Comment by circuit10
3 years ago
I will admit that I don't know much about Bayesian statistics, but how does something producing probability as an output mean it's not reasoning? I'm pretty sure humans do that consciously and subconsciously all the time and we call that reasoning
Because it's just an arbitrary number. It has no concept of what the numbers mean or what it means when it gets a number that it doesn't have in its existing data set (the "training", more accurately described as references), whereas a human being can make an educated guess, or adapt to the unexpected outcome and thus provide a new novel solution. It isn't thinking about the numbers, it's executing maths, as programmed.
Is a calculator reasoning? It doesn't understand what the numbers mean. It's an input-output machine. Is a sheet of paper with numbers on it the process of reasoning itself? No, of course not. Human beings apply meaning to the output, or feed that output into other things to drive processes that they've already created.
If you kick the Boston Dynamics BigDog, it will compensate for the changes in x sensors and remain upright, or get back up, ergo it can traverse a dynamic (changing) environment, such as a battlefield, or an urban area with cars, people etc. It's not reasoning. It's conditional logic based on different vars. The BigDog bot doesn't understand what it is, where it's going, it doesn't think, it's applying maths to sensor inputs and motors on a recursive loop. If it encounters a problem it hasn't been programmed for, it cannot reason a new solution.
By your logic, video game characters must use reasoning, when no, they don't. It's maths.
Is it all fascinating? Yes, absolutely. Are there uses for it? Yes, absolutely. Is it reasoning? No.
So what is your test for when it is reasoning? It would be both reasoning and intelligence in all or most tests 25 years ago. But now we changed the definitions because ‘it cannot be, this is just stochastic mumbling’. You cannot say it’s not reasoning unless you can give me test that it doesn’t pass that humans do pass.
You in this and other comments vastly overestimate humans it seems; I dare to say that whatever test you come up with; I can pluck a random human of the street that will fail it. And chatgpt probably passes it now or soon. The tests I have seen that gpt fails on also trip over the vast majority of humanity. Not the few elite like probably you and me on HN but the rest yes; you want to say they have no reasoning power either or?
Gpt might be reasoning or it might not be; I cannot say as I don’t understand at all how I reason myself. Or how to describe what it is to reason in coherent terms. Or to test for it. But saying the substrate (meat vs silicon) makes the difference and, even though gpt actually does get a lot of calculations right even though it was not made for it and we don’t understand why that is, means something is going on. I think it will debunk most of the religious arguments we have to elevate us to something special like you and others try to do pretty soon. It seems we will find that our thinking mechanism is a few pages of Python and then trillions of complex calculations to train it. Animals like us did this over millions of years, we will repeat it in 100 years or less.
If a human brain doesn’t use maths, what does it use? It’s Magic?
> "training", more accurately described as references
Uh, no, that's not at all how the training process works. The training process very roughly mirrors evolution/natural selection except more more direct and faster.
This is a good introduction to the concept of how a computer could learn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv6UVOQ0F44
This is a more technical look at how exactly it works in more modern AIs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk (it's a series)
> If it encounters a problem it hasn't been programmed for, it cannot reason a new solution.
But an LLM can? It's not as good at it as a human but it can
Relevant: https://twitter.com/nearcyan/status/1632661647226462211
(if you don’t want to click it it says “referring to AI models as "just math" or "matrix multiplication" is as uselessly reductive as referring to tigers as "just biology" or "biochemical reactions"”)
> By your logic, video game characters must use reasoning, when no, they don't. It's maths.
“By your logic, if tigers are dangerous, then bananas must be too, when no, they aren’t. It’s biology.”
This has to be the most misinformed counterargument of all time. The brain certainly doesn't use maths as it is not a binary system. Information is approximated and estimated. Do some reading on chemically mediated graded responses and how neurotransmitters actually function within a synapse.
Scientific research also suggests there are quantum processes involved that we don't yet grasp, ergo a hypothetical AGI likely won't emerge without using quantum physics.
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I can’t reply to your latest comment for some reason, so:
> This has to be the most misinformed counterargument of all time. The brain certainly doesn't use maths as it is not a binary system. Information is approximated and estimated. Do some reading on chemically mediated graded responses and how neurotransmitters actually function within a synapse.
Uh, what? The brain is a physical object. The way that physical objects work is dictated by the equations of physics (maths). Are you telling me that the brain doesn’t abide by physics?
And weren’t you just telling me that something that uses approximations/probability isn’t reasoning?
“chemically mediated graded responses”
That sounds like roughly the same thing as an activation function that neural networks like GPT models use.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activation_function