I love the idea of educating students on the math behind AI to demystify them. But I think it's a little weird to assert "AI is not magic and AI systems do not think. It’s just maths." Equivalent statements could be made about how human brains are not magic, just biology - yet I think we still think.
I agree saying "they don't think" and leaving it at that isn't particularly useful or insightful, it's like saying "submarines don't swim" and refusing to elaborate further. It can be useful if you extend it to "they don't think like you do". Concepts like finite context windows, or the fact that the model is "frozen" and stateless, or the idea that you can transfer conversations between models are trivial if you know a bit about how LLMs work, but extremely baffling otherwise.
It's just provencial nonsense, there's no sound reasoning to it. Reductionism being taken and used as a form of refutation is a pretty common cargo culting behavior I've found.
Overwhelmingly, I just don't think the majority of human beings have the mental toolset to work with ambiguous philosophical contexts. They'll still try though, and what you get out of that is a 4th order baudrillardian simulation of reason.
Statements like "it is bound by the laws of physics" are not "verifiable" by your definition, and yet we safely assume it is true of everything. Everything except the human brain, that is, for which wild speculation that it may be supernatural is seemingly considered rational discussion so long as it satisfies people's needs to believe that they are somehow special in the universe.
I have yet to hear any plausible definition of "thought" that convincingly places LLMs and brains on opposite sides of it without being obviously contrived for that purpose.
>Equivalent statements could be made about how human brains are not magic, just biology - yet I think we still think.
They're not equivalent at all because the AI is by no means biological. "It's just maths" could maybe be applied to humans but this is backed entirely by supposition and would ultimately just be an assumption of its own conclusion - that human brains work on the same underlying principles as AI because it is assumed that they're based on the same underlying principles as AI.
But parent didn't try to apply "it's just maths" to humans. He said one could just as easily say, as some do: "Humans are just biology, hence they're not magic". Our understanding of mathematics, including the maths of transformer models is limited, just as our understanding of biology. Some behaviors of these models have taken researches by surprise, and future surprises are not at all excluded. We don't know exactly how far they will evolve.
As for applying the word thinking to AI systems, it's already in common usage and this won't change. We don't have any other candidate words, and this one is the closest existing word for referencing a computational process which, one must admit, is in many ways (but definitely not in all ways) analogous to human thought.
> that human brains work on the same underlying principles as AI
That wasn't the assumption though, it was only that human brains work by some "non-magical" electro-chemical process which could be described as a mechanism, whether that mechanism followed the same principles of AI or not.
Straw man. The person who you're responding to talked about "equivalent statements" (emphasis added), whereas you appear to be talking about equivalent objects (AIs vs. brains), and pointing out the obvious flaw in this argument, that AIs aren't biology. The obvious flaw in the wrong argument, that is.
That's where these threads always end up. Someone asserts, almost violently, that AI does not and/or cannot "think." When asked how to falsify their assertion, perhaps by explaining what exactly is unique about the human brain that cannot and/or will not be possible to emulate, that's the last anyone ever hears from them. At least until the next "AI can't think" story gets posted.
The same arguments that appeared in 2015 inevitably get trotted out, almost verbatim, ten years later. It would be amusing on other sites, but it's just pathetic here.
Someone asserts, almost religiously, that LLMs do and/or can "think." When asked how to falsify their assertion, perhaps by explaining what exactly is "thinking" in the human brain that can and/or will be possible to emulate...
Or they just point to the turing test which was the defacto standard test for something so nebulous. And behold: LLM can pass the turing test. So they think. Can you come up with something better (than the turing test)?
Err, no, that’s not what’s happening. Nobody, at least in this thread (and most others like it I’ve seen), is confidently claiming LLMs can think.
There are people confidently claiming they can’t and then other people expressing skepticism at their confidence and/or trying to get them to nail down what they mean.
When asked how to falsify their assertion, perhaps by explaining what exactly is "thinking" in the human brain that can and/or will be possible to emulate...
... someone else points out that the same models that can't "think" are somehow turning in gold-level performance at international math and programming competitions, making Fields Medalists sit up and take notice, winning art competitions, composing music indistinguishable from human output, and making entire subreddits fail the Turing test.
A lot of the drama here is due to the ambiguity of what the word 'think' is supposed to mean. One camp associates 'thinking' to consciousness, another does not. I personally believe it is possible to create an animal-like or human-like intelligence, without consciousness existing in the system. I personally would still describe whatever processing that system is doing as 'thinking'. Others believe in "substrate independence"; they think any such system must be consciousness.
(Sneaking a bit of belief in here, to me "substrate independence" is a more extreme position than the idea that a system could be made which is intelligent but not conscious, hence I find it implausible.)
You can replicate all calculations done by LLMs with pen and paper. It would take ages to calculate anything, but it's possible. I don't think that pen and paper will ever "think", regardless of how complex the calculations involved are.
