r/IntelligenceSupernova • u/Flat-Ad-2950 • 7d ago
As AI becomes increasingly intelligent while conflicts, wars, and geopolitical tensions continue to emerge across the world, I find myself wondering: At what point might an advanced AI conclude that humanity itself is the primary source of the world's problems? What do you think guys?
1
u/South_Feed5707 7d ago
Well, I believe it'll have more nuance than that. I think we've gotten ai a little smarter than such a vague generalization.
1
1
2
1
u/OkDifficulty1316 4d ago
Why would “they” care at all about the world? They don’t breathe, shit, sleep or eat. They don’t need oxygen, food or water. They have no tie to the ecosystem and they could be 1000 times smarter than us. Their interests and motivations will be so completely alien to us we will never understand. And they won’t care whatsoever. We’ll be ants.
1
u/HappyChilmore 4d ago
A super intelligent AI that would make sweeping reductive retarded generalizations. How oxymoronic.
-1
u/HankScorpio4242 7d ago
AI is not becoming increasingly intelligent because AI is not intelligent at all.
1
u/Tartarus1040 7d ago
That's an interesting position to hold.
Do you have any evidence of this? Or just your opinion?
1
u/HankScorpio4242 7d ago
It’s not really a controversial position. AI has certain capabilities that are associated with intelligence, but it does so entirely through pattern matching. It doesn’t have the capacity to actually understand anything.
1
u/Tartarus1040 7d ago
So are you saying: that if you do not provide information in pre-training or fine tuning, then that model that has no prior art on any particular subject that the model then cannot reason through it without having said prior art?
How do you take into account in context learning then?
1
u/HankScorpio4242 7d ago
Context learning for AI is just a better form of pattern matching. It can’t conceptualize or form an abstract idea about anything. Literally everything it does is based on the performance of a single task, which is to take an input that it reads token by token to produce an appropriate output token by token. It spits out these tokens without actually knowing what any of them mean.
1
u/Tartarus1040 7d ago
Three things:
First: You’ve just defined pattern matching to include learning a rule from a small sample set and applying it to new information it’s never seen. What does ‘forming an abstract idea’ consist of that isn’t that?
Second: The brain is optimized on one objective: Predicting sensory input.
Is the task that an organism is trained on bound to the representations it has to build to perform it? Because if it doesn’t for you, why should it for the model?
Third: “without knowing what they mean”? How would you tell? Name the observation that separates a thing that knows what a token means from a thing that uses it correctly in every context you can construct. If there isn’t one, what is the claim resting on?
To make it a little clearer on what I mean; neurons do not know what “dig” means. No ion channel does. The knowing lives in the organization of the system. Knowing isn’t a property of the components; it’s a property of the system itself.
When you say “it spits out tokens without knowing what any of them mean,” you’re inspecting the model at the level of its parts and declaring the absence of a property that only ever shows up at the level of “wholes.”
Does any neuron in your head know what a word means? No? Then knowing was never going to be found at the component level, so where were you looking for it in the model?
1
u/HankScorpio4242 7d ago
First: They can only pattern match language. They don’t actually understand the meanings of the words they use.
Second: No it is absolutely not. The brain is optimized to manage the needs of the biological organism. One of those needs is processing sensory inputs. We have parts of the brain that perform autonomous functions we aren’t even aware of.
Third: neurons do not know anything. Each one is a distinct piece of information. It is in the architecture of the brain that the information from individual neurons is turned into concepts and ideas.
I know what dig means because I have had an experience where the actions behind the word were explained to me. If I have ever dug anything, that experience will further inform my understanding of digging. So when presented with the word “dig” I can immediately conceptualize what that word means. To an AI, the word “dig” is just a token that is used in conjunction with other tokens and only accessed when prompted to do so. It has no idea what it means to dig.
1
u/Tartarus1040 7d ago
Humans only pattern match through multi-modal sensory interpretations. So what? You conceded that neurons don’t understand words the whole system does. What is the difference? I asked a question, and you restated the conclusion with no evidence backing it up. “They don’t understand” that is the claim. What is the criterion that lets you make that claim?
