Comment by tgv
15 days ago
> But you couldn't explain your brain from principles or its architecture, you'd need all of neuroscience to do it
That's not a good argument. Neuroscience was constructed by (other) brains. The brain is trying to explain itself.
> The truth is that all of the progress on machine learning is absolutely science.
But not much if you're interested in finding out how our brain works, or how language works. One of the interesting outcomes of LLMs is that there apparently is a way to represent complex ideas and their linguistic connection in a (rather large) unstructured state, but it comes without thorough explanation or relation to the human brain.
> Chomsky is [...] pretty flippant about what this stuff can do.
True, that's his style, being belligerently verbose, but others have been pretty much fawning and drooling over a stochastic parrot with a very good memory, mostly with dollar signs in their eyes.
> but others have been pretty much fawning…
This is not relevant. An observer who deceives for purposes of “balancing” other perceived deceptions is as untrustworthy and objectionable as one who deceives for other reasons.