[ExI] all we are is just llms was

Mon Apr 24 07:05:34 UTC 2023

https://mashable.com/article/strawberry-optical-illusion

On Mon, Apr 24, 2023 at 12:05 AM Giovanni Santostasi <gsantostasi at gmail.com>
wrote:

> There is not a single red pixel in this red strawberry picture.... yeah,
> it was an illusion after all, as old Giovanni said...
>
> On Sun, Apr 23, 2023 at 11:55 PM Giovanni Santostasi <
> gsantostasi at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Brent,
>> I hope we are done talking about this redness quality business once for
>> all. Watch this and it should be enough to say "we rest our case".
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJBfn07gZ30
>>
>> On Sun, Apr 23, 2023 at 11:51 PM Giovanni Santostasi <
>> gsantostasi at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Brent,
>>> Watch this is and tell me what you think and the relevance to your
>>> understanding of yellowness.
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GInwvIsH-I
>>>
>>> Giovanni
>>>
>>> On Sun, Apr 23, 2023 at 11:48 PM Giovanni Santostasi <
>>> gsantostasi at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> How language influences the color we see:
>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGZJflerLZ4
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Apr 23, 2023 at 11:01 PM Giovanni Santostasi <
>>>> gsantostasi at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Let say something provocatory, but I want really to drive the point.
>>>>> It is childish to think that
>>>>> [image: image.png] is not a symbol or a "word" that the brain
>>>>> invented for itself. It is a nonverbal symbol but it is a symbol, it is a
>>>>> "word". It is so obvious to me, not sure why it is not obvious to everybody
>>>>> else. Would it be less mysterious if we heard a melody when we see a
>>>>> strawberry (we hear a pitch when we hit a glass with a fork), if we heard a
>>>>> little voice in our head that says "red", in fact we do when we learn to
>>>>> associate [image: image.png] with "red". There are neuroscientists
>>>>> who invented a vest with actuators that react when a magnetic field is
>>>>> present. It is interesting but not something that should
>>>>> case endless debate about the incommunicability of qualia. What is really
>>>>> interesting in an experiment like that is how the brain rewires to adapt to
>>>>> this new sensory information.
>>>>>  The brain had to invent a way to alert us of the presence of objects
>>>>> that reflect a certain range of light frequencies and it came up with [image:
>>>>> image.png]. Great, what is the fuss about?
>>>>> The communication issue is not an issue. Here I tell you what red
>>>>> means to me, this: [image: image.png]. Do you agree that this is what
>>>>> you "mainly" see when you see a strawberry or a firetruck? Yes, great, time
>>>>> to move on. Can I robot learn what color a firetruck is? Yes, it is already
>>>>> done, the word red suffices for all purposes necessary in terms of what
>>>>> a conversational AI needs.
>>>>> It is a different business for an AI that needs to move in the real
>>>>> world and it is trivial to  teach an AI how to recognize
>>>>> [image: image.png] if given optical sensors.
>>>>> Nothing else is interesting or fascinating about this, not at least
>>>>> from a scientific perspective. If silly philosophers want to debate this
>>>>> let them, this why they are irrelevant in the modern world.
>>>>>
>>>>> Giovanni
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, Apr 23, 2023 at 10:42 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sun, Apr 23, 2023 at 11:16 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon.swobe at gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Sat, Apr 22, 2023 at 4:17 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
>>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Sat, Apr 22, 2023, 3:06 AM Gordon Swobe via extropy-chat <
>>>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 5:44 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
>>>>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> On 21/04/2023 12:18, Gordon Swobe wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> > Yes, still, and sorry no, I haven't watched that video yet, but
>>>>>>>>>> I will
>>>>>>>>>> > if you send me the link again.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=xoVJKj8lcNQ&t=854s
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Thank you to you and Keith. I watched the entire presentation. I
>>>>>>>>> think the Center for Human Technology is behind the movement to pause AI
>>>>>>>>> development. Yes? In any case, I found it interesting.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> The thing (one of the things!) that struck me particularly was the
>>>>>>>>>> remark about what constitutes 'language' for these systems, and
>>>>>>>>>> that
>>>>>>>>>> make me realise we've been arguing based on a false premise.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Near the beginning of the presentation, they talk of how, for
>>>>>>>>> example, digital images can be converted into language and then processed
>>>>>>>>> by the language model like any other language. Is that what you mean?
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Converting digital images into language is exactly how I might
>>>>>>>>> also describe it to someone unfamiliar with computer programming. The LLM
>>>>>>>>> is then only processing more text similar in principle to English text that
>>>>>>>>> describes the colors and shapes in the image. Each pixel in the image is
>>>>>>>>> described in symbolic language as "red" or "blue" and so on. The LLM then
