpass the human mind in terms of depth and complexity. knowledge does not equal understanding. even if one were to memorize every single textbook on biology, for example, they wouldn’t hold a candle to someone who has been our in the field because there are always unknowns and quirks and things that aren’t in the books. you can know what a dog is like by reading about it, you can know that dogs make people happy, you can know that they’re full of life, but to actually experience being with a dog is a different matter entirely

phillythompson t1_jar7p83 wrote on March 3, 2023 at 1:59 PM

We don’t know how other minds work, either. Animals and all that you listed, I mean.

And complexity doesn’t imply… anything, really. And you have a misunderstanding of what LLMs do — they aren’t “memorizing” necessarily. They are predicting the next text based on a massive amount of data and then a given input.

I’d argue that it’s not clear we are any different than that. Note I’m not claiming we are the same! I am simply saying I don’t see evidence to say with certainty that we are different / special.