LeelooFeb 25

As a software developer who took an elective in neural networks - when people call LLMs stochastic parrots, that's not criticism of their results.

It's literally a description of how they work.

The so-called training data is used to build a huge database of words and the probability of them fitting together.

Stochastic because the whole thing is statistics.
Parrot because the answer is just repeating the most probable word combinations from its training dataset.

Calling an LLM a stochastic parrot is lile calling a car a motorised vehicle with wheels. It doesn't say anything about cars being good or bad. It does, however, take away the magic. So if you feel a need to defend AI when you hear the term stochastic parrot, consider that you may have elevated them to a god-like status, and that's why you go on the defense when the magic is dispelled.

Show threadWolf480plFeb 26
@leeloo on the flipside, I feel like some people use the term "stochastic parrot" or "it just completes the next token" to imply that "therefore it cannot be intelligent" - is that correct reasoning?
Show threadLeelooFeb 26
@wolf480pl
Of course it can not be intelligent, it's just a huge database of probabilities.
Show threadWolf480plFeb 26

@leeloo pretty sure that's a fallacy, kinda like "a sculpture is just stone, therefore it can't be beautiful", or "a cell is just a bunch of proteins, therefore it cannot be a living creature".

Now, I'm not saying a huge database of probabilities can be intelligent (I hope it can't), just that I think a better argument is needed why in the case of a database of probabilities, what it's made of prevents it from being intelligent.

Show threadLeelooFeb 26

@wolf480pl
You would have to redefine intelligence for asking whether a list of numbers is intelligent to even make sense.

And your comparison is completely off. Beauty is not a property of the sculpture, it's, as they say, "in the eye pf the beholder". Some people find curves beautiful. Can a stone have curves? Yes, of course. Others may find sharp edges beautiful. Can a stone have sharp edges? Again, yes.

I suggest you consider once again whether you are elevating "AI" to a god-like status.

Show threadWolf480plFeb 26

@leeloo
I guess evil gods are also a thing, but no, I'm not treating them as gods. If anything, more like Frankenstein's monster.

You're right that we'd have to define intelligence, and that'd be quite difficult on its own.

Also, the sculpture was a bad example, but the cell one still stands IMO.

1/

Show threadLes OrchardFeb 26
@wolf480pl @leeloo These models aren't intelligent, so much as they're auto-completing rules and patterns derived from almost inconceivably huge corpora of example material originally produced by human intelligence. That's interesting and can be very handy for a great many uses. But it's more computational brute force than intelligence
Show threadWolf480plFeb 26

@lmorchard @leeloo
These specific models - yes, probably.

One plausible argument I heard for it is that there's a common failure mode in ML where the model fails to generalize, but if the verification set overlaps the training set, then data leakage will fool the authors into thinking it generalized.

Another one is that these models were "rewarded" for saying plausible things, not for interacting with a world in a way that doesn't get them killed.

But these arguments are specific.

Show threadWolf480plFeb 26
@lmorchard @leeloo
I don't buy a general "no matrix multiplication will ever be intelligent".
Show threadJ. R. DePriest    :EA DATA. SF:Feb 27

@wolf480pl @lmorchard @leeloo you are allowed to believe that even if it is factually incorrect.

https://addxorrol.blogspot.com/2025/07/a-non-anthropomorphized-view-of-llms.html

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/827820/large-language-models-ai-intelligence-neuroscience-problems

https://medium.com/@colin.fraser/who-are-we-talking-to-when-we-talk-to-these-bots-9a7e673f8525

https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/

A non-anthropomorphized view of LLMs

In many discussions where questions of "alignment" or "AI safety" crop up, I am baffled by seriously intelligent people imbuing almost magic...

Show threadLes OrchardFeb 27
@jrdepriest @wolf480pl @leeloo I'm confused... those links basically say what I said. (i.e. the "intelligence" is second-hand) That's... incorrect?
Show threadJ. R. DePriest    :EA DATA. SF:

@lmorchard @wolf480pl @leeloo

LLM based genAI can never be "intelligent". They can spit out language that looks like intelligence but there is no thinking, no inner life, no thoughts, just math. And this is not how the human brain works.

https://around.com/the-lie-of-ai/

https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/toolmen

Also, we know the brain is not a computer.

https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer

The Parrot in the Machine – James Gleick

Feb 27 at 3:28amWeb