6 ms·

> glorified token predicting machine trained on existing data (made by humans) sorry to disappoint, but human brain fits the same definition

by ohcmon 2y ago

roywiggins 2y ago
See, this sort of claim I am instantly skeptical of. Nobody has ever caught a human brain producing or storing tokens, and certainly the subjective experience of, say, throwing a ball, doesn't involve symbols of any kind.
- mewpmewp2 2y ago
  Any output from you could be represented as a token. It is a very generic idea. Ultimately whatever you output is because of chemical reactions that follow from the input.
  - roywiggins 2y ago
    It could be represented that way. That's a long way from saying that's how brains work. Does a thermometer predict tokens? It also produces outputs that can be represented as tokens, but it's just a bit of mercury in a tube. You can dissect a thermometer as much as you like and you won't find any token prediction machinery. There's lots of things like that. Zooming out, does that make the entire atmosphere a token prediction engine, since it's producing eg wind and temperatures that could be represented as tokens? If you need one token per particle then you're admitting that this is task is impossible. Nobody will ever build a computer that can simulate a brain-sized volume of particles to sufficient fidelity. There is a long, long distance from "brains are made of chemicals" to "brains are basically token prediction engines."
    - therobots927 2y ago
      The argument that brains are just token prediction machines is basically the same as saying “the brain is just a computer”. It’s like, well, yes in the same way that a B-21 Raider is an airplane as well as a Cessna. That doesn’t mean that they are anywhere close to each other in terms of performance. They incorporate some similar basic elements but when you zoom out they’re clearly very different things.
      - mewpmewp2 2y ago
        But we are bringing it up in regards to what people are claiming is a "glorified next token predictor, markov chains" or whatever. Obviously LLMs are far from humans and AGI right now, but at the same time they are much more amazing than a statement like "glorified next token predictor" lets on. The question is how accurate to real life the predictor is and how nuanced it can get. To me, the tech has been an amazing breakthrough. The backlash and downplaying by some people seems like some odd type of fear or cope to me. Even if it is not that world changing, why downplay it like that?
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        therobots927 2y ago
        To be fair my analogy works if you want to object to ChatGPT being called a glorified token prediction machine. I just don’t agree with hyperbolic statements about AGI.
        mewpmewp2 2y ago
        There's so many different statements everywhere, that it's hard to understand what someone is specifically referring to. Are we thinking of Elon Musk who is saying that AGI is coming next year? Are we thinking of people who believe that LLM like architecture could reach AGI in 5 to 10 years given tweaks, scale and optimisations? Are we considering people who believe that some other arch breakthrough could lead to AGI in 10 years?
        therobots927 2y ago
        >> Are we thinking of people who believe that LLM like architecture could reach AGI in 5 to 10 years given tweaks, scale and optimisations? Yep, that’s exactly who I’m talking about! I’m pretty sure Sam Altman is in that camp.
- marshray 2y ago
  > Nobody has ever caught a human brain producing or storing tokens Do you remember learning how to read and write? What are spelling tests? What if "subjective experience" isn't essential, or is even just a distraction, for a great many important tasks?
  - roywiggins 2y ago
    Entirely possible. Lots of things exhibit complex behavior that probably don't have subjective experience. My point is just that the evidence for "humans are just token prediction machines and nothing more" is extremely lacking, but there's always someone in these discussions who asserts it like it's obvious.
robbomacrae 2y ago
It's a cute generalization but you do yourself a great disservice. It's somewhat difficult to argue given the medium we have here and it may be impossible to disprove but consider that in first 30 minutes of your post being highly visible on this thread no one had yet replied. Some may have acted in other ways.. had opinions.. voted it up/down. Some may have debated replying in jest or with a some related biblical verse. I'd wager a few may have used what they could deduce from your comment and/or history to build a mini model of you in their heads, and using that to simulate the conversation to decide if it was worth the time to get into such a debate vs tending to other things. Could current LLM's do any of this?
- kredd 2y ago
  I’m not the OP, and I genuinely don’t like how we’re slowly entering the “no text in internet is real” realm, but I’ll take a stab at your question. If you made an LLM to pretend to have a specific personality (e.g. assume you are a religious person and you’re going to make a comment in this thread) rather than “generic catch-all LLM”, they can pretty much do that. Part of Reddit is just automated PR LLMs fighting each other, making comments and suggesting products or viewpoints, deciding on which comment to reply and etc. You just chain bunch of responses together with pre-determined questions like “given this complete thread, do you think it would look organic if we responded with a plug to a product to this comment?”. It’s also not that hard to generate these type of “personalities”, since you can use a generic one to suggest you a new one that would be different from your other agents. There are also Discord communities that share tips and tricks for making such automated interactions look more real.
  - robbomacrae 2y ago
    These things might be able to produce comparable output but that wasn't my point. I agree that if we are comparing ourselves over the text that gets written then LLM's can achieve super intelligence. And writing text can indeed be simplified to token predicting. My point was we are not just glorified token predicting machines. There is a lot going on behind what we write and whether we write it or not. Does the method matter vs just the output? I think/hope it does on some level.
mjr00 2y ago
If you genuinely believe your brain is just a token prediction machine, why do you continue to exist? You're just consuming limited food, water, fuel, etc for the sake of predicting tokens, like some kind of biological crypto miner.
- paulmd 2y ago
  Genetic and memetic/intellectual immortality, of course. Biologically there can be no other answer. We are here to spread and endure, there is no “why” or end-condition. If your response to there not being a big ending cinematic to life with a bearded old man and a church choir, or all your friends (and a penguin) clapping and congratulating you is that you should kill yourself immediately, that’s a you problem. Get in the flesh-golem, shinzo… or Jon Stewart will have to pilot it again.
  - mjr00 2y ago
    I'm personally a lot more than a prediction engine, don't worry about me. For those who do believe they are simply fleshy token predictors, is there a moral reason that other (sentient) humans can't kill -9 them like a LLaMa3 process?
    - mewpmewp2 2y ago
      Morality is just what worked as set of rules for groups of humans to survive together. You can try to kill me if you want, but I will try to fight back and society will try to punish you. And all of the ideas of morality and societal rules come from this desire to survive and desire to survive exists because this is what natural selection obviously selects for. There is also probably a good explanation why people want to think that they are special and more than prediction engines.
    - quesera 2y ago
      Yes, specifically that a person's opinions are never justification for violence committed against them, no matter how sure you might be of your righteousness.
jen729w 2y ago
Sure. > Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer > To understand even the basics of how the brain maintains the human intellect, we might need to know not just the current state of all 86 billion neurons and their 100 trillion interconnections, not just the varying strengths with which they are connected, and not just the states of more than 1,000 proteins that exist at each connection point, but how the moment-to-moment activity of the brain contributes to the integrity of the system. https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-informati...
therobots927 2y ago
What are you talking about? Do you have any actual cognitive neuroscience to back that up? Have they scanned the brain and broken it down into an LLM-analogous network?

