[IanCal]

> Don't be sycophantic. Disagree and push back when appropriate.

They can do this though.

> Can they spontaneously come up with something, anything, without any external input?

I don’t see any why not, but then humans don’t have zero input so I’m not sure why that’s useful.

[zahlman]

> but then humans don’t have zero input

Humans don't require input to, say, decide to go for a walk.

What's missing in the LLM is volition.

[dragonwriter]

> Humans don't require input to, say, decide to go for a walk.

Impossible to falsify since humans are continuously receiving inputs from both external and internal sensors.

> What's missing in the LLM is volition.

What's missing is embodiment, or, at least, a continuous loop feeding a wide variety of inputs about the state of world. Given that, and info about of set of tools by which it can act in the world, I have no doubt that current LLMs would exhibit some kind (possibly not desirable or coherent, from a human POV, at least without a whole lot of prompt engineering) of volitional-seeming action.

[jmcodes]

Our entire extistence and experience is nothing _but_ input.

Temperature changes, visual stimulus, auditory stimulus, body cues, random thoughts firing, etc.. Those are all going on all the time.

[goatlover]

Random thoughts firing wouldn't be input, they're an internal process to the organism.

[jmcodes]

It's a process that I don't have conscious control over.

I don't choose to think random thoughts they appear.

Which is different than thoughts I consciously choose to think and engage with.

From my subjective perspective it is an input into my field of awareness.

[zeroonetwothree]

Your subjective experience is only the tip of the iceberg of your entire brain activity. The conscious part is merely a tool your brain uses to help it achieve its goals, there's no inherent reason to favor it.

[IanCal]

LLMs can absolutely generate output without input but we don’t have zero input. We don’t exist in a floating void with no light or sound or touch or heat or feelings from our own body.

But again this doesn’t see to be the same thing as thinking. If I could only reply to you when you send me a message but could reason through any problem we discuss just like “able to want a walk” me could, would that mean I no longer could think? I think these are different issues.

On that though, these see trivially solvable with loops and a bit of memory to write to and read from - would that really make the difference for you? A box setup to run continuously like this would be thinking?

[ithkuil]

It's as if a LLM is only one part of a brain, not the whole thing.

So of course it doesn't do everything a human does, but it still can do some aspects of mental processes.

Whether "thinking" means "everything a human brain does" or whether "thinking" means a specific cognitive process that we humans do, is a matter of definition.

I'd argue that defining "thinking" independently of "volition" is a useful definition because it allows us to break down things in parts and understand them

[BeetleB]

> Humans don't require input to, say, decide to go for a walk.

Very much a subject of contention.

How do you even know you're awake, without any input?

[esafak]

I would not say it is missing but thankfully absent.