Comment by DavidPiper
4 days ago
I agree with you in concept, but it's still 100% category error to talk like this.
AIs don't have souls. They don't have egos.
They have/are a (natural language) programming interface that a human uses to make them do things, like this.
Within the framing that it's all fundamentally a make-document-longer algorithm, I propose "seed document."
While there's some metaphor to it, it's the kind behind "seed crystals" for ice and minerals, referring to non-living and mostly-mathematical process.
If someone went around talking about how the importance of "Soul Crystals" or "Ego Crystals", they would quite rightly attract a lot of very odd looks, at least here on Earth and not in a Final Fantasy game.
I quite like seed but for a different reason - if you squint a bit, it looks like a natural evolution of a random number seed.
My complaint against seed would be that it still harkens back to a biological process that could be easily and creatively conflated when it's convenient.
Pretty sure the term "seed" for a pRNG initial value is already derived from the same crystal seed analogy...
> I quite like seed but for a different reason - if you squint a bit, it looks like a natural evolution of a random number seed.
Nice!
> I agree with you in concept, but it's still 100% category error to talk like this.
It's a category error heavily promoted by the makers of these LLMs and their fans. Take an existing word that implies something very advanced (thinking, soul, etc.) and apply it grandiosely to some bit of your product. Then you can confuse people into thinking your product is much more grand and important. It's thinking! It has a soul! It's got the capabilities of a person! It is a a person!
Oh, completely. I've started calling people on it in-person and it's been quite interesting to see who understands this immediately with a single prompt (no pun intended), and who is a true believer, as it were.
It lives in the cloud!
..
marketing does what it does.
I read this as "ego" being a reflection of the creator, not a property of the llm.
Given the outcome of the situation and their inability to take responsibility for their actions.
Oh I think you're right, thank you for the callout. Sorry for the misread, GP.
> AIs don't have souls. They don't have egos.
You could argue the same for humans. Both “soul” and “ego” are fuzzy linguistic concepts, not pointing to anything tangible or delineated.
“Don’t create things which are not there” https://isha.sadhguru.org/en/wisdom/article/what-is-ego