>>>>>>>>> goes on to do what might be amazing things with that symbolic information,
>>>>>>>>> but the problem remains that these language models have no access to the
>>>>>>>>> referents. In the case of colors, it can process whatever
>>>>>>>>> symbolic representation it uses for "red" in whatever programming language
>>>>>>>>> in which it is written, but it cannot actually see the color red to ground
>>>>>>>>> the symbol "red."
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> That was not my interpretation of his description. LLMs aren't used
>>>>>>>> to process other types of signals (sound, video, etc.), it's the
>>>>>>>> "transformer model" i.e. the 'T' in GPT.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> The transformer model is a recent discovery (2017) found to be
>>>>>>>> adept at learning any stream of data containing discernable patterns:
>>>>>>>> video, pictures, sounds, music, text, etc. This is why it has all these
>>>>>>>> broad applications across various fields of machine learning.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> When the transformer model is applied to text (e.g., human
>>>>>>>> language) you get a LLM like ChatGPT. When you give it images and text you
>>>>>>>> get something not quite a pure LLM, but a hybrid model like GPT-4. If you
>>>>>>>> give it just music audio files, you get something able to generate music.
>>>>>>>> If you give it speech-text pairs you get something able to generate and
>>>>>>>> clone speech (has anyone here checked out ElevenLabs?).
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> This is the magic that AI researchers don't quite fully understand.
>>>>>>>> It is a general purpose learning algorithm that manifests all kinds of
>>>>>>>> emergent properties. It's able to extract and learn temporal or positional
>>>>>>>> patterns all on its own, and then it can be used to take a short sample of
>>>>>>>> input, and continue generation from that point arbitrarily onward.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I think when the Google CEO said it learned translation despite not
>>>>>>>> being trained for that purpose, this is what he was referring to: the
>>>>>>>> unexpected emergent capacity of the model to translate Bengali text when
>>>>>>>> promoted to do so. This is quite unlike how Google translate (GNMT) was
>>>>>>>> trained, which required giving it many samples of explicit language
>>>>>>>> translations between one language and another (much of the data was taken
>>>>>>>> from the U.N. records).
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> That is all fine and good, but nowhere do I see any reason to think
>>>>>>> the AI has any conscious understanding of its inputs or outputs.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Nor would I expect that you would when you define conscious
>>>>>> understanding as "the kind of understanding that only human and some animal
>>>>>> brains are capable of."
>>>>>> It all comes down to definitions. If we can't agree on those, we will
>>>>>> reach different conclusions.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> You write in terms of the transformer, but to me all this is covered
>>>>>>> in my phrase "the LLM then goes on to do what might be amazing things with
>>>>>>> that symbolic information, but..."
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Is there any information which isn't at its core "symbolic"? Or do
>>>>>> you, like Brent, believe the brain communicates with other parts of itself
>>>>>> using direct meaning, like with "��" such that no interpretation is needed?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> >  (has anyone here checked out ElevenLabs?).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Yes. About a week ago, I used GPT-4, ElevenLabs and D-ID.com in
>>>>>>> combination. I asked GPT-4 to write a short speech about AI, then converted
>>>>>>> it to speech, then created an animated version of my mugshot giving the
>>>>>>> speech, then uploaded the resulting video to facebook where it amazed my
>>>>>>> friends.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Nice.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> These are impressive feats in software engineering, interesting and
>>>>>>> amazing to be sure, but it's just code.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "Just code."
>>>>>> You and I also do amazing things, and we're "just atoms."
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Do you see the problem with this sentence? Cannot everything be
>>>>>> reduced in this way (in a manner that dismisses, trivializes, or ignores
>>>>>> the emergent properties)?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Jason
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> extropy-chat mailing list
>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>>>>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>>>>>
>>>>>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20230424/219dac79/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 746 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20230424/219dac79/attachment.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 746 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20230424/219dac79/attachment-0001.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 746 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20230424/219dac79/attachment-0002.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 746 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20230424/219dac79/attachment-0003.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 746 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20230424/219dac79/attachment-0004.png>