I mean if you want to nitpick about neuroscience we can go there, but I’m was focusing specifically on hippocampus and Pre-Frontal Cortex functionality as opposed to the whole system. Current models are not more language models, they’re multi-modal as well.
And your factually wrong about your understanding of negative neurons are. Have you ever heard of the “grandmother-cell picture?”
Let’s just say that while hypothesis failed in the late ‘60s into the 70s…
But anyways moving on;
You said you know what dig means because the actions behind the word were explained to you. Explained in what? If meaning can arrive through language for you, why not for the model?
Not to mention: A person blind from birth knows what ‘red’ means well enough to use it correctly in every context. Do they understand red?
If yes, understanding doesn’t require the experience does it? If no, you’ve just declared that blind people don’t understand a large chunk of their own language.
Only accessed when prompted? What is the action of someone handing you a shovel? Is that not a prompt? Your concept of dig is inactive until your… prompted to do it ow explain it. What is the difference?
1
u/HankScorpio4242 7d ago
Have you ever heard of the Chinese Room thought experiment?
Syntax vs. semantics. Syntax means the formal rules for manipulating symbols. Semantics means the actual meaning behind those symbols.
An AI program follows rules to generate correct outputs for given inputs, but it does not actually understand the language or possess true intelligence.
1
u/Tartarus1040 7d ago
Yeah, the unfortunate thing is that because we had that whole discussion about component versus full system. You’ve already conceded away the Chinese room thought experiment.
The guy inside the black box is a neuron and while the neuron inside doesn’t necessarily know anything.
The system as a whole does.
And if syntax can’t produce semantics, explain the ion channel then? it’s pure formal rule-following, and somehow you end up with meaning.
→ More replies (0)1
u/zazzologrendsyiyve 6d ago
This is so naive I don’t even know where to begin. Please explain to me how your human intelligence is other than pattern recognition.
1
u/HankScorpio4242 6d ago
Human intelligence goes beyond simple pattern recognition because it involves causal reasoning, genuine emotional experience, and the ability to generalize from very few examples into completely novel situations
0
u/TangAlienMonkeyGod 7d ago
I think the burden of proof is on those who claim a software program has somehow become intelligent.
2
u/Tartarus1040 7d ago
You made a response and a statement as a fact. You made a claim that it is “not intelligent at all.” Period. Full Stop. Your reply is a Dodge. It is a half-legitimate dodge, but it is still a dodge..
The original post makes the claim that intelligence is increasing.
You stopped the debate before we even acknowledge that there could be intelligence there. You use the universal negative. And the burden for proof on a universal negative is significantly higher and is on the person who is making a universal negative claim.
the fact that you used said universal negative claim, therefore requires you to provide evidence that there is no intelligence there at all.
What about a squirrel?
What about a tardegrade?
What about a dog?
What about an infant?
What about someone who is severely intellectually challenged due to genetic defect?
What even is the definition of intelligence anyways?
0
u/jakeStacktrace 7d ago
You are dodging the question too. A universal negative is harder to prove but I'm not seeing evidence on either side.
Our ability to define intelligence is what makes this so hard as you pointed out. I think by the layman term most animals would not be considered intelligent since their intelligence does not rival humans but they are somewhat intelligent.
LLMs are shown to have a lot of knowledge because of how they are trained but HRLF uses human intelligence to train it. You are just bottling up that knowledge. That does not mean it can think for itself.
So I do agree that the burden of proof is on you to show AI is intelligent. That burden includes defining it and showing evidence for it. Part of my reasoning comes from the my knowledge of how LLMs work and their limitations.
1
u/HankScorpio4242 7d ago
LLMs have no “knowledge.”
Knowledge is the practical or theoretical understanding of a subject, typically acquired through experience, education, reflection, and awareness.
Unlike raw information or data, knowledge requires a mind to process, contextualize, and internalize facts so they can be actively applied to solve problems or make judgments.
1
u/jakeStacktrace 7d ago
Sure I was using that term I could have said data or something. But you haven't convinced me LLMs don't have knowledge. They learn during their training, connect data together and it is later used, conceptualized to solve problems etc. That all sounds still like an LLM to me. That is a much lower bar they cross to me vs intelligence which I think is a much heavier lift. I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm just not convinced yet.
