I wonder what your cat would say if she could talk. I imagine she would surprise you.
But yeah, obviously you can train an llm to be stubborn, but that’s only half of it. The algorithm doesn’t have a sense of self and doesn’t have a sense of something being “true” or “false.” So it has no heuristics for whether or not it should agree with or disagree with you and doesn’t have opinions of its own.
Personally I happen to think human consciousness isn’t that different from other animals, we just happened to get the right combination of long lifespan + language + tool use + very social and cooperative so that we could develop generational knowledge on a societal level through oral traditions and writing.
Humans aren’t just smart because our brains are better, we’re smarter because we’re educated.
I think I pretty much agree with you on everything you’ve said here. The sense of self is something I mentioned as well, I just wanted to distinguish it from having an opinion because that can get kinda muddled with sticking with an argument rather than actually having the position.
And to be clear, I’m not saying my cat doesn’t have thoughts. Maybe I’m anthropomorphizing a bit, but I definitely feel like she does have ideas and tries to convey them. She makes a specific “don’t do that/stop/I don’t like that” noise and a “happy/good/more” noise and has different tones when she wants attention or when she wants me to do something for her. I can see it in her when she sees something she wants to knock over and she’s ‘thinking about it’. (Edit: sorry, here’s where I realize I wasn’t very clear. My last comment was more a joke about my cat being a dumbass but definitely being conscious; I didn’t mean to give the impression that I don’t think she has thoughts. More that I see glimmers here and there that I would guess are thoughts, but don’t really have any kind of real proof beyond what I can relate to.)
I wouldn’t say human consciousness is that different from animals, either, I just think the capacity and predisposition might be slightly different for different types of thought. I think we can see the same in people, though, too. Something that’s always really blown my mind is that people can literally think differently. Like, some people don’t have an internal narrator. Some people can’t visualize images, or visualize new images. Some people can’t picture 3-Dimensional images. Some people exclusively have feelings instead of those things.
I definitely agree that age and language and education and capabilities (like our dexterity) all play into it, but I don’t think that is necessarily the only thing.
You should check out the button things that let dogs and cats talk. Some of those animals are surprisingly opinionated and I think you’d enjoy seeing it for yourself
I wonder what your cat would say if she could talk. I imagine she would surprise you.
But yeah, obviously you can train an llm to be stubborn, but that’s only half of it. The algorithm doesn’t have a sense of self and doesn’t have a sense of something being “true” or “false.” So it has no heuristics for whether or not it should agree with or disagree with you and doesn’t have opinions of its own.
Personally I happen to think human consciousness isn’t that different from other animals, we just happened to get the right combination of long lifespan + language + tool use + very social and cooperative so that we could develop generational knowledge on a societal level through oral traditions and writing.
Humans aren’t just smart because our brains are better, we’re smarter because we’re educated.
I think I pretty much agree with you on everything you’ve said here. The sense of self is something I mentioned as well, I just wanted to distinguish it from having an opinion because that can get kinda muddled with sticking with an argument rather than actually having the position.
And to be clear, I’m not saying my cat doesn’t have thoughts. Maybe I’m anthropomorphizing a bit, but I definitely feel like she does have ideas and tries to convey them. She makes a specific “don’t do that/stop/I don’t like that” noise and a “happy/good/more” noise and has different tones when she wants attention or when she wants me to do something for her. I can see it in her when she sees something she wants to knock over and she’s ‘thinking about it’. (Edit: sorry, here’s where I realize I wasn’t very clear. My last comment was more a joke about my cat being a dumbass but definitely being conscious; I didn’t mean to give the impression that I don’t think she has thoughts. More that I see glimmers here and there that I would guess are thoughts, but don’t really have any kind of real proof beyond what I can relate to.)
I wouldn’t say human consciousness is that different from animals, either, I just think the capacity and predisposition might be slightly different for different types of thought. I think we can see the same in people, though, too. Something that’s always really blown my mind is that people can literally think differently. Like, some people don’t have an internal narrator. Some people can’t visualize images, or visualize new images. Some people can’t picture 3-Dimensional images. Some people exclusively have feelings instead of those things.
I definitely agree that age and language and education and capabilities (like our dexterity) all play into it, but I don’t think that is necessarily the only thing.
Oh ok 😅
Yeah with that clarification I think we agree.
You should check out the button things that let dogs and cats talk. Some of those animals are surprisingly opinionated and I think you’d enjoy seeing it for yourself