It’s absurd that this is even a question for some people. We may get AGI someday, but a vector database that generates streams of tokens based on tokens that it receives as input is never going to be it no matter how huge you make it. It lacks a world model, it doesn’t have the capacity to update itself with new information, and - most importantly - it doesn’t even do anything until it receives input.
And the assholes pushing this as potential AGI fucking know all that already. They know that without input, LLMs literally do nothing. They’re not sitting there going, “I think therefore I am” while waiting around to hallucinate dangerous medical advice and fake case law at people. They are static and unchanging.
My mind is still blown that llm is by definition intelligent because it certainly does not meet my definition of intelligence, but rather seems intelligent. 🤷
And I agree. AGI will not evolve from this, but still actions are taken as if it were so, bringing us in a very bad position.
It’s a shame nobody has thought about these sort of philosophical arguments before…
If you’re referring to the Chinese Room, I don’t personally find it to be a compelling argument against the hypothetical possibility of AGI. The proposed room has no way to store information, no way to incorporate that information into its system, and no way to initiate activity without external input.
Heck, now that I think about it, it’s actually a pretty good description of the way LLMs actually work. But not the way an autonomous thinking agent works.
I find it interesting because it forces lots of people to think at least superficially about how they would define consciousness and its boundaries.
Does it need a substrate? Does the substrate need to be constantly active? Does it need to be organic? Does it need to be able to do high level computation and thinking? Any answer you may give is unfalsifiable so it’s not like it’s a scientific subject anyway. It’s all vibes.
I like that it gives anyone the opportunity to wrestle with some hardcore metaphysics.
Let me fix that Headline “Microsoft Researcher Turns Age Of Empire Goats Sentient.”
“I built a single neuron to prove that brains aren’t sentient” is obviously dumb.
I’m not claiming that LLMs are sentient (their current forms can’t be, for several reasons) but this research is poorly done.
Besides, judging sapience entirely off of the processing substrate is a serious “no true Scotsman” kind of thing.
But can it run Doom?
The Goat?
