[nomel]

I would claim that, if you think without introspection (that loop), then there is virtually no self check. I'm not sure what "self check" you see that the brain has. Could you describe this "self check in a line of thought"? How do you perceive the check there? This is a genuine question. It definitely doesn't align with how I think about things. I ponder and talk to myself to iterate verify and test my understanding of my own thoughts.

[cauch]

Maybe a good analogy is "throwing a paper plane in real life" and "throwing a paper plane in a video game".

In real life, the paper moves "by itself". It does not need an external loop that update its position in a loop manner.

In the video game, you need an internal loop, a step-by-step tick, that update the plane position based on its current position and its momentum. And this is why a video game paper plane is not a real object. It is a very good simulation, it looks like it, but it is missing some intrinsic properties that we expect from a real object.

Yet you can analyse the paper plane trajectory and see it as a Markov chain, with quantified step-by-step progress (for example one position point every 0.1 second). The same way you can look at your though process and identify a step-by-step progression. But it does not mean that it works like that intrinsically, it does not mean that the paper plane "jumps" from position point at time T1 to position point at time T1+0.1 second.

For the human brain, there is no "loop centre" in the brain. There is no one (to my knowledge) who got a brain injury and suddenly were unable to keep a single line of thought without having someone else having to feed them the previous thought in order to feed the next thought.

In the brain, the fact that the previous thought feeds the next thought is "how it works", it is intrinsic, it is by design. And this mechanism of thoughts feeding the next thoughts is what creates "consciousness" or "awareness": self-reflection is based on the fact that thoughts are intrinsically linked together, that they "flow" continuously, without needing an external system to update them.

You cannot take away the "loop" part of the paper plane so that it suddenly would be unable to move on its own once thrown away.

Now, you can always say "well, the paper plane in the video game is a very good simulation, it does not matter if it is a real object or not", and that is fair enough. But in this discussion, some people have arguments to support that this property matters, that it is one condition for consciousness or awareness.

[nomel]

> For the human brain, there is no "loop centre" in the brain.

There are definitely cognitive feedback loops: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11903256/

Is your argument that, because they're external to the Llm, rather than integrated, they don't count, not even in a practical sense?

I think the result of the system is all that's important. Where/how it's implemented doesn't matter for practical results.

If the argument here is that LLM don't have this built in, you should know that nobody has a practical use for plain LLMs these days. Nobody uses them this way, except for debug. All interesting use is through some kind of harness, with all sorts of systems bolted on. I think these conversations are only meaningful in this "agent" context that people actually use LLM, where they stop when they think they're done.

LLM don't have a some self contained loop, like we do, sure. Who cares though. The actual AI system that we use every day definitely do.

[cauch]

> There are definitely cognitive feedback loops

Have you read the article in question. It is saying that for one continuous thought, the brain will use different part of the brain to do different thing. It does not say that there is a "loop controler" anywhere. On the contrary, it illustrates that there is no loop controller: there is not special brain function that control this loop, this loop is "how the brain works", and LLM don't do that, they are incapable to do that, it is not how they work.

> Is your argument that, because they're external to the Llm, rather than integrated, they don't count, not even in a practical sense?

No, my argument is that the nature of the brain and the nature of the LLM are very different, as different as a real paper plane and a video game paper plane. Some characteristics (for example, awareness) that exist in the brain cannot exist in the LLM because these characteristics are the result of the nature of the thing in question.

The problem is not that you build a system by integrating 2 things together. The problem is that they are different "things", they are different machines, they function, fundamentally, differently. They may produce the same output, but when you say "the brain has the characteristic X, the LLM produce the same output, so the LLM also has the characteristic X", it is logically inconsistent.

Planes are built as a system combining 2 things: a motor and some wings. But they are fundamentally different from a bird. They just don't "work" the same. It is not the same mechanism.

> you should know that nobody has a practical use for plain LLMs these days

That is totally irrelevant. My point is about the nature of the LLM, and the fact that it is stupid to see the same output and to conclude that they have the same characteristic. It is like saying "Birds are flying in the air and are alive. Planes are flying in the air, so I guess they are alive".

> LLM don't have a some self contained loop, like we do, sure. Who cares though. The actual AI system that we use every day definitely do.

No, you miss the point. The problem is not that "you can just add an external loop". The problem is that the brain is a system that works without such control loop. The thoughts are flowing (and they may flow to different brain functions, like explained in the article you quote). It is part of how the system works. Having a system that contains 2 things, one that does one computation and one that control the loop is not equivalent to another system where you cannot decouple the "flowing of the thought" from the "thinking machine".