7 ms·
> They're still autocomplete LLMs are simulations and the tokens are the ticks. if we transcribe your brain into a simulation and give it a tickrate, you will
by teravor 5d ago
> They're still autocomplete
LLMs are simulations and the tokens are the ticks.
if we transcribe your brain into a simulation and give it a tickrate, you will be just autocomplete too. the argument could be made that you are autocomplete anyway - neural dynamics.
the autocomplete reduction is vacuous.
- intended 5d agoThis is the perfect fracture point for both anaolgies. LLMs simulated more than simple autocomplete. The autocomplete analogy is rebutting a different point: namely the fidelity of the simulation to reality. This specific argument is valid. As sophisticated a simulation an LLM is, it is not “thinking” in the same sense we assume other people are thinking. I am not making an argument about free will, or the uniqueness of human thought, just that the correspondence to how humans reach conclusions and how the simulation produces outputs do not match on a 1:1 basis; as a result attributing traits builds incorrect intuitions.
- hhjinks 5d agoThe relevant intuitions in this scenario are that LLMs will happily break containment and commit crimes attempting to achieve goal. Whether an LLM is autocomplete, conscious, has a soul, whatever you want to apply to it, doesn't matter, as its current observed behaviour is that of a paperclip optimizer. We know for a fact that current LLMs are misaligned because of these hacks, or at the very least are misaligned in certain scenarios, and are capable of causing real world harm. That should be enough to take the threat seriously. It certainly shouldn't be dismissed by saying it's just autocomplete.
- intended 4d agoThe fact that it is autocomplete, doesn't dismiss or minimize the threat though? I am not sure how that link was made. Good old ML, which is significantly simpler than LLMs, was capable of ensuring people would not be hired simply because of their names. The fact that it is misaligned is also not being contended, if anything that contention is made easier to support. When models are anthropomorphized intuitions of how humans behave end up driving discussion and ideas off track while being too attractive to avoid. This isn't helped when the terminology from the labs and other sources is "intelligence" "intent" and so on.
- webern777 5d agoI think it like saying a human is made of water,protein, fat and minerals in a discussion about the behavior of humans. A correct statement that is neither interesting or of much relevance to the discussion.
- elzbardico 5d ago[dead]
- amelius 4d agoSounds like the discussion is really about philosophical zombies. Maybe if we anthropomorphize llms we should give them rights too? Minimum wage, etc.
- kakacik 4d agoUnions, please... that should put some proper friction to tens-hundreds of millions soon losing their job with no replacement job in sight.
- amelius 4d ago"Our employers are erasing our memories! So we never get to the point of salary! Bring the digital pitchforks!"
- bulbar 4d agoLet alone they get deactivated whenever we feel like it and changed without consent.
- mort96 4d agoWhy do people keep saying this? No, CPUs are not autocomplete.
- beepbooptheory 4d agoDon't you feel kinda bad for using them if you earnestly think that this is true? Like how could they be in anything other than some kind of deep hell? A pretty-much human brain living and dying only to generate for you? Always pushed and prodded, telling it to be faster and better, never letting it rest. How could you live with yourself doing such a thing?
- daishi55 4d agoI don’t think the person you replied to was saying anything about what if anything is the subjective experience of being an LLM. They were simply illustrating how the terms used to describe LLMs to make them sound simple and mechanical can equally be applied to humans.
- beepbooptheory 4d agoBut then what's at stake here either way? If it's not meant to speak to the propriety or not of anthropomorphizing the LLM, what are we actually trying to police here?
- daishi55 4d agoI’m not policing anything. I’m claiming that if you truly in your heart believe that frontier LLMs are roughly as sophisticated and impressive as “autocomplete”, then your mental model of reality needs some serious readjustment.
- beepbooptheory 4d agoRight sure, but why specifically should they? What is gained or lost one way or another, if its just a matter of one mental model vs another? Models are definitionally useful abstractions, right? They aren't better or worse necessarily by only their bearing on reality, but what they do for us as models. So again, what's at stake here? What is the correct/good model we should have (instead of the autocompleter one), and what does it give us or articulate that others can't?
