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Ted Lieu

@tedlieu ↗

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Ted Lieu @tedlieu
Skeptical

The below post is correct. We don’t need to define consciousness to know pet rocks are not conscious, even though they have eyes. Just like we don’t need to define consciousness to know linear algebra equations are not conscious.

Oscar Davies Writing on AI @OscarMDavies

If I say "AI isn't conscious" tons of people tell me I can't make that claim since I can't define consciousness. No one asks for a definition if I say "A puddle of water isn't conscious". Why is no definition needed then?

It's just next-token prediction
retweets 71 likes 329 quoted by 1 archive account substance 4 · argument · rank 233 · We know AI is not conscious without defining consciousness, just like rocks or math. view on X ↗
1 top reply
Jai @Laneless_

Congressman, how do you think action potentials gated on ion diffusion across selectively permeable membranes work? We're all math.

Ted Lieu @tedlieu
Skeptical

I like the below joke. Another version: math equations are not conscious. Rocks are not conscious. If you attach the above to random number generators, they still wouldn’t be conscious. We don’t need to define consciousness to know the Pythagorean theorem is not conscious.

It's just next-token prediction
retweets 32 likes 257 quoted by 1 archive account substance 5 · argument · rank 226 · AI is not conscious, just as math equations and rocks are not conscious. view on X ↗
Ted Lieu @tedlieu
Skeptical

The below is not accurate. An artificial neural network is deterministic, not arbitrary. It generates the same output to the same input every time. Because it’s math. What makes AI models arbitrary is that AI companies stick in random number generators. That’s not consciousness.

Jonathan Gorard @getjonwithit

No. A concatenation of many matrix multiplications is… just a single matrix multiplication (that’s what linearity means). Rather, a neural network is a concatenation of matrix multiplications *and* nonlinearities, i.e. a concatenation of arbitrary linear and nonlinear

It's just next-token prediction
retweets 0 likes 476 substance 5 · argument · rank 75 · AI is deterministic math with added random number generators, which is not consciousness. view on X ↗
2 top replies
Cameron Berg @camhberg

Nope, the tweet is exactly accurate and you are misunderstanding what is he saying, you are conflating nonlinearity and nondeterminism. Also, LLMs *are* nondeterministic in practice, AND a system being deterministic has nothing to do with whether or not that system is conscious.

Jai @Laneless_

Congressman I respect you a great deal and I understand how this perception could come about, but it's just incorrect on multiple levels. 1. Low-level optimizations introduce individually-small nondeterministic elements in arithmetic operations that can compound over the billions of trillions that occur in each forward pass 2. LLMs produce probability distributions. The most obvious "deterministic" choice would be to always take the most-likely prediction, but this wouldn't really accurately reflect the most natural interpretation of the LLM output, and historically has not worked as well as other sampling approaches. 3. Deterministic results can be arbitrary! It just means that the arbitrary nature is in the mechanics of the deterministic system rather than the sampling. 4. Although there isn't scientific consensus around many questions of consciousness, under most schools of thought determinism does not not preclude consciousness. Human cognition may well be nearly-deterministic, and that's fine.