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Comment by mrandish

4 hours ago

> For the benefit of a layman, can you explain why this is so much different than a human doing it?

More broadly than the existing answers (which are correct), For a layman, I'd also add that LLMs are essentially 'brains in a vat'. They can't confirm ground truth about physical reality. They only know what's in their training data and prompt, which is incomplete and can be incorrect. Even with real-time external sensors they are limited to the sensor's margin of error, range and trusting it's working correctly.

When properly trained, fine-tuned and prompted, LLMs can be very effective in well-defined, non-physical domains like logic, writing, math and code but making things function in the real-world quickly spirals into combinatorial complexity.

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mrandish

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interstice  4 hours ago

> They are limited to the sensor's margin of error, range and trusting it's working correctly

So are we and our sensors can be pretty vague in comparison, I can only imagine human error correction is pretty next level.

hackyhacky  3 hours ago

> They can't confirm ground truth about physical reality.

That's true. Of course we can hook an llm up to Motors and sensors. That's a robot. Or a self-driving car. So would you say that those devices can confirm the ground truth about physical reality, and therefore are capable of creativity?

  • mrandish  2 hours ago

    > So would you say that those devices can confirm the ground truth about physical reality

    Within the limits of resolution, range, location and veracity of sensors, a machine can register their reported state and use it as a variable. That's substantially different than the level of knowledge and understanding implied when we say a human "confirms ground truth about physical reality." The first ~half of the difference is humans have a deep world model about the planet which surrounds any sensor and human sensations are pre-processed and filtered by a highly evolved bio-chemical substrate before ever reaching the higher-order cognitive processes which assign words, meaning and qualia to them.

    > therefore are capable of creativity?

    I never mentioned creativity, nor would I in relation to LLMs. Like "Intelligence", "Creativity" is far too vague to be of any use in assessing the capabilities, limitations or utility of LLMs.

    On HN, posts like the OP tend to attract POVs at polar extremes from "LLMs are nothing more than stochastic parrots" to "LLMs are (or can be) as intelligent, creative, innovative (etc) as any human or all humans combined." I've researched and thought a lot about these and related topics for a very long time, Neither POV is going to find any quick agreement or easy answers from me.

    There's a tiny germ of truth somewhere in both extremes that's drowning in an ocean of confusion ranging from "definitionally or categorically muddled" to "mostly incorrect" to "not even wrong". But neither POV seems interested in anything more than drive-by hot takes, debating over-simplistic strawmen or trading 'gotcha' hypotheticals.