6 ms·

> These theories are flawed in the sense that they cannot account for subjective experience and agency, amongst other things. On the contrary, it's precisely t

by codeflo 4mo ago

> These theories are flawed in the sense that they cannot account for subjective experience and agency, amongst other things. On the contrary, it's precisely this assumption, that there is a "subjective experience" that requires explanation beyond the material, that is axiomatically assumed without evidence. It falls apart quickly, any "subjective experience" is completely tied to neurons, knock out the neurons and the subjective experience disappears, or stimulate the neurons to cause the experience.

stonogo 4mo ago
"that is axiomatically assumed" passive voice doing a hell of a lot of work in this phrase
tuyiown 4mo ago
> at requires explanation beyond the material, that is axiomatically assumed without evidence Nobody talked about anything out of neurons. The question is still open.
kristov 4mo ago
I think the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes. An LLM is not a human brain, and does not try to emulate one. It should not be a surprise that an LLM does not behave like a human brain. So we can not infer things either way. The best we can say is that an LLM appears to exhibit very similar behavior to a human brain, under certain constraints. So maybe we can infer that the human brain has something in it that operates in a similar way to an LLM (like the human "unconscious", or "intuition" maybe). It seems obvious to me that a human brain and an LLM are not comparable things, for many reasons. So we can not make inferrences one way or the other.
- dnautics 4mo ago
  > An LLM is not a human brain, true > and does not try to emulate one citation please. something like the universal approximation theory comes to mind, transformer architecture clearly has the shape of a universal algorithm approximator
  - cootsnuck 4mo ago
    > something like the universal approximation theory comes to mind, transformer architecture clearly has the shape of a universal algorithm approximator That says nothing about emulating a human brain.
    - dnautics 4mo ago
      is human cognition not an algorithm? is it just woo? or vibes?
      - kristov 3mo ago
        But what is the shape of the algorithm of the human brain? It has a complex physical structure. We know the folds on the surface are important, but why is that shape specifically important? The brain is made up of two hemispheres - why, what does that do? There are different "types" of brain inside the human skull. There are physical areas that perform specific tasks. There are different types of neurons. Then there chemicals that interact with the brain, changing how it function depending on things happening to the body. All that stuff and more is the "algorithm" of the human brain. It's not the same algorithm as an LLM.
  - calepayson 3mo ago
    I think you're right in that it has the shape but I think it's missing a pretty key piece. We still haven't been able to solve catastrophic forgetting, yet everything with a brain has. Basically LLMs seem good at approximating intelligence on a moment-to-moment basis, but feel quite far away when you chat with one over time. Like at some level, yes, transformers are trying to emulate a human brain but the second you ask folks if they do a good job of it, I think most rationale people would say no.
SlinkyOnStairs 4mo ago
There's two meanings to "the body is a complex machine" and I think you're missing the forest for the trees here. 1) The abstract "dictionary" version: It'd be technically correct to say that the body is a machine under the definition of "A machine is a thermodynamic system that uses power to apply forces and control movement to perform an action.". 2) But there's also the less abstract/technical: "The body is alike the complex machines we have built", and this is much less true. Especially for the brain. The "neuron" analogy in machine learning is effective, but entirely wrong; We do not fully know how even a single neuron works, nevermind any complex system made out of multiple of them. With regard to AI, there's a lot of people extrapolating "There is no magical animating spirit, the brain is just a pile of stochastic molecules following the laws of physics" into "The brain is an inert pile of matter, computers are an inert pile of matter, ergo AI/LLMs are like the brain!" Especially so by people who have a financial/legal interest in doing so. "AI is just like a brain, fire your employees and buy our LLM now!", "AI is just like a brain, so it's totally not copyright infringement!"
- sixeyes 4mo ago
  oh yeah! i recall a paper linked here not so long ago, where it was shown that the dendrites of a neuron do computations themselves. The "weight per neuron" is very simplistic then. At the very least, each actual neuron is a network of weights. https://www.quantamagazine.org/neural-dendrites-reveal-their-computational-power-20200114/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/neural-dendrites-reveal-their...
