[ExI] LLM's cannot be concious

[Darin Sunley]

If a system can formulate a sentence that employs a word,
and I can then ask the system to tell me the definition of that word,
and it does,
and I can then ask the system to relate its definition to the original
utterance,
and it does,
and the system goes on to continue to use that word,
and all of the system's uses of that word are consistent with the
definition,
then I no longer even understand what it could possibly mean for that
system to /not/ "really understand" that word.

You might just as well say humans don't "really understand" words, since
all our neurons are doing is manipulating concentrations of
neurotransmitters and calcium ions.

On Sat, Mar 18, 2023 at 10:15 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Is there any referent for the word 'understand' as it relates to an AI?
> bill w
>
> On Sat, Mar 18, 2023 at 4:42 AM Gordon Swobe via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> I think those who think LLM  AIs like ChatGPT are becoming conscious or
>> sentient like humans fail to understand a very important point: these
>> software applications only predict language. They are very good at
>> predicting which word should come next in a sentence or question, but they
>> have no idea what the words mean. They do not and cannot understand what
>> the words refer to. In linguistic terms, they lack referents.
>>
>> Maybe you all already understand this, or maybe you have some reasons why
>> I am wrong.
>>
>> -gts
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