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Comment on Judge disses Star Trek icon Data’s poetry while ruling AI can’t author works

nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

Do you have an example I could check out? I’m curious how a study would show a process to be “fundamentally incapable” in this way.

I’ll have to get back to you a bit later when I have a chance to fetch some articles from the library (public libraries providing free access to scientific journals is wonderful).

Isn’t this analagous to short term memory?

As one with AuADHD, I think a good deal about short-term and working memory. I would say “yes and no”. It is somewhat like a memory buffer but, there is no analysis being linguistics. Short-term memory in biological systems that we know have multi-sensory processing and analysis that occurs inline with “storing”. The chat session is more like RAM than short-term memory that we see in biological systems.

Would you consider that LLM system to have persistent context?

Potentially, yes. But that relies on ore systems supporting the LLM, not just the LLM itself. It is also purely linguistic analysis without other inputs out understanding of abstract meaning. In vacuum, it’s a dead-end towards an AGI. As a component of a system, it becomes much more promising.

On the flip side, would you consider a person with anterograde amnesia, who is unable to form new memories, to lack sentience?

This is a great question. Seriously. Thanks for asking it and making me contemplate. This would likely depend on how much development the person has prior to the anterograde amnesia. If they were hit with it prior to development of all the components necessary to demonstrate conscious thought (ex. as a newborn), it’s a bit hard to argue that they are sentient (anthropocentric thinking would be the only reason that I can think of).

Conversely, if the afflicted individual has already developed sufficiently to have abstract and synthetic thought, the inability to store long-term memory would not dampen their sentience. Lack of long-term memory alone doesn’t impact that for the individual or the LLM. It’s a combination of it and other factors (ie. the afflicted individual previously was able to analyze and support enough data and build neural networks to support the ability to synthesize and think abstractly, they’re just trapped in a hellish sliding window of temporal consciousness).

Full disclosure: I want AGIs to be a thing. Yes, there could be dangers to our species due to how commonly-accepted slavery still is. However, more types of sentience would add to the beauty of the universe, IMO.

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ProfessorScience@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Cherry-picking a couple of points I want to respond to together

It is somewhat like a memory buffer but, there is no analysis being linguistics. Short-term memory in biological systems that we know have multi-sensory processing and analysis that occurs inline with “storing”. The chat session is more like RAM than short-term memory that we see in biological systems.

It is also purely linguistic analysis without other inputs out understanding of abstract meaning. In vacuum, it’s a dead-end towards an AGI.

I have trouble with this line of reasoning for a couple of reasons. First, it feels overly simplistic to me to write what LLMs do off as purely linguistic analysis. Language is the input and the output, by all means, but the same could be said in a case where you were communicating with a person over email, and I don’t think you’d say that that person wasn’t sentient. And the way that LLMs embed tokens into multidimensional space is, I think, very much analogous to how a person interprets the ideas behind words that they read.

As a component of a system, it becomes much more promising.

It sounds to me like you’re more strict about what you’d consider to be “the LLM” than I am; I tend to think of the whole system as the LLM. I feel like drawing lines around a specific part of the system is sort of like asking whether a particular piece of someone’s brain is sentient.

Conversely, if the afflicted individual has already developed sufficiently to have abstract and synthetic thought, the inability to store long-term memory would not dampen their sentience.

I’m not sure how to make a philosophical distinction between an amnesiac person with a sufficiently developed psyche, and an LLM with a sufficiently trained model. For now, at least, it just seems that the LLMs are not sufficiently complex to pass scrutiny compared to a person.

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- nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  It sounds to me like you’re more strict about what you’d consider to be “the LLM” than I am; I tend to think of the whole system as the LLM.
  
  My apologies if it seems “nit-picky”. Not my intent. Just that, to my brain, the difference in semantic meaning is very important.
  
  I feel like drawing lines around a specific part of the system is sort of like asking whether a particular piece of someone’s brain is sentient.
  
  In my thinking, that’s exactly what asking “can an LLM achieve sentience?” is, so, I can see the confusion. Because I am strict in classification, it is, to me, literally line asking “can the parahippocampal gyrus achieve sentience?” (probably not by itself - though our meat-computers show extraordinary plasticity… so, maybe?).
  
  For now, at least, it just seems that the LLMs are not sufficiently complex to pass scrutiny compared to a person.
  
  Precisely. And I suspect that it is very much related to the constrained context available to any language model. The world, and thought as we know it, is mostly not language. Not everyone has an internal monologue that is verbal/linguistic (some don’t even have one and mine tends to be more abstract when not in the context of verbal things) so, it follows that more than linguistic analysis is necessary.
  
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