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by stickfigure 633 days ago
Neural networks are much closer to modeling a brain than other approaches to AI, ie symbolic reasoning. There will always be differences (it's machine, not meat), but it's fair to say the approach is at least "brain like".

Your position sounds like a No True Scotsman fallacy.
2 comments
binoct 633 days ago
Sorry if it came across as non-falsifiable, that was not the intent.

Neural networks do not directly encode high-level reasoning and logic, yes. But in the spectrum of “does this model the actual functioning of an animal/human brain”, they lack both a 1st order model of how biological neurons and neural chemistry behaves, but also lack anything like the multiple levels of structural specialization present in nervous systems. That’s the basis for my argument.

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stickfigure 632 days ago
That's true, but we also don't know that the multiple levels of structural specialization are necessary to produce "approximately human" intelligence.

Let's say two alien beings landed on earth today and want you to settle a bet. They both look weird in different ways but they seem to talk alike. One of them says "I'm intelligent, that other frood is fake. His brain doesn't have hypersynaptic gibblators!" The other says "No, I'm the intelligent one, the other frood's brain doesn't have floozium subnarblots!"

Who cares? Intelligence is that which acts intelligent. That's the point of the Turing test, and why I think it's still relevant.

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binoct 632 days ago
I think we are arguing on different tracks, probably due to a difference in understanding of ‘model’.

There are arguments to be made, including the Turing test, for some sort of intelligence and potential equivalence for LLMs. I am probably more skeptical than most here that current technology is approaching human intelligence, and I believe the Turing test is in many ways a weak test. But for me that is different, more complex discussion I would not be so dismissive of.

I was originally responding to the claim “isn’t a neural network a simplified model of the working of the human brain”. A claim I interpreted to mean that NNs are system models of the brain. Emphasis on “model of the working of”, as opposed to “model of the output of”.

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wredue 633 days ago
AI fanatics claiming to know SHIT THE TOP TIER NEURAL SCIENCE HAS NO FIRM IDEA OF.

We know there are neurons and that electric signals hit between them. That’s it. Literally everything else about your claim is bogus nonsense.

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