[snakeboy]

> And therefore, if an AI had more data that mirrors that experience in some way would it be sufficiently creative to create something "truly original"?

An important distinction seems to lie in a human having original experiences to draw from, while an AI has only "data that mirrors" experiences.

[exe34]

> while an AI has only "data that mirrors" experiences.

True for a lot of current AI. With more robotic bodies, loads more access to cameras/audio/satellite/science measurements, an AI can have original experience on a level that can only be described as god-like compared to humans.

[kraai]

You could argue AI already partly has access to these measurements. You could easily tap into smart sensor data etc, same voor video/audio etc.

The part that AI can't (yet) truly replicate is 'feelings/emotions'. Experiences such feeling dread, loneliness, happiness. Or being anxious, nervous or having goosebumps. You can describe all these states but they are differently experienced for each individual and also dependent on each unique situation.

Ofcourse this also then comes down to how you exactly define emotions.

[exe34]

We don't know that Claude doesn't feel dread when it looks at my code. To be fair, these emotional circuits are the result of evolving in various environments. AI might well have completely new emotions that we just can't comprehend.

[keiferski]

And at this point you’re far off into science fiction, and beyond reasonable discussion of this.

Even then, it’s not really clear to me that an android with the exact appearance of a person will have the same experiences. They aren’t biological creatures with millions of years of evolution behind them.

[EGG_CREAM]

If it has a subjective viewpoint, i.e. sentience. Otherwise it still doesn’t actually experience any of those things, and can’t tell actually you what it’s like to experience those things. It can give you the data readings though.

[brazzy]

Wouldn't it be funny if they missing thing is actually the body, and having one to give the subjective viewpoint something to center on directly leads to emerging sentience?

Though I think there's at least one more important thing missing, namely the ability to form memories - to incorporate recent context into the model's weights. I don't think it's a coincidence that this is a very complex process in humans as well (involving sleep and dreams as neccessary mechanisms).

[rahimnathwani]

ChatGPT has had more conversations than you or I have. And it's conversed with people from a wider range of backgrounds in a wider range of situations.

[perrygeo]

Billions of conversations. Zero lived experience.

The difference is huge. An LLM conversation can contain within it a batshit crazy model of the world and still produce a plausible stream of tokens. No skin in the game. If you don't test your ideas against reality, you don't have a model of reality; you have a model of written human thought. It's critical to understand the difference.

[keiferski]

And? Can you tell me what it feels like to eat a hamburger by asking a thousand people about it?

[everdrive]

I think this is actually a tough one. Yes, I agree that an LLM can never experience this. But -- when a real human needs to translate that experience back into words, it can actually do so just fine.

In other words, when a real human needs to translate an experience into words to share it, A LOT of information is lost. The LLM might actually be better-suited for the the task in your example, even if the point you were driving at stands.

[keiferski]

I don't think it's all that difficult. Language is not a 1-1 match to reality. Ergo any entity which is inherently language-only, will fail to accurately describe the experience.

[brazzy]

Not if the only result you can judge is also language-only, and the entity has access to a large corpus of descriptions produced by people who have had the experience.

[keiferski]

Then you're just comparing descriptions, and you're also dependent on the language skills of the experiencers, and you're still stuck with the problem that language is not a complete map of reality. So an LLM may be able to give you the optimal description of a feeling, on par with what a person would give you; but it won't be equivalent to the actual feeling.

[lordnacho]

That's what we all did in school, didn't we?

Nobody did any original research, you didn't discover gravity, and you didn't participate in any historically significant events.

Yet we say that people who have been through education know about such things.

[keiferski]

That is descriptive knowledge. Not firsthand qualia.

You may know every detail of the American Civil War, from every book ever written on the topic. You may read every journal from every person that wrote one about it.

You do not have firsthand knowledge of what it was like to participate in the war. Any assumption of that knowledge is a (false) generalization of what you think a person “would have thought or felt” based on contemporary ideas of the personality, psychology, etc. Reading a journal entry about a soldier seeing his comrade killed is not equivalent to actually having that experience yourself.

[wild_egg]

So only people who have fought in wars can write novels about fighting in wars?

[keiferski]

If the aim is to have actual knowledge of the experience, then yes.

Of course not all works need to be this way, and many, many books are written about war by people that haven't been in it.

The broader point is that LLMs cannot have original experiences.

[vitorfblima]

He probably could tell you something about it, based on other people's experiences. Doesn't mean he would actually know what he was talking about.

[keiferski]

He could tell you a collection of descriptions. Not actual knowledge firsthand.

Does reading an infinite number of cookbooks mean you know what the ingredients in each taste like?

[rahimnathwani]

Yes, of course.

[keiferski]

That’s a pretty lacking theory of knowledge. How can you know what taste is, if you’re never tasted anything?

If you read a thousand books about living in New York City, is that the same thing as the experiential knowledge that comes from living there in person? I certainly don’t think so.

[rahimnathwani]

keiferski didn't ask for a theory of knowledge. You're moving the goalposts.

[keiferski]

That's literally what the conversation is about: what is knowledge?

You cannot claim that descriptive knowledge of something is equivalent to experiential knowledge of it, unless you have a theory of knowledge explaining why this is the case.