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by RC_ITR 1000 days ago
The counterpoint to this is always "models work with numerical vectors and we translate those to/from words"

These things feel sentient because they talk like us, but if I told you that I have a machine that takes 1 20k-dimensional vector and turns it into another meaningful 20k-dimensional vector, you definitely wouldn't call that sentience.
2 comments
dmd 1000 days ago
What if I told you I have a machine that takes 1 20k-dimensional vector and turns it into another meaningful 20k-dimensional vector, but the machine is made of a bunch of proteins and fats and liquids and gels? Would you be willing to call it sentient now?
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buzzscale 1000 days ago
That's ridiculous. You're asking me to believe in sentient meat?

https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...

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RC_ITR 1000 days ago
Bro, I can't even do 5 dimensional vector math.

EDIT: I couldn't help but make the joke, but I am certain my brain is doing zero dot products as a type this. What these models do is just different.

We should consider what that means, and the 'sentience' jump is just lazy thinking to avoid that.

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xg15 1000 days ago
Sorry to tell you, but your brain is doing millions of dot products - it's what the biochemical reactions in the synapses between neurons amount to. We already know how the brain works on that level, we just don't know how it works on a higher level.
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RC_ITR 1000 days ago
Sorry to tell you, but neurons do not follow a dot product structure in any way shape or form beyond basic metaphor.

I mean fine I’ll play along - is it whole numbers? Floating points? How many integers? Are we certain that neurons are even deterministic?

The point I’m making is this whole overuse of metaphor (I agree it’s an ok metaphor) belittles both what the brain and these models are doing. I get that we call them perceptrons and neurons, but friend, don’t tell me that a complex chemical system that we don’t understand is “matrix math” because dendrites exist. It’s kind of rude to your own endocrine system tbh.

Transformers and your brain are both extremely impressive and extremely different things. Doing things like adding biological-inspired noise and biological-inspired resilience might even make Transformers better! We don’t know! But we do know oversimplifying the model of the brain won’t help us get there!

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xg15 1000 days ago
Yes, and you wouldn't believe you're made out of cells as well.

The brain can't see, hear, smell, etc directly and neither can it talk or move hands or feet. "All" it does is receive incoming nerve signals from sensor neurons (which are connected to our sensory organs) and emit outgoing nerve signals through motor neurons (which are connected to our muscles).

So the "data format" is really not that different.

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NobleLie 1000 days ago
Are you sure that is all the brain does?
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xg15 1000 days ago
As far as "inputs and outputs" are concerned, yes. (Well, not quite, I think there is also communication with the body going on through chemical signals - but even this doesn't have to do a lot with how we experience our senses)

Not a neurologist, but that's about what you can read in basic biology textbooks.

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RC_ITR 998 days ago
What is the value of ignoring the endocrine system?

There are plenty of inputs to the brain outside of neural signals and implying otherwise isn't even at the level of basic biology textbooks.

I'll put it this way - what are the 'sensor nerve signals' that make us tired pray tell? Do models 'get tired'?

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