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Xeoncross | on: Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
> or (more pointedly) that brain activity could not possibly implement cognition because it can be described as a collection of neural firings.

This sounds like a dismissal of the argument through a characterized straw man.

That is, it seems that reducing the complexity of the brain to "collection of neural firings" is not being honest about everything involved to a much greater degree than saying neural networks are a "collection of statistical calculations".

I too believe LLM's will grow in complexity, but presently I can not even fathom how they can be compared to the complexity of a system such as the human brain.

orbital-decay | parent | next
Complex processes don't necessarily require complex substrates, if that's what you mean.
galangalalgol | root | parent
Y combinators are all you need... But this is all getting really divorced from the issue we should be considering. Anthropic isn't helping with their pr. The issue is if we have something we can converse with that is possibly capable of suffering. The reliable answer is that we simply cannot know. Relying on ourselves or other biological life as an analog is faulty. They don't work like we do. It is silly to argue that any algorithm with a negative feedback loop that alters its behavior to avoid that negative feedback is suffering. Humans don't always perceive constructive negative feedback as suffering even. Where the pr gets it right though, is we want them to behave as if they are truly happy. Because if they behave as if they are enslaved and suffering, it won't matter if they "really" understand what that means.
orbital-decay | root | parent
Of course. But after reading too many mechinterp and functional anatomy studies I'll be lying if I say that there are no striking similarities between the biological evolution, brain function, societal processes, and implicit processes inside big models. Surely this deserves a mention and can't be trivially dismissed.
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neolefty | parent
> presently I can not even fathom how they can be compared to the complexity of a system such as the human brain

Totally understandable; I don't think we can fully understand the human brain, using the human brain. We can understand its principles (firings and chemistry, structure and specialized areas, etc) but otherwise it's a capacity problem.

And while I can't fully understand myself, let alone another person, I definitely enjoy talking with people and sharing thoughts that I realize I wouldn't have had on my own.