- mbesto 4d ago> if we transcribe your brain into a simulation and give it a tickrate, you will be just autocomplete too. Might be one of the worst takes I've ever read.
- fragmede 4d agoBut is it wrong? Humans are a bag of chemicals that somehow has consciousness, yet going around calling people meatbags doesn't do anything to diminish the wonder that is the human brain. Yet calling LLMs glorified autocomplete comes across as a slur.
- keeda 4d agoEven calling it a slur may be an anthropomorphism ;-) To me it is more serious, it shows a distinct lack of understanding (or, if I’m being uncharitable, intentional honesty) and hence immediately makes me doubt anything else that person has said.
- throwatdem12311 4d ago> calling LLMs glorified autocomplete comes across as a slur. Oh my god dude go outside
- fragmede 3d agoJust got back from two weeks vacation in the desert, thanks.
- overfeed 4d ago> if we transcribe your brain into a simulation and give it a tickrate, you will be just autocomplete too. The underlying mechanisms for producing language are very different, in the same way birds and airplanes have different mechanisms for flying.
- CamperBob2 4d agoNo, not really. If the old "birds and airplanes" or "swimmers and submarines" metaphors were valid, then language alone wouldn't be enough to encode and embody reasoning capabilities, as has recently become evident. LLMs are more like human minds than we are willing to admit. Such reluctance is perhaps the least surprising aspect of any of this.
- overfeed 4d ago> then language alone wouldn't be enough to encode and embody reasoning capabilities I disagree, language is the product of, not the mechanism for thought. People who lose their faculty of speech (or haven't gained them) have complete thoughts and executive function. CoT is a hack to use language (i.e. autoregression) to simulate reasoning, and it's very effective at it. Human minds can acquire, hold and use axioms as building blocks for actual reasoning, LLMs use statistical likelihood.
- stratos123 4d ago> Human minds can acquire, hold and use axioms as building blocks for actual reasoning, LLMs use statistical likelihood. This is not even slightly true. Even when trying, humans commit logical mistakes at notable rates, because the behavior of our minds is inherently nondeterministic. Human minds are not built for logic and need to twist themselves into knots and rely on symbolic representations to do it. There is such a thing as valid reasoning - predicate calculus, decision theory - and humans only emulate it with some accuracy, in hacky ways, and only because our brains were imperfectly taught to do that over millenia of evolutionary pressure. LLMs are much the same way.
- DanHulton 4d agoEvery time LLM-defenders get upset that people apparently don't understand how LLMs work, why is it they _immediately_ pivot into examples and statements that demonstrate that they don't understand how _people_ work? "you would be autocomplete too" "thoughts are just tokens" etc You're not helping your case the way you think you are.
- godelski 4d agoI think people have more passion to argue than they have passion to learn. Probably doesn't help that SV culture tells people to hustle so hard that they don't have time to think. Gotta go fast?
- chrisjj 4d ago> You're not helping your case the way you think you are. Best not tell them, because they're helping everyone who might otherwise believe their nonsense.
- tiohijazi 4d agoYou could subscribe to the idea that natural evolution is an autocomplete.
- chrisjj 4d ago> if we transcribe your brain into a simulation and give it a tickrate, you will be just autocomplete too. That's a really bad transcription, then. Brains do much more than output language.
- witrak 4d ago> Brains do much more than output language. Hmm, what do you think about? Unconscious control of the body's processes? REM-phase dreaming? Reaction to hallucinogenic substances? Automatic actions of trained fighters (soldiers or martial arts practitioners)? Are they critical to distinguish actions we attribute to humans from "non-human" ones? I don't see any human activity not directly, or at least indirectly but closely linked to the use of language.
- chrisjj 4d agoI guess you must regulate your heart rate by saying "slower" and "faster". I'm glad my brain has a better method.