[TeMPOraL]

> Computers are naturally better at computing.

Explain the difference.

> I look forward to hearing how you've delegated thought to the machines, and how that's going.

We all do. That's what you do whenever you fire up a maps app on your phone to plan or navigate, or when you use car navigation. That's what you do when you let the computer sort a list, or notify you about something. That's literally what using Computer-Aided anything software is, because you task the machine with thinking of and enforcing constraints so you don't have to. That's what you do when you run computer simulations for anything. That's what you do each time you have a computer solve an optimization problem, whether to feed your cat or to feed your city.

Our whole modern world is built on outsourcing thinking to machines at every level.

And on top of that, in the last few years computers (yes, I'm talking about the hated "AI") got better at us at various general-purpose, ill-specified activities, such as talking, writing, understanding what people wrote, poetry, visual arts, and so on.

Because as it turns out, it's much easier for us to build machines that are better than our own brains at computing for any purpose, than it is to build physical bodies that are better than ours. That's both fundamental and actual, practical reality today - and all I'm saying is that this has pretty ironic implications that people still haven't grasped yet.

[scns]

>> Computers are naturally better at computing.

> Explain the difference.

Computing: Performing the instructions they are given.

Thinking: Can be introspective, self correcting. May include novel ideas.

> Our whole modern world is built on outsourcing thinking to machines at every level.

I don't think they can think. You can't get a picture of a left hand writing or a clock showing something else then 10:10 from AI. They regurtitate what they are fed and hallucinate instead of admitting lack of ability. This applies to LLMs too as we all know.

[ben_w]

> You can't get a picture of a left hand writing or a clock showing something else then 10:10 from AI.

You as a human have a list of cognitive biases so long you'd get bored reading it.

I'd call current ML "stupid" for different reasons*, but not this kind of thing: We spot AI's failures easy enough, but only because their failures are different than our own failures.

Well, sometimes different. Loooooots of humans parrot lines from whatever culture surrounds them, don't seem to notice they're doing it.

And even then, you're limiting yourself to one subset of what it means to think; and AI demonstrably do produce novel results outside training set; and while I'm aware it may be a superficial similarity, what so-called "reasoning models" produce in their so-called "chain-of-thought transcripts" seems a lot like my own introspection, so you aren't going to convince anyone just by listing "introspection" as if that's an actual answer.

* training example inefficiency

[TeMPOraL]

> Computing: Performing the instructions they are given.

> Thinking: Can be introspective, self correcting. May include novel ideas.

LLMs can perform arbitrary instructions given in natural language, which includes instructions to be introspective and self correcting and generate novel ideas. Is it computing or is it thinking? We can judge the degree to which they can do these things, but it's unclear there's a fundamental difference in kind.

(Also obviously thinking is computation - the only alternative would be believing thinking is divine magic that science can't even talk about.)

I'm less interested in topic of whether LLMs are thinking or parrotting, and more in the observation that offloading cognition on external systems, be their digital, analog, or social, is just something humans naturally do all the time.

[walleeee]

Certainly we have machines that can do any number of tasks for us. The problem is deciding which ones to let them.

Delegating to artificial constructs is an old habit and its effects are more apparent today than ever. It's not the principle I object to but the practice as it stands. Paperclip maximizers are a reality not a thought experiment.

Computing is what we do with a precise algorithm to solve a problem. Thinking is an open question, we know not what yet, really. That's the whole problem with letting machines do it. It's not just cleverness but wisdom that counts