this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2023
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Except that it is, categorically, different. AI doesn't "learn", it builds associations between data it samples. Incorporating data from the source itself is how these algorithms work, then they reproduce these pieces with permutations applied.
LLMs are easier to explain, so I'll use one as an example. The idea is that if you use particular words in order, that exact ordering of words is given higher weight in the model by a linear association between those words following each other in sequence. When you ask an LLM to "write like Author X", it can do so (partially) by pulling the weights it generated from that authors' works.
This is fundamentally different from how our brains learn and function. We can't hold databases of billions of pieces of information in our heads and compare them all in real time. It's not really comparable at all except as an inaccurate metaphor.
Edit: Too many replies to respond to them all, but our brains don't do linear algebra on matrices with billions of elements. Our brains work in fundamentally different ways. Conflating the two is a gross oversimplification and is incorrect. That was my entire point.
You’re complaining about scale, and pretending it’s a fundamental difference. It’s not
You have a severe misunderstanding of how your own brain works and why we call them neural nets in the first place if you think otherwise.
That is also exactly how I see it. Do you think the negative view is due to some primal jealousy? I don’t know how else to describe not liking something/someone because it’s better than you.
Perhaps it is from a viewpoint of sports, where performance enhancing drugs are frowned upon.
We don’t get mad at calculators anymore, but we did at one point. There was quite a large movement to ban them in schools. Isn’t this a similar thing on the “creative” side?
I do think it’s the jealousy, the fear of being replaced, but also the pride of thinking of ourselves as somehow special and important.
We’re not.
We’re dumb fucking monkeys who learned to sometimes not be so dumb, and then a bunch of us forgot we were pretending.
The real lesson in ai is not that they’re getting super complex or sophisticated, but more us realizing the limitations of our own cognition, and hopefully finding ways to extend it.
You’re spot on about calculators. It’s really just that our schools and schoolteachers are unable to evolve, just like with the insistence that cursive is still a needed skill. Hopefully it won’t take a generation or more to update the educators mindset to taking advantage of the tools available, instead of shunning them.
You’re right. It behaves exactly like we do. And yes, it is at a much grander scale.
Is something ethically, legally, or morally wrong with a computer that does what we do, but does it better?