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PaperclipPerfector  17d ago (text post)   32901 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 4, 2024

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LLMs aren't going to replace humans because the set of all data is miniscule to the set of all potential patterns in the world.

I mean, you can say LLMs aren't going to replace humans...but the 'potential patterns in the world' are all reducible to data in one way or another.

So some Machine trained on language AND physics data AND biology AND etc. etc. is still a potential contender, no?

the 'potential patterns in the world' are all reducible to data in one way or another

I mean is it? Quantitative Realism doesn't exactly seem self evident.

I've consistently pointed AI hype believers to their own metaphysical assumptions and this is the crux of it.

Are we just pattern matching engines or does agency have another source and is that in anyway connected to our experience of consciousness?

I think when people believed that larger gizmoes we don't fully understand would give us the answer to this question, they were deluding themselves, and I'm somewhat dissapointed that I was right since we are still without answers. But at least the possibility that we have a soul, ghost or another manner of special thing that automata don't is still secure.

Now the real test will be this: if Musk can convince enough people to use Neuralink and get their brain patterns recorded 24/7, and if someone trains transformers on that, what will be the outcome? Can we Chinese room our way to general intelligence?

I don't know, but it seems like the most logical way forward, since access to immense unpolluted datasets is no longer a possibility.

I mean is it? Quantitative Realism doesn't exactly seem self evident.

Isn't Computational Complexity Theory supposed to tackle questions of this kind?

Scott Aaronson offered the following highly evocative metaphor:

The best definition of complexity theory I can think of is that it’s quantitative theology: the mathematical study of hypothetical superintelligent beings such as gods. Its concerns include:

  • If a God or gods existed, how could they reveal themselves to mortals? (IP=PSPACE, or MIP=NEXP in the polytheistic case.)
  • Which gods are mightier than which other gods? (PNP vs. PP, SZK vs. QMA, BQPNP vs. NPBQP, etc. etc.)
  • Could a munificent God choose to bestow His omniscience on a mortal? (EXP vs. P/poly.)
  • Can oracles be trusted? (Can oracles be trusted?)

And of course:

  • Could mortals ever become godlike themselves? (P vs. NP, BQP vs. NP.)

Although I doubt such general questions and theories are that helpful in guiding our research: they provide boundaries for what is possible, but what is practical typically lies far away from those boundaries.

Scott's metaphor is funny to think about but it has no philosophical rigor.

Complexity theory is not meaningfully different from other mathematics in its relationship to the metaphysical: it's a pure reason construct that attempts to map out necessary truths.

In many ways it it actually completely disconnected from the question at hand, because the machines it is concerned about are abstractions that are not and cannot possibly be real. They just happen to map onto real objects in a useful enough way. As you point out.

Scott isn't the first to connect this type of endeavor and the sacred. Pythagoras did it a long time ago. But the connection isn't relevant to the question of intelligence in my view.

I think pure data is a directionally useful way of looking at the world, and useful for most problem-solving purposes. I am a theist so I think there’s more beyond just physical reality, but whether or not it’s true, I think that for most projects, reducing the universe to data is going to work just fine. Consciousness is produced in the brain, and definitely experienced there, so I think you can get something like a conscious AI simply by recreating a brain. Might be easier to start with a dog or something like that, but I think even though there’s a metaphysical aspect to consciousness, that doesn’t mean that there’s no point to studying it in brains.

I suppose it comes down to whether or not there is a ghost in the machine.

If human intelligence is all neurons that can be modeled as a graph with weighted edges then we should be able to simulate it.

Maybe we do that and still can’t get human intelligence to pop out of the simulated brain and find that something is missing.

It would be a bit funny if they design a machine that is provably a 1:1 simulation of a human brain, switch it on, and get an error message to the effect of "Cannot Execute Commands: This unit is not ensouled."

“Humunculus not installed: please refer to manual.”

I mean, that kind of sounds like you're saying it's provably not a 1:1 simulation of a human brain.

What you're describing is measurable evidence of new physics. Every physicist in the world would want to buy you a beer.

...Please contact your local soul provider for further information

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