> glorified token predicting machine trained on existing data (made by humans) sorry to disappoint, but human brain fits the same definition

by ohcmon 2y ago

> glorified token predicting machine trained on existing data (made by humans) sorry to disappoint, but human brain fits the same definition

roywiggins 2y ago

See, this sort of claim I am instantly skeptical of. Nobody has ever caught a human brain producing or storing tokens, and certainly the subjective experience of, say, throwing a ball, doesn't involve symbols of any kind.

mewpmewp2 2y ago
Any output from you could be represented as a token. It is a very generic idea. Ultimately whatever you output is because of chemical reactions that follow from the input.
- roywiggins 2y ago
  It could be represented that way. That's a long way from saying that's how brains work. Does a thermometer predict tokens? It also produces outputs that can be represented as tokens, but it's just a bit of mercury in a tube. You can dissect a thermometer as much as you like and you won't find any token prediction machinery. There's lots of things like that. Zooming out, does that make the entire atmosphere a token prediction engine, since it's producing eg wind and temperatures that could be represented as tokens? If you need one token per particle then you're admitting that this is task is impossible. Nobody will ever build a computer that can simulate a brain-sized volume of particles to sufficient fidelity. There is a long, long distance from "brains are made of chemicals" to "brains are basically token prediction engines."
  - therobots927 2y ago
    The argument that brains are just token prediction machines is basically the same as saying “the brain is just a computer”. It’s like, well, yes in the same way that a B-21 Raider is an airplane as well as a Cessna. That doesn’t mean that they are anywhere close to each other in terms of performance. They incorporate some similar basic elements but when you zoom out they’re clearly very different things.
    - mewpmewp2 2y ago
      But we are bringing it up in regards to what people are claiming is a "glorified next token predictor, markov chains" or whatever. Obviously LLMs are far from humans and AGI right now, but at the same time they are much more amazing than a statement like "glorified next token predictor" lets on. The question is how accurate to real life the predictor is and how nuanced it can get. To me, the tech has been an amazing breakthrough. The backlash and downplaying by some people seems like some odd type of fear or cope to me. Even if it is not that world changing, why downplay it like that?
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - therobots927 2y ago
        To be fair my analogy works if you want to object to ChatGPT being called a glorified token prediction machine. I just don’t agree with hyperbolic statements about AGI.
        mewpmewp2 2y ago
        There's so many different statements everywhere, that it's hard to understand what someone is specifically referring to. Are we thinking of Elon Musk who is saying that AGI is coming next year? Are we thinking of people who believe that LLM like architecture could reach AGI in 5 to 10 years given tweaks, scale and optimisations? Are we considering people who believe that some other arch breakthrough could lead to AGI in 10 years?
        therobots927 2y ago
        >> Are we thinking of people who believe that LLM like architecture could reach AGI in 5 to 10 years given tweaks, scale and optimisations? Yep, that’s exactly who I’m talking about! I’m pretty sure Sam Altman is in that camp.
marshray 2y ago
> Nobody has ever caught a human brain producing or storing tokens Do you remember learning how to read and write? What are spelling tests? What if "subjective experience" isn't essential, or is even just a distraction, for a great many important tasks?
- roywiggins 2y ago
  Entirely possible. Lots of things exhibit complex behavior that probably don't have subjective experience. My point is just that the evidence for "humans are just token prediction machines and nothing more" is extremely lacking, but there's always someone in these discussions who asserts it like it's obvious.