  - ACCount37 4mo ago
    I'm partial to "modern ML weights are much closer to 1:1 capacity mapping to synapse count than to neuron count". A single biological neuron is closer to 100 or even 1000 weights worth of ANN than to 1 weight worth of ANN. In which case: modern LLMs are still running in a capacity-starved regime! Even Mythos 5, the 10-trillion monster LLM, the scaling law boogeyman, the harbinger of Vera Rubin NVL72, doesn't quite rise to 100T-to-1000T of synapses. Anything the light of today's AI touches still lives in the shadow of what evolution has managed to cram into a single human skull. We're arguing about the limitations of AI while our best AIs are still very subhuman in the scale dimension. The one dimension we know how to push. And it's already this tight.
JulianChastain 4mo ago
I find the claim subjective experience may be illusory absolutely baffling. I can only speak for myself with certainty, but I am entirely sure I have subjective experience. All the other propositions I believe could be false but I don't see how I can be wrong about experiencing something. I could be a brain in a vat (or weights on a GPU) and be specifically programmed to only come to false beliefs and still I can be sure that there is an experience I am the subject of. I cannot provide empirical evidence for my experience, that is why it is subjective. I cannot be entirely sure you are experiencing anything, and when I encounter people who don't share the same baseline intuition here I do begin to wonder if this is truly a universal across humanity. But I can't think of any other assumption which I would be more comfortable as a foundational axiom other than, "I am experiencing something." I do not require additional evidence for it because I experience the truth of it directly
- edbaskerville 4mo ago
  Indeed. Even positing an illusion seems like a contradiction. If it's illusory, doesn't there need to be a subjective entity experiencing the illusion?
  - MichaelZuo 4mo ago
    This proves too much. As it would imply parrots have sapiencee.
    - jazzypants 4mo ago
      Why do you think that parrots do not have sapience? How would one even measure such a thing?
      - beering 4mo ago
        Because by definition, sapience is something only humans have. Ergo, parrots are not sapient. More meta, all of the threads on this page are just people playing games with definitions. Eg, “qualia is something I have as a human but machines don’t have it. Therefore, LLMs do not have qualia.”
jimbokun 4mo ago
It’s the opposite. Descartes made clear that subjective experience is the ONLY thing we know. Everything else is theories to explain the phenomena we subjectively experience. We theorize that there is a physical world and other beings like us having similar subjective experiences, because that seems the best explanation for our subjective experiences. But we might be living in the Matrix, with all the people we think we are interacting with and just sophisticated simulations.
- aspenmartin 4mo ago
  And this has some bearing on the debate about whether these systems do or could in the future exhibit something similar?
  - bogdanoff_2 3mo ago
    If we go along with the though that our own subjective experience is the only thing we truly know, and that we cannot really know if any other humans are having the same experience (and any belief of that sorts is purely extrapolation), then there isn't a fundamental difference between LLMs and "other humans" in terms of whether or not they're "conscious". Sure, it appears more likely that "other humans" are real conscious beings, but there's no fundamental difference. >whether these systems do or could in the future exhibit something similar? I think the whole discussion is based on the idea that consciousness isn't something you can "exhibit". (Tell me, how can you "exhibit consciousness"?)
llmssuck 4mo ago
Interesting, so you would say that your experience is .. illusory? In what medium exactly? Illusion requires a substrate of some kind. "Awareness"? What's that? Neurons are themselves things we experience (indirectly). Once seen through a microscope or known about in some fashion the only way they "exist" is by you having the experience of knowing them. It's not the other way around. One thing is more fundamental here. What is this experience? What are the atoms of this? "Atomic particles"? How would you even approach an answer if your building blocks are themselves part of what needs to be explained? The hard problem cannot even be touched if you start out like this.
f_klem 3mo ago
Refuting the "subjective experience" axiom does not lead to 'any "subjective experience" is completely tied to neurons', you also need to explain why the subjective experience is tied to neurons. And that's precisely what computational theories of mind do not account for: the link between subjective experience and neurons. I am not arguing that neurons (or the brain) are not a necessary condition for subjective experience.

