[peddling-brink]

Today maybe. I disagree in the long term.

While they’ll never have the same subjective experience as humans, what stops an LLM from applying similar lines of thought* in a manner that results in a novel conjecture?

They are prediction machines, and so are we in a way. We can give them nearly limitless resources to scale their predictive capabilities. We have billions of years of training baked in. They distill directly from our knowledge and can walk down paths that no human has before.

It’s silly to say they’ll never do anything novel.

At their current capabilities, it sounds like they are already capable of being a specific type is research assistant. What will that look like in 10-20 years?

[seiferteric]

They also have ability to go deep and wide in a way that humans just can't. We have limits, get tired, distracted and biased where AI does not. I think there a lot of problem where all the information needed to solve them is there, but we just can't put the pieces together. Like no matter how many people you throw at some problems, you hit human limits and more people won't help, but AI will because it is just relentless.

[qsera]

>biased where AI does not.

AI can be totally biased...

The fact that it can spout bullshit all day long to a human who can be tired and would actually act on the said bullshit, is not very comforting...

For example, an LLM could confidently declare something a tired human would take as a fact, but would backfire in a real world.

[seiferteric]

Not really the kind of biased I meant though. There was a recent article about a AI disproving I think an Erdos conjecture by doing similar things humans have tried, but it was much messier and less "beautiful". I think it is a common bias in science and math that things should be "beautiful" but there is no real reason to think that.

[qsera]

>what stops an LLM from applying similar lines of thought* in a manner that results in a novel conjecture?

One thing is that an LLM can never assume, or find out, an inconsistency in its training data. Novel ideas often require correction of existing assumptions. As far as I understand, it is impossible, by design, for LLMs to contradict what is in its training data.

For example, an LLM trained on the data from an internet comprised of people who believe in the earth centric hypothesis can never say "Hey, that cannot be correct", or come up with the heliocentric alternative

But maybe it is not applicable to pure Math...

[WarmWash]

They can, but it's limited to that specific chat context.

[qsera]

They can spot contradictions in the the prompt. But not in their own training data.

[qarl2]

> While they’ll never have the same subjective experience as humans

You state this as a fact - are you aware the question is unresolved?

EDIT: I'd love to know why you're downvoting me for stating a known fact.

[peddling-brink]

Ok, I guess never is a real long time and eventually when we merge our consciousness with the machines we may have the same subjective experience.

I can confidently state that GPT-5.6 Sol is not experiencing the same reality as me. They _might_ be "experiencing" and I personally think they are, but their reality and experience is not the same as ours.

[qarl2]

Well, sure. I'm not experiencing the same reality as you, either. I guess I assumed you were implying something more - a lesser experience or something. No?

[skeledrew]

Fear spreads.