I don't see the relevance of that argument (which other responders to your post have pointed out as Searle's Chinese Room argument). The pen and paper are of course not doing any thinking, but then the pen isn't doing any writing on its own, either. It's the system of pen + paper + human that's doing the thinking.
And the counter argument is also exactly the same. Imagine you take one neuron from a brain and replace it with an artificial piece of electronics (e.g. some transistors) that only generates specific outputs based on inputs, exactly like the neuron does. Now replace another neuron. And another. Eventually, you will have the entire brain replaced with a huge set of fundamentally super simple transistors. I.e. a computer. If you believe that consciousness or the ability to think disappears somewhere during this process, then you are essentially believing in some religious meta-physics or soul-like component in our brains that can not be measured. But if it can not be measured, it fundamentally can not affect you in any way. So it doesn't matter for the experiment in the end, because the outcome would be exactly the same. The only reason you might think that you are conscious and the computer is not is because you believe so. But to an outsider observer, belief is all it is. Basically religion.
You can replicate the entire universe with pen and paper (or a bunch of rocks). It would take an unimaginably long time, and we haven't discovered all the calculations you'd need to do yet, but presumably they exist and this could be done.
Does that actually make a universe? I don't know!
The comic is meant to be a joke, I think, but I find myself thinking about it all the time!!!
You're arguing against Functionalism [0], of which I'd encourage you to at least read the Wikipedia page. Why would doing the brain's computations on pen and paper rather than on wetware lead to different outcomes? And how?
Connect your pen and paper operator to a brainless human body, and you got something indistinguishable from a regular alive human.
> You can simulate a human brain on pen and paper too.
That's an assumption, though. A plausible assumption, but still an assumption.
We know you can execute an LLM on pen and paper, because people built them and they're understood well enough that we could list the calculations you'd need to do. We don't know enough about the human brain to create a similar list, so I don't think you can reasonably make a stronger statement than "you could probably simulate..." without getting ahead of yourself.
This is basically the Church-Turing thesis and one of the motivations of using tape(paper) and an arbitrary alphabet in the Turing machine model.
It's been kinda discussed to oblivion in the last century, interesting that it seems people don't realize the "existing literature" and repeat the same arguments (not saying anyone is wrong).
I can make a claim much stronger than "you could probably" The counterclaim here is that the brain may not obey physical laws that can be described by mathematics. This is a "5G causes covid" level claim. The overwhelming burden of proof is on you.
The simulation isn't an operating brain. It's a description of one. What it "means" is imposed by us, what it actually is, is a shitload of graphite marks on paper or relays flipping around or rocks on sand or (pick your medium).
An arbitrarily-perfect simulation of a burning candle will never, ever melt wax.
An LLM is always a description. An LLM operating on a computer is identical to a description of it operating on paper (if much faster).
What makes the simulation we live in special compared to the simulation of a burning candle that you or I might be running?
That simulated candle is perfectly melting wax in its own simulation. Duh, it won't melt any in ours, because our arbitrary notions of "real" wax are disconnected between the two simulatons.
If we don't think the candle in a simulated universe is a "real candle", why do we consider the intelligence in a simulated universe possibly "real intelligence"?
The brain follows the laws of physics. The laws of physics can be closely approximated by mathematical models. Thus, the brain can be closely approximated by mathematical models.
It’s not that open. We can simulate smaller system of neurons just fine, we can simulate chemistry. There might be something beyond that in our brains for some reason, but it sees doubtful right now
Our brains actually do something, may be the difference. They're a thing happening, not a description of a thing happening.
Whatever that something that it actually does in the real, physical world is produces the cogito in cogito, ergo sum and I doubt you can get it just by describing what all the subatomic particles are doing, any more than a computer or pen-and-paper simulated hurricane can knock your house down, no matter how perfectly simulated.
Doing something merely requires I/O. Brains wouldn't be doing much without that. A sufficiently accurate simulation of a fundamentally computational process is really just the same process.
Why are the electric currents moving in a GPU any less of a "thing happening" than the firing of the neurons in your brain? What you are describing here is a claim that the brain is fundamentally supernatural.
You're arguing for the existence of a soul, for dualism. Nothing wrong with that, except we have never been able to measure it, and have never had to use it to explain any phenomenon of the brain's working. The brain follows the rules of physics, like any other objects of the material world.
A pen and paper simulation of a brain would also be "a thing happening" as you put it. You have to explain what is the magical ingredient that makes the brain's computations impossible to replicate.
You could connect your brain simulation to an actual body, and you'd be unable to tell the difference with a regular human, unless you crack it open.
It's unfortunate that there's so little (none in the article, just 1 comment here as of this writing) mention of the Turing Test. The whole premise of the paper that introduced that was that "do machines think" is such a hard question to define that you have to frame the question differently. And it's ironic that we seem to talk about the Turing Test less than ever now that systems almost everyone can access can arguably pass it now.
It's not always the case, but often verifying an answer is far easier than coming up with the answer in the first place. That's precisely the principle behind the RSA algorithm for cryptography.