by codeflo 4mo ago

stonogo 4mo ago

"that is axiomatically assumed" passive voice doing a hell of a lot of work in this phrase

tuyiown 4mo ago

> at requires explanation beyond the material, that is axiomatically assumed without evidence Nobody talked about anything out of neurons. The question is still open.

kristov 4mo ago

I think the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes. An LLM is not a human brain, and does not try to emulate one. It should not be a surprise that an LLM does not behave like a human brain. So we can not infer things either way. The best we can say is that an LLM appears to exhibit very similar behavior to a human brain, under certain constraints. So maybe we can infer that the human brain has something in it that operates in a similar way to an LLM (like the human "unconscious", or "intuition" maybe). It seems obvious to me that a human brain and an LLM are not comparable things, for many reasons. So we can not make inferrences one way or the other.

dnautics 4mo ago
> An LLM is not a human brain, true > and does not try to emulate one citation please. something like the universal approximation theory comes to mind, transformer architecture clearly has the shape of a universal algorithm approximator
- cootsnuck 4mo ago
  > something like the universal approximation theory comes to mind, transformer architecture clearly has the shape of a universal algorithm approximator That says nothing about emulating a human brain.
  - dnautics 4mo ago
    is human cognition not an algorithm? is it just woo? or vibes?
    - kristov 3mo ago
      But what is the shape of the algorithm of the human brain? It has a complex physical structure. We know the folds on the surface are important, but why is that shape specifically important? The brain is made up of two hemispheres - why, what does that do? There are different "types" of brain inside the human skull. There are physical areas that perform specific tasks. There are different types of neurons. Then there chemicals that interact with the brain, changing how it function depending on things happening to the body. All that stuff and more is the "algorithm" of the human brain. It's not the same algorithm as an LLM.
- calepayson 3mo ago
  I think you're right in that it has the shape but I think it's missing a pretty key piece. We still haven't been able to solve catastrophic forgetting, yet everything with a brain has. Basically LLMs seem good at approximating intelligence on a moment-to-moment basis, but feel quite far away when you chat with one over time. Like at some level, yes, transformers are trying to emulate a human brain but the second you ask folks if they do a good job of it, I think most rationale people would say no.

SlinkyOnStairs 4mo ago

There's two meanings to "the body is a complex machine" and I think you're missing the forest for the trees here. 1) The abstract "dictionary" version: It'd be technically correct to say that the body is a machine under the definition of "A machine is a thermodynamic system that uses power to apply forces and control movement to perform an action.". 2) But there's also the less abstract/technical: "The body is alike the complex machines we have built", and this is much less true. Especially for the brain. The "neuron" analogy in machine learning is effective, but entirely wrong; We do not fully know how even a single neuron works, nevermind any complex system made out of multiple of them. With regard to AI, there's a lot of people extrapolating "There is no magical animating spirit, the brain is just a pile of stochastic molecules following the laws of physics" into "The brain is an inert pile of matter, computers are an inert pile of matter, ergo AI/LLMs are like the brain!" Especially so by people who have a financial/legal interest in doing so. "AI is just like a brain, fire your employees and buy our LLM now!", "AI is just like a brain, so it's totally not copyright infringement!"

