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by croniev 535 days ago
In comparing neural networks to brains it seems like you are implying a relation between the size/complexity of a thinking machine and the reasonability of its thinking. This gives us nothing, because it disregards the fundamental difference that a neural network is a purely mathematical thing, while a brain belongs to an embodied, conscious human being.

For your implication to be plausible, you either need to deny that consciousnes plays a role in reasonability of thinking (making you a physicalist reductionist) or you need to posit that a neural network can have consciousness (some sort of mystical functionalism).

As both of these alternatives imply some heavy metaphysical assumptions and are completely unbased, I'd advise to avoid thinking of neural networks as an analogue of brains with regards to thinking and reasonability. Don't expect they will make more sense with more size. It is and will continue to be mere statistics.

1 comments

I'm not implying anything or delving into metaphysical matters.

All I'm saying above is that the number of neuron-neuron connections in current AI systems is still tiny, so as of right now, we have no way of knowing in advance what the future capabilities of these AI systems will be if we are able to scale them up by 10x, 100x, 1000x, and more.

Please don't attack a straw-man.