In contrast, we know very little about human brains. We know how they work at a fundamental level, and we have vague understanding of brain regions and their functions, but we have little knowledge of how the complex behavior we observe actually works. The complexity is also orders of magnitude greater than what we can model with current technology, but it's very much an open question whether our current deep learning architectures are even the right approach to model this complexity.
So, sure, emergent behavior is neat and interesting, but just because we can't intuitively understand a system, doesn't mean that we're on the right track to model human intelligence. After all, we find the patterns of the Game of Life interesting, yet the rules for such a system are very simple. LLMs are similar, only far more complex. We find the patterns they generate interesting, and potentially very useful, but anthropomorphizing this technology, or thinking that we have invented "intelligence", is wishful thinking and hubris. Especially since we struggle with defining that word to begin with.
What we do know and have so far, across and cross disciplines, and also from the fact that neural nets are modeled after what we've learned about the human brain, is, it isn't an impossibility to propose that LLMs _could_ be more than just "token prediction machines". There can be 10000 ways of arguing how they are indeed simply that, but there also are a few of ways of arguing that they could be more than what they seem. We can talk about probabilities, but not make a definitive case one way or the other yet, scientifically speaking. That's worth not ignoring or dismissing the few.
That may be. We also don't have a way to scientifically rule out the possibility that a teapot is orbiting Pluto.
Just because you can't disprove something doesn't make it plausible.
We are talking about a computer program. It does nothing until it is invoked with an input and then it produces a deterministic output unless provided a random component to prevent determinism.
That's all it does. It does not live a life of its own between invocations. It does not have a will of its own. Of course it isn't conscious lol how could anyone possibly believe it's conscious? It's an illusion. Don't be fooled.
But the problem is the narrative around this tech. It is marketed as if we have accomplished a major breakthrough in modeling intelligence. Companies are built on illusions and promises that AGI is right around the corner. The public is being deluded into thinking that the current tech will cure diseases, solve world hunger, and bring worldwide prosperity. When all we have achieved is to throw large amounts of data at a statistical trick, which sometimes produces interesting patterns. Which isn't to say that this isn't and can't be useful, but this is a far cry from what is being suggested.
> We can talk about probabilities, but not make a definitive case one way or the other yet, scientifically speaking.
Precisely. But the burden of proof is on the author. They're telling us this is "intelligence", and because the term is so loosely defined, this can't be challenged in either direction. It would be more scientifically honest and accurate to describe what the tech actually is and does, instead of ascribing human-like qualities to it. But that won't make anyone much money, so here we are.
All of this is false.
The point is that one could similarly be dismissive of human brains, saying they're prediction machines built on basic blocks of neuro chemistry and such a view would be asinine.
Per the predictive processing theory of mind, human brains are similarly predictive machines. "Psychology" is an emergent property.
I think it's overly dismissive to point to the fundamentals being simple, i.e. that it's a token prediction algorithm, when it's clear to everyone that it's the unexpected emergent properties of LLMs that everyone is interested in.