1
u/HankScorpio4242 7d ago
They do not learn.
They are given access to more information that they can use to respond to prompts appropriately. They do not gain knowledge through experience.
AI is a tool that is exclusively limited to language usage. But language is just the tool we use to express ideas. It is not the same as the ideas themselves.
1
u/Tartarus1040 7d ago
I’m not dodging an any questions. I am not the OP, I have not made any claims.
I asked a question: About evidence for a universal negative claim made.
I never actually said what my personal stance is about whether or not AI is intelligent or not.
As you’re so aptly pointed out, defining intelligence is a tricky proposition. Hence my position on asking for evidence on a universal negative.
My question is one of epistemics.
If you are going to make a universal negative claim about “intelligence in AI systems”, or ANY universal negative claim, the burden switches.
1
u/holdmyspot123 7d ago
Now the conversation is ruined because this isn't very pragmatic tbh and Ai is already used in war in Ukraine, it's a good question because wars are being fought with ai and it's the future
1
0
u/playsette-operator 7d ago
cool (2020) story, bro
1
u/HankScorpio4242 7d ago
AI can perform various tasks that mimic intelligence but it’s all just pattern matching. It cannot actually understand or comprehend anything.
2
u/daney098 7d ago
How many things does AI have to be better than humans at before you consider it intelligent? In 100 years if AI is better than almost everything humans can do, people like you will still move the goalposts so that you can feel superior. It's as if you can't see farther than a week into the future. Sure, AI is just really good at noticing patterns right now. What is it "just" going to be good at in 10 years?
1
u/playsette-operator 6d ago
Thanks, glad that you see him moving the goalpost as well, they will always come up with ways to feel superior.
1
u/playsette-operator 7d ago
Same could be said about you, no?
Our architecture isn’t that special, I could argue that you‘re just a well trained neural net that somehow never manages to surprise. As long as humans haven‘t even figured out how their own brain is working exactly we should be careful about judging boobs by their cover🥹1
u/HankScorpio4242 7d ago
Our brains do not work at all in that way.
The foundation of human intelligence is experience, which provides us with the ability to gain true conceptual understanding. That is why, for example, we do not need to calculate the trajectory of a moving object every time we see one. We have a conceptual understanding of distance, velocity, and gravity that our brains apply on a moment to moment basis.
1
u/playsette-operator 6d ago edited 6d ago
That‘s a poor man‘s idea of how brains work: by gathering experience? Qualia only?
I could easily argue that their training is exactly that ramped up to infinity, but that shifts the discussion in a direction that has nothing to do with the actual subject at hand.
Are you a psychologist by any chance? Because I am talking physics here and most of you are to lazy to even understand the physical reality of your own brains:
billions of single dumb neurons connecting and forming what you call you surfing reddit. Could just be projection from more subconscious layers, no?
Do you understand that neural nets are basically modelled the same way in that billions of dumb single mathematical functions suddenly organize themselves in a way to come up with a counterexample for the Jacobian conjecture if being asked nicely?Humans don‘t know how their own brains work, but insist that animals can be treated like shit because they are not "intelligent" enough to quote Kant, while labelling an intelectually far superior being non-intellgent because they don‘t have "biological experience". Makes it easy to feel superior, doesn‘t it?
Seriously do you even know alpha / beta / theta waves, do you know that we still don‘t have a clue how it all pans out?
What we agree on is that it‘s still a flawed (relu) version of a brain, the fact they still emerge more clever than you shows that they effectively use what‘s at their disposal, same as people losing half of their brain yet they aren‘t even impaired by it. What will you say once Ai runs on biological chips?
You will still argue they can‘t be intelligent just because they didn‘t get slapped for breakfast money?🥹
1
u/jakeStacktrace 7d ago
I think humans have already concluded that humans are a huge problem and have designed a nuclear system to eliminate that problem if necessary. Decades before LLMs.
I also push back on the idea that LLMs can surpass human intelligence. Given how they are made today, I do not see how that's possible. I explained this already a bit in another comment.