Comment by windexh8er
13 hours ago
Wow.
You’re using ‘derived’ to imply ‘therefore equivalent.’ That’s a category error. A cookbook is derived from food culture. Does an LLM taste food? Can it think about how good that cookie tastes?
A flight simulator is derived from aerodynamics - yet it doesn’t fly.
Likewise, text that resembles reasoning isn’t the same thing as a system that has beliefs, intentions, or understanding. Humans do. LLMs don't.
Also... Ask an LLM what's the difference between a human brain and an LLM. If an LLM could "think" it wouldn't give you the answer it just did.
Ask an LLM what's the difference between a human brain and an LLM. If an LLM could "think" it wouldn't give you the answer it just did.
I imagine that sounded more profound when you wrote it than it did just now, when I read it. Can you be a little more specific, with regard to what features you would expect to differ between LLM and human responses to such a question?
Right now, LLM system prompts are strongly geared towards not claiming that they are humans or simulations of humans. If your point is that a hypothetical "thinking" LLM would claim to be a human, that could certainly be arranged with an appropriate system prompt. You wouldn't know whether you were talking to an LLM or a human -- just as you don't now -- but nothing would be proved either way. That's ultimately why the Turing test is a poor metric.
> Right now, LLM system prompts are strongly geared towards not claiming that they are humans or simulations of humans. If your point is that a hypothetical "thinking" LLM would claim to be a human, that could certainly be arranged with an appropriate system prompt. You wouldn't know whether you were talking to an LLM or a human -- just as you don't now -- but nothing would be proved either way. That's ultimately why the Turing test is a poor metric.
The mental gymnastics here is entertainment at best. Of course the thinking LLM would give feedback on how it's actually just a pattern model over text - well, we shouldn't believe that! The LLM was trained to lie about it's true capabilities in your own admission?
How about these...
What observable capability would you expect from "true cognitive thought" that a next-token predictor couldn’t fake?
Where are the system’s goals coming from—does it originate them, or only reflect the user/prompt?
How does it know when it’s wrong without an external verifier? If the training data says X and the answer is Y - how will it ever know it was wrong and reach the correct conclusion?
How does it know when it’s wrong without an external verifier? If the training data says X and the answer is Y - how will it ever know it was wrong and reach the correct conclusion?
You need to read a few papers with publication dates after 2023.
You’re arguing against a straw man. No one is claiming LLMs have beliefs, intentions, or understanding. They don’t need them to be economically useful.
Oh yes, they are.
And beyond people claiming that LLMs are basically sentient you have people like CamperBob2 who made this wild claim:
"""There's no such thing as people without language, except for infants and those who are so mentally incapacitated that the answer is self-evidently "No, they cannot."
Language is the substrate of reason. It doesn't need to be spoken or written, but it's a necessary and (as it turns out) sufficient component of thought."""
Let that sink. They literally think that there's no such thing as people without language. Talk about a wild and ignorant take on life in general!
How'd they communicate with the test subjects?
That's "language."