[jeffparsons]

Serious question, in pursuit of understanding where you're coming from: in what way do you think that your own reckoning is fundamentally different to or more "real" than what you're describing above?

I know I don't experience the world as it is, but rather through a whole bunch of different signals I get that give me some hints about what the real world might be. For example, text.

[Guvante]

You understand the concept of true vs false.

LLM does not, that isn't how it works.

You can say the difference is academic but there is a difference.

What is the difference between a real good faker of intelligence and actual intelligence is an open question.

But I will say most AI experts agree that LLM are not artificial general intelligence. It isn't just a lack of training data, they just are not of the category that we mean by that.

[xcv123]

> You understand the concept of true vs false.

> LLM does not, that isn't how it works.

GPT-4 can explain the concept when prompted and can evaluate logic problems better than most human beings can. I would say it has a deeper understanding of "true vs false" than most humans.

I think what you are trying to say is that LLMs are not conscious. Consciousness has no precise universally agreed formal definition, but we all know that LLMs are not conscious.

[weebull]

> GPT-4 can explain the concept when prompted and can evaluate logic problems better than most human beings can. I would say it has a deeper understanding of "true vs false" than most humans.

Sigh

GPT produces output which obeys the patterns it has been trained on for definitions of true and false. It does not understand anything. It is a token manipulation machine. It does it well enough that it convinces you, a walking ape, that it understands. It does not.

[xcv123]

A human is an ape that is obeying patterns that it has been trained on. What is school but a bunch of apes being trained to obey patterns? Some of these apes do well enough to convince you that it understands things. Some apes fully "understand" that flat earth theory is true, or they "understand" that the Apollo moon landings were faked.

You have a subjective philosophical disagreement about what constitutes understanding. That is fine. I clearly understand it is not conscious and that programs do not understand things the way that humans do. We are fundamentally different to LLMs. That is obvious. But you are not making a technical argument here unless you can define "understand" in technical terms. This is a matter of semantics.

> It is a token manipulation machine

Deep learning and machine learning in general is more than token manipulation. They are designed for pattern recognition.

[Guvante]

You acknowledged above that consciousness isn't what LLM is and you likely understand that the poster was referring to that...

The broad strokes you use here are exactly why discussing LLMs are hard. Sure some people dismiss them because it isn't general AI but having supporters dismiss any argument with "passes the Turning test" is equally useless.

[xcv123]

No you have misunderstood. As I wrote above:

"But you are not making a technical argument here unless you can define "understand" in technical terms. This is a matter of semantics."

I said the nature of their argument is not technical, since they are not dealing with technical definitions, but I did not dismiss their argument altogether. I clarified and restated their own argument for them in clearer terms. LLMs are not conscious, but they can still "understand" very well depending on your definition of understand. Understanding is not a synonym for consciousness. Language is evolving and you need to be more precise when discussing AI / machine learning.

One definition of understand is:

"perceive the intended meaning of (words, a language, or a speaker)."

Deep learning models recognize patterns. Mechanical perception of patterns. They understand things mechanically, unconsciously.

[edflsafoiewq]

In order to affirm something is true, you don't just need to know it, you need to know that you know it. LLMs fundamentally have no self-knowledge.

[xcv123]

> LLMs fundamentally have no self-knowledge

ChatGPT can tell me about itself when prompted. It tells me that it is an LLM. It can tell me about capabilities and limitations. It can describe the algorithms that generate itself. It has deep self knowledge, but is not conscious.

[user_named]

LLMs only knows it's text embeddings. It does not know the real world. Clear?

[xcv123]

Humans and other creatures only know their sensory data input. Therefore they also don't know the real world.

Your eyes and ears perceive a tiny minuscule fraction of what is out there in the real world.

A blind and deaf person must know even less of the real world than an LLM, which can read more than a human can ever read in their lifetime.