this post was submitted on 15 May 2024
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Why is that a criticism? This is how it works for humans too: we study, we learn the stuff, and then try to recall it during tests. We've been trained on the data too, for neither a human nor an ai would be able to do well on the test without learning it first.
This is part of what makes ai so "scary" that it can basically know so much.
LLMs know nothing. literally. they cannot.
I guess it comes down to a philosophical question as to what "know" actually means.
But from my perspective is that it certainly knows some things. It knows how to determine what I'm asking, and it clearly knows how to formulate a response by stitching together information. Is it perfect? No. But neither are humans, we mistakenly believe we know things all the time, and miscommunications are quite common.
But this is why I asked the follow up question...what's the effective difference? Don't get me wrong, they clearly have a lot of flaws right now. But my 8 year old had a lot of flaws too, and I assume both will get better with age.
no, it doesn't, and it's not a philosophical question (and neither is this a question of philosophy).
the software simply has no cognitive capabilities.
I'm not sure I agree, but then it goes to my second question:
What's the effective difference?
don't know why you got downvoted, an LLM is essentially a chinese room, and whether such a room "knows" is still the question.
no, it fucking isn't. (see the postscript in linked article.)
Thanks for the link, that's a fascinating article.
The thought experiment (I really liked it) has convinced me that an LLM cannot learn meaning the same way a human does.
But two counter arguments arise: first - does it matter? If the only interaction is through thai text, how could the difference between understanding the meaning of Thai text and simple text completion through infinite studying of Thai books be asserted? And second - how is this changed by multimodal models? The author explicitly states that all images are removed from the library and, when asking others on their opinions of the thought experiment, "I'd look for an encyclopedia with images" is considered cheating. That means the author considers images as a weak point of the thought experiment. If the presence of other media did not change the outcome they would not have to be excluded. And if multi modal models change your opinion is that not simply because you underestimated how much you can do with infinite time in a Thai library? What is the fundamental difference between text and an image?