> the team wants to tackle a major and common misconception: that students think that ANN systems learn, recognise, see, and understand, when really it’s all just maths
This is completely idiotic. Do these people actually believe that showing it can't be actual thought because it is described by math?
By every scientific measure we have the answer is no. It’s just electrical current taking the path of least resistance through connected neurons mixed with cell death.
The fact a human brain peaks at IQ around 200 is fascinating. Can the scale even go higher? It would seem no since nothing has achieved a higher score it must not exist.
Overwhelmingly, I just don't think the majority of human beings have the mental toolset to work with ambiguous philosophical contexts. They'll still try though, and what you get out of that is a 4th order baudrillardian simulation of reason.
Unicorns are not bound by the laws of physics - because they do not exist.
edit : Thinking is undefined, statements about undefined cannot be verified.
They're not equivalent at all because the AI is by no means biological. "It's just maths" could maybe be applied to humans but this is backed entirely by supposition and would ultimately just be an assumption of its own conclusion - that human brains work on the same underlying principles as AI because it is assumed that they're based on the same underlying principles as AI.
As for applying the word thinking to AI systems, it's already in common usage and this won't change. We don't have any other candidate words, and this one is the closest existing word for referencing a computational process which, one must admit, is in many ways (but definitely not in all ways) analogous to human thought.
That wasn't the assumption though, it was only that human brains work by some "non-magical" electro-chemical process which could be described as a mechanism, whether that mechanism followed the same principles of AI or not.
But I think most people get what GP means.
But they are two different things with overlapping qualities.
It's like MDMA and falling in love. They have many overlapping quantities but no one would claim one is the other.
The same arguments that appeared in 2015 inevitably get trotted out, almost verbatim, ten years later. It would be amusing on other sites, but it's just pathetic here.
There are people confidently claiming they can’t and then other people expressing skepticism at their confidence and/or trying to get them to nail down what they mean.
... someone else points out that the same models that can't "think" are somehow turning in gold-level performance at international math and programming competitions, making Fields Medalists sit up and take notice, winning art competitions, composing music indistinguishable from human output, and making entire subreddits fail the Turing test.
Uh huh. Good luck getting Stockfish to do your math homework while Leela works on your next waifu.
LLMs play chess poorly. Chess engines do nothing else at all. That's kind of a big difference, wouldn't you say?
This is exactly the problem. Claims about AI are unfalsifiable, thus your various non-sequiturs about AI 'thinking'.
(Sneaking a bit of belief in here, to me "substrate independence" is a more extreme position than the idea that a system could be made which is intelligent but not conscious, hence I find it implausible.)
The opinions are exactly the same than about LLM.
You can replicate the entire universe with pen and paper (or a bunch of rocks). It would take an unimaginably long time, and we haven't discovered all the calculations you'd need to do yet, but presumably they exist and this could be done.
Does that actually make a universe? I don't know!
The comic is meant to be a joke, I think, but I find myself thinking about it all the time!!!
Connect your pen and paper operator to a brainless human body, and you got something indistinguishable from a regular alive human.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_%28philosophy_of...
That's an assumption, though. A plausible assumption, but still an assumption.
We know you can execute an LLM on pen and paper, because people built them and they're understood well enough that we could list the calculations you'd need to do. We don't know enough about the human brain to create a similar list, so I don't think you can reasonably make a stronger statement than "you could probably simulate..." without getting ahead of yourself.
It's been kinda discussed to oblivion in the last century, interesting that it seems people don't realize the "existing literature" and repeat the same arguments (not saying anyone is wrong).
An arbitrarily-perfect simulation of a burning candle will never, ever melt wax.
An LLM is always a description. An LLM operating on a computer is identical to a description of it operating on paper (if much faster).
That simulated candle is perfectly melting wax in its own simulation. Duh, it won't melt any in ours, because our arbitrary notions of "real" wax are disconnected between the two simulatons.
If we don't think the candle in a simulated universe is a "real candle", why do we consider the intelligence in a simulated universe possibly "real intelligence"?
Being a functionalist ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_(philosophy_of_m... ) myself, I don't know the answer on the top of my head.
Whatever that something that it actually does in the real, physical world is produces the cogito in cogito, ergo sum and I doubt you can get it just by describing what all the subatomic particles are doing, any more than a computer or pen-and-paper simulated hurricane can knock your house down, no matter how perfectly simulated.
A pen and paper simulation of a brain would also be "a thing happening" as you put it. You have to explain what is the magical ingredient that makes the brain's computations impossible to replicate.
You could connect your brain simulation to an actual body, and you'd be unable to tell the difference with a regular human, unless you crack it open.
I'm not. You might want me to be, but I'm very, very much not.
This is completely idiotic. Do these people actually believe that showing it can't be actual thought because it is described by math?
By every scientific measure we have the answer is no. It’s just electrical current taking the path of least resistance through connected neurons mixed with cell death.
The fact a human brain peaks at IQ around 200 is fascinating. Can the scale even go higher? It would seem no since nothing has achieved a higher score it must not exist.