@DKThomp I would say that AI cannot think in the sense that it cannot generate any original ideas. It predicts the best possible response based on existing data it has been trained on. It cannot synthesize and generate a genuinely new idea. It’s a sophisticated version of autocomplete.
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@Zachary_Louie @DKThomp The logic here is the problem! You can’t say “I don’t know what thinking is” and then say “LLM’s are thinking” that doesn’t hold water. You CAN understand what an LLM is actually doing and to assume that is thought is bizarre when YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT THINKING IS
There are more urgent matters in the world, but what frustrates me about the way that AI has contaminated certain conversations is that I think it used to be well understood that the mind isn't well understood. There was a healthy uncertainty about things like thinking, consciousness, etc. But AI's arrival, and the threat it poses to academics and word-makers, has created a tribal motivation to make extremely confident declarations about what thinking/consciousness is in order to define it as the opposite of whatever AI is up to, even though we have a perfect understanding of neither what AI is up to nor what thinking/consciousness are.
To put my cards on the table 1. I don’t know for sure what thinking is 2. I am skeptical of anybody who claims they have a perfect understanding of what thinking is 3. I don’t think LLMs do whatever it is that brains do when they think 4. I still find the ability of machines to …. imitate? pantomime? … the act of thinking in the production of essays or art that people mistakenly believe to be acts of human creativity is more interesting at the level of “okay so what *is* creativity/thinking, really?” than a lot of anti-AI academics let on
~AI can’t think. It can only use electrical signals to synthesize a piece of writing that many professors evaluate as the equivalent of thinking.~ If this argument compels you, that makes one of us. https://twitter.com/squirbin/status/2075216118268997728
Many users agree with Derek Thompson that AI only imitates thinking and cannot generate original ideas or true consciousness, as it relies on pattern prediction rather than genuine understanding.
Based on 10 visible X reactions from 34 accounts; directional sample.
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