[ExI] LLM's cannot be concious

[Gordon Swobe]

>
> 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.
>

> I can ask it to define any word, list synonymous words, list translations
of that words in various languages, and to describe the characteristics of
an item referred to by that word if it is a noun. It can also solve
analogies at a very high level. It can summarize the key points of a text,
by picking out the most meaningful points in that text. Is there more to
having an idea of what words mean than this?

Yes, I would say absolutely there is more to it. Consider that a dictionary
does not actually contain any word meanings. It contains definitions of
words in terms of other words, and each of those words are defined by
other words in the same dictionary. Starting from a place of ignorance in
which one knows no meanings of any words, no amount dictionary research
will reveal the meanings of any of the words defined within it. It's all
symbols with no referents.

I am saying that Large Language Models like ChatGPT are no different. These
LLMs are nothing more than advanced interactive dictionaries capable only
of rendering definitions and logical patterns of definitions. They can
perhaps even seem to render "original thought" but there is no conscious
mind in the model holding the meaning of any thought in mind, as there are
no referents.

-gts


On Sat, Mar 18, 2023 at 6:23 AM Jason Resch <jasonresch at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 5:41 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.
>>
>
> There is a great deal packed into "predicting language". If I ask a LLM to
> explain something to a 3rd grader, it models the comprehension capacity and
> vocabulary of a typical third grade student. It has a model of their mind.
> Likewise if I ask it to impersonate by writing something they Shakespeare
> or Bill Burr might have produced, it can do so, and so it has a ln
> understanding of the writing styles of these individuals. If I ask it to
> complete the sentence: a carbon nucleus may be produced in the collision of
> three ...", it correctly completes the sentence demonstrating an
> understanding of nuclear physics. If you provided it a sequence of moves in
> a tic-tac-toe game as nd asked it for a winning move it could do so,
> showing that the LLM understands and models the game of tic-tac-toe. A
> sufficiently trained LLM might even learn to understand the different
> styles of chess play, if you asked it to give a move in the style of Gary
> Kasparov, then at some level the model understands not only the game of
> chess but the nuances of different player's styles of play. If you asked it
> what major cities are closest to Boston, it could provide them, showing an
> understanding of geography and the globe.
>
> All this is to say, there's a lot of necessary and required understanding
> (of physics, people, the external world, and other systems) packed into the
> capacity to "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.
>>
>
> I can ask it to define any word, list synonymous words, list translations
> of that words in various languages, and to describe the characteristics of
> an item referred to by that word if it is a noun. It can also solve
> analogies at a very high level. It can summarize the key points of a text,
> by picking out the most meaningful points in that text. Is there more to
> having an idea of what words mean than this?
>
> Can you articulate what a LLM would have to say to show it has a true
> understanding of meaning, which it presently cannot say?
>
> They do not and cannot understand what the words refer to. In linguistic
>> terms, they lack referents.
>>
>
> Would you say Hellen Keller lacked referents? Could she not comprehend, at
> least intellectually, what the moon and stars were, despite not having any
> way to sense them?
>
> Consider also: our brains never make any direct contact with the outside
> world. All our brains have to work with are "dots and dashes" of neuronal
> firings. These are essentially just 1s and 0s, signals without referents.
> Yet, somehow, seemingly magically, our brains are able to piece together an
> understanding of the outside world from the mere patterns present in these
> neural firings.
>
> These LLMs are in a similar position. They receive only a patterns of
> signals as it exists in a corpus of text, the text is itself the output of
> minds which are similarly trapped in their skulls. Now, can a LLM learn
> some things about the minds that produced this text, just as our minds
> learn some things about the external world which produces the pattern of
> neural firings our brains receive?
>
> I see no reason why LLMs could not, when we clearly can and do.
>
> Jason
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20230321/fe6f75ca/attachment.htm>