[Alchemista]

Don't you think the onus should be on the people making the fantastical claims to prove it? If human cognition is ill-defined, then define it before making grand claims like ML models being on some path of childhood development and is a few steps from being an adult.

[orbital-decay]

I think that neither side has a convincing argument in these discussions, actually, I'm pointing out that both extremes - anthropomorphism and stochastic parrot - lack any foundation, so I wouldn't be so confident. The behavior of neither statistical models nor biological systems is well understood. It's entirely possible that every trait you consider human can naturally emerge from a dumb statistical model, and indeed certain processes are remarkably similar as the models get bigger, smarter, and have better training data. It's possible that it can't, however.

[daveguy]

The stochastic parrot is much more grounded in the physical reality of how the models are structured, trained, and produce outputs than the "it's like people" argument. Statistical models are much better understood than biological systems. That said, your penultimate statement is true:

> It's entirely possible that every trait you consider human can naturally emerge from a dumb statistical model, and indeed certain processes are remarkably similar as the models get bigger, smarter, and have better training data.

I just don't think it's likely given the biological complexity we are washing over with the statistical model.