[dartos]

We… can’t really understand how neural networks work, but we can definitely tell they’re not intelligent beyond making good sounding word soup (as demonstrated in their minimal practical reasoning abilities)

I wouldn’t call pagerank intelligent, even though I can give it a text prompt and get relevant information back.

In my view, the only difference between that and an llm is the natural language interface.

I’m no expert on intelligence, but I’d expect being able to introspect and continually learn to be part of it.

[welferkj]

You're engaging in explaining away intelligence.

One way to help you notice this is to try and estimate how many billions of people you've defined out of "being intelligent" with your latest goalpost movement.

Be honest, how many people do you think "introspect and continually learn" on a daily basis?

[cootsnuck]

> Be honest, how many people do you think "introspect and continually learn" on a daily basis?

That's wild if you think that isn't quite literally one of the defining features of human consciousness (and many would say other animals as well).

If you think people thinking differently than you means they don't still indeed...think...then I don't know what tell you.

[welferkj]

Unfortunately for the intelligence denial crowd, introspection and learning capability is something we can measure, as opposed to the vibes-based discourse you prefer to engage in. If that's what you've picked for your threshold of "intelligence", you've reduced the majority of the bell curve's left side to soulless automatons. Again, your definition, not mine.

[dartos]

My definition (again, as a layman on the subject of intelligence philosophy), but your incorrect analysis.

I guess I just think more highly of my fellow humans.

[exe34]

> I guess I just think more highly of my fellow humans.

As an article of faith, yes. But I don't see what this adds to the discussion.

[dartos]

> If that's what you've picked for your threshold of "intelligence", you've reduced the majority of the bell curve's left side to soulless automatons

I disagree with this statement, which is the crux of their argument against my definition of intelligence.

I don’t think any credible survey of the intelligence or lack of a large enough population exists (due to there not being a common binary measure of intelligence), so it’s an issue you kind of need to take on faith.

[ImHereToVote]

>so it’s an issue you kind of need to take on faith.

Thanks for playing.

[dartos]

It cuts both ways… you need to believe that most humans aren’t actually intelligent as we don’t have any data that suggests that most humans aren’t.

[dartos]

It’s crazy to me that people would rather believe that we can create intelligence by feeding the text of the internet into a statistics machine, than believe that the people making that text are intelligent.

[welferkj]

It's crazy to me people would rather deny the intelligence of a large segment of the human population than admit to the increasing overlap between it and AI.

That's what you're doing when you keep moving the goalposts of "real intelligence" further and further right on the bell curve. You're denying the intelligence and consciousness of billions of people (and counting) just so you don't have to admit there's nothing magical about intelligence.

Sometime in the next 10 years, you'll have to start thinking of yourself as a soulless automaton to keep up the delusion. Good luck with that.

[dartos]

> It's crazy to me people would rather deny the intelligence of a large segment of the human population than admit to the increasing overlap between it and AI.

You’re the one here denying. I think the vast majority (if not all) of humans are intelligent under my definition. You do not.

I don’t think LLMs or other statistical models are.

[welferkj]

Under the latest definition you made up on the spot, yes. And definitely not all.

So what's your plan when the fraction keeps shrinking? When you're no longer in it?

This is simple interpolation. It is plainly obvious that at some point soon, you will be faced with the fact that there's nothing magical about intelligence. When that happens, will you concede that, or start thinking of yourself as a soulless automaton?

If you can't project that far forward, I question whether you meet any meaningful definition of "intelligent" right now.

[dartos]

> how many people do you think "introspect and continually learn" on a daily basis?

At the very least, every single person who plays sports, video games, tries finding a way around traffic, a faster route home, a way to do less work, take a longer break, or a way to save some extra money getting food.

Literally any optimization task at all requires an observation, analysis (read: introspection,) and adjustment. That’s why we model training loops as optimization problems.

We spoof that with REACT prompts in LLMs, but it becomes clear after a few iterations that there’s no real optimization going on, just guessing at tokens (a gross oversimplification, as this guessing has real uses). It’s doing what it was trained to do, completes text. Not to mention that those steps all disappear when the prompt is changed.

[exe34]

> One way to help you notice this is to try and estimate how many billions of people you've defined out of "being intelligent" with your latest goalpost movement.

love this, I will use this in future rants.

[dartos]

That argument only works if your audience already thinks of humans as mostly automotons…

[exe34]

It's an operational definition: if you claim AI is not intelligent because it cannot do X, then you necessarily exclude a whole lot of humans who also can't do X.

There used to be a strident faction that would say "but AI can't produce original art/a symphony/novel/etc". My answer was usually (correctly), "neither can you."

[dartos]

> It's an operational definition: if you claim AI is not intelligent because it cannot do X, then you necessarily exclude a whole lot of humans who also can't do X.

Sure, but I think most people are intelligent according to my definition, but AI is not…

You’re already coming from the assumption that people are “souless automatons,” which is probably why the idea of a machine being “intelligent” is so easy for you to accept.

> There used to be a strident faction that would say "but AI can't produce original art/a symphony/novel/etc". My answer was usually (correctly), "neither can you."

This is a dumb apples and oranges comparison. AI as a concept is different than a concrete person.

AI as a concept can do anything, it’s a conceptual placeholder for an everything machine.

[dartos]

I can’t reply to the other comment, but “soulless” was to quote the other commenter. Having a soul (whatever that might mean) holds no bearing on what I’m saying.

[exe34]

> You’re already coming from the assumption that people are “souless automatons

do your people obey the laws of physics? is the soul magical or physical?