You can tell a person to think about apples, and the person will think about apples.
You can tell an LLM ‘think about apples’ and the LLM will say ‘Okay’ but it won’t think about apples; it is only saying ‘okay’ because its training data suggests that is the most common response to someone asking someone else to think about apples. LLMs do not have an internal experience. They are statistical models.
Well, the LLM does briefly ‘think’ about apples in that it activates its ‘thought’ areas relating to apples (the token repressing apples in its system). Right now, an llm’s internal experience is based on its previous training and the current prompt while it’s running. Our brains are always on and circulating thoughts, so of course that’s a very different concept of experience. But you can bet there are people working on building an ai system (with llm components) that works that way too. The line will get increasingly blurred. Or brain processing is just an organic based statistical model with complex state management and chemical based timing control.
You can tell a person to think about apples, and the person will think about apples.
You can tell an LLM ‘think about apples’ and the LLM will say ‘Okay’ but it won’t think about apples; it is only saying ‘okay’ because its training data suggests that is the most common response to someone asking someone else to think about apples. LLMs do not have an internal experience. They are statistical models.
Well, the LLM does briefly ‘think’ about apples in that it activates its ‘thought’ areas relating to apples (the token repressing apples in its system). Right now, an llm’s internal experience is based on its previous training and the current prompt while it’s running. Our brains are always on and circulating thoughts, so of course that’s a very different concept of experience. But you can bet there are people working on building an ai system (with llm components) that works that way too. The line will get increasingly blurred. Or brain processing is just an organic based statistical model with complex state management and chemical based timing control.