sixeyes 4mo ago
oh yeah! i recall a paper linked here not so long ago, where it was shown that the dendrites of a neuron do computations themselves. The "weight per neuron" is very simplistic then. At the very least, each actual neuron is a network of weights. https://www.quantamagazine.org/neural-dendrites-reveal-their-computational-power-20200114/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/neural-dendrites-reveal-their...
- ACCount37 4mo ago
  I'm partial to "modern ML weights are much closer to 1:1 capacity mapping to synapse count than to neuron count". A single biological neuron is closer to 100 or even 1000 weights worth of ANN than to 1 weight worth of ANN. In which case: modern LLMs are still running in a capacity-starved regime! Even Mythos 5, the 10-trillion monster LLM, the scaling law boogeyman, the harbinger of Vera Rubin NVL72, doesn't quite rise to 100T-to-1000T of synapses. Anything the light of today's AI touches still lives in the shadow of what evolution has managed to cram into a single human skull. We're arguing about the limitations of AI while our best AIs are still very subhuman in the scale dimension. The one dimension we know how to push. And it's already this tight.

JulianChastain 4mo ago

I find the claim subjective experience may be illusory absolutely baffling. I can only speak for myself with certainty, but I am entirely sure I have subjective experience. All the other propositions I believe could be false but I don't see how I can be wrong about experiencing something. I could be a brain in a vat (or weights on a GPU) and be specifically programmed to only come to false beliefs and still I can be sure that there is an experience I am the subject of. I cannot provide empirical evidence for my experience, that is why it is subjective. I cannot be entirely sure you are experiencing anything, and when I encounter people who don't share the same baseline intuition here I do begin to wonder if this is truly a universal across humanity. But I can't think of any other assumption which I would be more comfortable as a foundational axiom other than, "I am experiencing something." I do not require additional evidence for it because I experience the truth of it directly

edbaskerville 4mo ago
Indeed. Even positing an illusion seems like a contradiction. If it's illusory, doesn't there need to be a subjective entity experiencing the illusion?
- MichaelZuo 4mo ago
  This proves too much. As it would imply parrots have sapiencee.
  - jazzypants 4mo ago
    Why do you think that parrots do not have sapience? How would one even measure such a thing?
    - beering 4mo ago
      Because by definition, sapience is something only humans have. Ergo, parrots are not sapient. More meta, all of the threads on this page are just people playing games with definitions. Eg, “qualia is something I have as a human but machines don’t have it. Therefore, LLMs do not have qualia.”

jimbokun 4mo ago

It’s the opposite. Descartes made clear that subjective experience is the ONLY thing we know. Everything else is theories to explain the phenomena we subjectively experience. We theorize that there is a physical world and other beings like us having similar subjective experiences, because that seems the best explanation for our subjective experiences. But we might be living in the Matrix, with all the people we think we are interacting with and just sophisticated simulations.

aspenmartin 4mo ago
And this has some bearing on the debate about whether these systems do or could in the future exhibit something similar?
- bogdanoff_2 3mo ago
  If we go along with the though that our own subjective experience is the only thing we truly know, and that we cannot really know if any other humans are having the same experience (and any belief of that sorts is purely extrapolation), then there isn't a fundamental difference between LLMs and "other humans" in terms of whether or not they're "conscious". Sure, it appears more likely that "other humans" are real conscious beings, but there's no fundamental difference. >whether these systems do or could in the future exhibit something similar? I think the whole discussion is based on the idea that consciousness isn't something you can "exhibit". (Tell me, how can you "exhibit consciousness"?)

llmssuck 4mo ago

Interesting, so you would say that your experience is .. illusory? In what medium exactly? Illusion requires a substrate of some kind. "Awareness"? What's that? Neurons are themselves things we experience (indirectly). Once seen through a microscope or known about in some fashion the only way they "exist" is by you having the experience of knowing them. It's not the other way around. One thing is more fundamental here. What is this experience? What are the atoms of this? "Atomic particles"? How would you even approach an answer if your building blocks are themselves part of what needs to be explained? The hard problem cannot even be touched if you start out like this.

f_klem 3mo ago

Refuting the "subjective experience" axiom does not lead to 'any "subjective experience" is completely tied to neurons', you also need to explain why the subjective experience is tied to neurons. And that's precisely what computational theories of mind do not account for: the link between subjective experience and neurons. I am not arguing that neurons (or the brain) are not a necessary condition for subjective experience.