robbomacrae 2y ago

It's a cute generalization but you do yourself a great disservice. It's somewhat difficult to argue given the medium we have here and it may be impossible to disprove but consider that in first 30 minutes of your post being highly visible on this thread no one had yet replied. Some may have acted in other ways.. had opinions.. voted it up/down. Some may have debated replying in jest or with a some related biblical verse. I'd wager a few may have used what they could deduce from your comment and/or history to build a mini model of you in their heads, and using that to simulate the conversation to decide if it was worth the time to get into such a debate vs tending to other things. Could current LLM's do any of this?

kredd 2y ago
I’m not the OP, and I genuinely don’t like how we’re slowly entering the “no text in internet is real” realm, but I’ll take a stab at your question. If you made an LLM to pretend to have a specific personality (e.g. assume you are a religious person and you’re going to make a comment in this thread) rather than “generic catch-all LLM”, they can pretty much do that. Part of Reddit is just automated PR LLMs fighting each other, making comments and suggesting products or viewpoints, deciding on which comment to reply and etc. You just chain bunch of responses together with pre-determined questions like “given this complete thread, do you think it would look organic if we responded with a plug to a product to this comment?”. It’s also not that hard to generate these type of “personalities”, since you can use a generic one to suggest you a new one that would be different from your other agents. There are also Discord communities that share tips and tricks for making such automated interactions look more real.
- robbomacrae 2y ago
  These things might be able to produce comparable output but that wasn't my point. I agree that if we are comparing ourselves over the text that gets written then LLM's can achieve super intelligence. And writing text can indeed be simplified to token predicting. My point was we are not just glorified token predicting machines. There is a lot going on behind what we write and whether we write it or not. Does the method matter vs just the output? I think/hope it does on some level.

mjr00 2y ago

If you genuinely believe your brain is just a token prediction machine, why do you continue to exist? You're just consuming limited food, water, fuel, etc for the sake of predicting tokens, like some kind of biological crypto miner.

paulmd 2y ago
Genetic and memetic/intellectual immortality, of course. Biologically there can be no other answer. We are here to spread and endure, there is no “why” or end-condition. If your response to there not being a big ending cinematic to life with a bearded old man and a church choir, or all your friends (and a penguin) clapping and congratulating you is that you should kill yourself immediately, that’s a you problem. Get in the flesh-golem, shinzo… or Jon Stewart will have to pilot it again.
- mjr00 2y ago
  I'm personally a lot more than a prediction engine, don't worry about me. For those who do believe they are simply fleshy token predictors, is there a moral reason that other (sentient) humans can't kill -9 them like a LLaMa3 process?
  - mewpmewp2 2y ago
    Morality is just what worked as set of rules for groups of humans to survive together. You can try to kill me if you want, but I will try to fight back and society will try to punish you. And all of the ideas of morality and societal rules come from this desire to survive and desire to survive exists because this is what natural selection obviously selects for. There is also probably a good explanation why people want to think that they are special and more than prediction engines.
  - quesera 2y ago
    Yes, specifically that a person's opinions are never justification for violence committed against them, no matter how sure you might be of your righteousness.

jen729w 2y ago

Sure. > Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer > To understand even the basics of how the brain maintains the human intellect, we might need to know not just the current state of all 86 billion neurons and their 100 trillion interconnections, not just the varying strengths with which they are connected, and not just the states of more than 1,000 proteins that exist at each connection point, but how the moment-to-moment activity of the brain contributes to the integrity of the system. https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-informati...

therobots927 2y ago

What are you talking about? Do you have any actual cognitive neuroscience to back that up? Have they scanned the brain and broken it down into an LLM-analogous network?