[feketegy]

In other news, water is wet.

I don't think anybody who uses LLMs professionally day-to-day thinks that it can reason like human beings... If some people thought this, they fundamentally do not understand how LLMs work under the hood.

[simonklitj]

I think most people, my close relatives included, who use LLMs professionally day-to-day do not understand how LLMs work under the hood.

[Lerc]

There are quite a lot of options out at the extremes and both ends seem to presuppose things about consciousness that even specialist's in the field have debated for years.

I'm ok with thinking it's possible that some subset of consciousness might exist in LLMs while also being well aware of their limitations. Cognitive science has plenty of examples of mental impairments that show that there are individuals that lack some of the things that LLMs also lack that. We would hardly deny those individuals are conscious. The distinction for what is thought is lower but no less complex.

Before we had machines pushing at these boundaries, there were very learned people debating these issues, but it seems like now some gut instincts from people who have chatted to a bot for a bit are carrying the day.

[stevenhuang]

The knowledge of how LLMs work under the hood says nothing about how humans reason.

They are completely independent. For all we know human reasoning may absolutely share similar underlying principles as LLMs. Or not. We just don't know.

[openplatypus]

Oh buddy, step our of your bubble. There are people out there who swear by LLM being a modern day mesahiah. And no, this are not just SV VCs trying to sell their investments.

[IshKebab]

Sure but VCs always exaggerate. Remember the dot com bubble? Or "there's an app for that"?

The internet and smartphones were still extremely useful. There's no need to refute VC exaggeration. It's like writing articles to prove that perfume won't catch you Bradd Pitt. Nobody literally believes the adverts but that doesn't mean perfume is a lie.

I'm not saying that VCs only push good ideas - e.g. flying cars & web3 aren't going to work. Just that their claims are obviously exaggerated and can be ignored, even for useful ideas.