Word predictors don't think any more than a magic 8-ball does.
Comment on Has anyone or anything ever passed the Turring Test? If so how and why?
Epp@lemmus.org 2 weeks ago
Almost every LLM available can pass the Turing test, because they can indeed think. Some, like Gemini, will even give you a stream of consciousness as they think. However, many luddites expect perfection from the technology, so they will claim the thinking is inadequate, or that the test is flawed. Neither is there, they’re just very bitter about the technology for reasons unrelated to it’s capabilities.
dandi8@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
Epp@lemmus.org 2 weeks ago
Your oversimplification is noted. I assume you believe humans are word predictors, too? Just biological, instead of mechanical. In both cases, using input and electrical signals to create an output.
dandi8@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
No, humans are not word predictors, and my claim is absolutely not an oversimplification.
LLMs are word predictors. No amount of attention heads and backpropagation is going to change that. Scientific researchers agree.
The human brain works in a completely different way to how LLMs do and to conflate the two like you did os disingenuous.
Epp@lemmus.org 2 weeks ago
Plants and animals work in completely different ways, but they’re both alive. Just because something works differently doesn’t invalidate it’s results and existence.
If LLM didn’t think, it would be gibberish - just words related to the input. Instead, they are typically logical, sound, relevant responses; often with insight made by extrapolated data in the periphery of the prompt.
What you are expecting is consciousness, which they do not have yet. Thinking, though, yes.
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Don’t get fooled by clever tricks from developers, LLMs are a mathematical function, where it gets the chain of numbers you give it and returns a new chain of numbers. LLMs are 100% predeterministic, programmers purposefully make them choose a random response within a degree of tolerance instead of picking the correct answer.
I saw you making this claim on another comment, this is COMPLETELY different from how humans/animals/plants think. LLMs are incapable of thought, incapable of learning, and incapable of understanding, that’s why they fail dumb tests like “how many Rs in strawberry”, they’re just average machines.
They’re not useless, they’re not intelligent, they’re a tool, you don’t think your calculator is intelligent because it can do math you can’t, and shouldn’t think an LLM is intelligent because it can aggregate texts that you can’t.
All that being said, you’re correct that LLMs do pass the Turing test, but that doesn’t mean what you think it does, it just means they’re very good at pretending to.
Epp@lemmus.org 2 weeks ago
I would argue that humans are the same, we just don’t have access to our programming. If we did, and could measure the state of our brains, we would be entirely deterministic, as well.
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That’s a very Newtonian way to look at the world. Even IF that was correct (which is not because of the uncertainty principle), if you go down that road you will get to the conclusion that everything is intelligent even a simple program that chooses an alternate greeting between Hello and Hi can be considered intelligent by that standard.
Epp@lemmus.org 2 weeks ago
Yes, I know, and what you’re overlooking is that the uncertainty principle applies to LLM, as well, and even your example alternating algorithm.
That’s why a solid definition of intelligence is necessary, and my own is that the closer the number of potential responses approaches infinity, the more intelligent it is. On this scale modern AI is not as intelligent as humans, but it’s certainly more intelligent than your alternating greeting.