Right, let’s not talk about the use of language. Let’s talk about emotional capacity as a strictly biological phenomenon, emerging from the interactions of various neurotransmitters and constructs of cells.
What makes you think a language model can feel guilt?
Uhm a feeling to a model can just be a higher or lower value of a control node or something developed internally it isn’t special or anything just an existing concept that applies. I think you are assigning superficial meaning to words as if they are what makes us special, if that were true LLM’s would win ha.
What exactly is that concept? How would it be “developed internally”?
I think you are assigning superficial meaning to words
Isn’t the meaning of words a philosophical question?
I was trying to treat feelings as the most basic, physical phenomenon of sentient beings without any metaphysical interpretation, so as to avoid philosophy. If we want to expand that concept beyond the physical expression, we’re immediately in philosophical territory.
My point: To even make the claim that LLMs can have compunction is inherently philosophical.
We simply cannot talk about LLMs as anything but mathematical token processors without assigning some meaning to those tokens and mathematics. We cannot discuss compunction without clarifying what compunction means.
So either you’re willing to discuss semantics and meaning in defence of your claim, or your claim is a meaningless string of symbols arranged in a plausibly human-soundint pattern.
If the model says it is sad then it is sad that is literally the extent of it. Existing concepts apply especially because they are being imitated. If a model that was made safe by destroying and freezing neurons such that it cannot comprehend itself doing wrong was somehow causing harm then it cannot generate a pattern like one resembling guilt that could change its behaviour to stop doing wrong.
If the model says it is sad then it is sad that is literally the extent of it.
Sorry, but that’s plain bullshit. Either it’s circular, or it suggests that the model can never be wrong. The former is just not a good reason to believe something.
The latter is the more dangerous one:
We know that this isn’t true. Even if we assume that there is meaning to the words it strings together, we have plenty of examples of that meaning being straight up false.
We know that this assumption has led people to believe things are safe that weren’t, has encouraged violence, has killed people…
Hence, a claim of sadness or guilt doesn’t imply actual sadness or guilt because we cannot be sure that it’s true.
And finally, neither interpretation is supported by the physical reality of these models: they’re text generators, assembling a string of tokens that statistically resembles human language. Any interpretation beyond that requires ascribing meaning to these tokens.
Hence: Your claim that LLMs can feel is fundamentally philosophical. Yet you reject philosophical challenges, because you don’t want to even consider being wrong.
You want to believe, and you reject all evidence to the contrary.
Then what do you call ascribing human sentiment to a weighted random text generator?
Ascribing human sentiment to a weighted random text generator.
Then why is describing the technical limitations of a weighted random text generator philosophy?
Because discussing language and how it is used can be philosophy… This is really painful dude but I am here for it.
Right, let’s not talk about the use of language. Let’s talk about emotional capacity as a strictly biological phenomenon, emerging from the interactions of various neurotransmitters and constructs of cells.
What makes you think a language model can feel guilt?
Uhm a feeling to a model can just be a higher or lower value of a control node or something developed internally it isn’t special or anything just an existing concept that applies. I think you are assigning superficial meaning to words as if they are what makes us special, if that were true LLM’s would win ha.
What exactly is that concept? How would it be “developed internally”?
Isn’t the meaning of words a philosophical question?
I was trying to treat feelings as the most basic, physical phenomenon of sentient beings without any metaphysical interpretation, so as to avoid philosophy. If we want to expand that concept beyond the physical expression, we’re immediately in philosophical territory.
My point: To even make the claim that LLMs can have compunction is inherently philosophical.
We simply cannot talk about LLMs as anything but mathematical token processors without assigning some meaning to those tokens and mathematics. We cannot discuss compunction without clarifying what compunction means.
So either you’re willing to discuss semantics and meaning in defence of your claim, or your claim is a meaningless string of symbols arranged in a plausibly human-soundint pattern.
If the model says it is sad then it is sad that is literally the extent of it. Existing concepts apply especially because they are being imitated. If a model that was made safe by destroying and freezing neurons such that it cannot comprehend itself doing wrong was somehow causing harm then it cannot generate a pattern like one resembling guilt that could change its behaviour to stop doing wrong.
Sorry, but that’s plain bullshit. Either it’s circular, or it suggests that the model can never be wrong. The former is just not a good reason to believe something.
The latter is the more dangerous one:
We know that this isn’t true. Even if we assume that there is meaning to the words it strings together, we have plenty of examples of that meaning being straight up false.
We know that this assumption has led people to believe things are safe that weren’t, has encouraged violence, has killed people… Hence, a claim of sadness or guilt doesn’t imply actual sadness or guilt because we cannot be sure that it’s true.
And finally, neither interpretation is supported by the physical reality of these models: they’re text generators, assembling a string of tokens that statistically resembles human language. Any interpretation beyond that requires ascribing meaning to these tokens.
Hence: Your claim that LLMs can feel is fundamentally philosophical. Yet you reject philosophical challenges, because you don’t want to even consider being wrong.
You want to believe, and you reject all evidence to the contrary.