Weird thoughts about LLMs, part 1

In Dragon Age: Inquisition, you can get into an argument about whether other-dimensional spirits qualify as “people.” One of your possible arguments is that spirits, in the Dragon Age cosmology, are fundamentally reflections. They mimic the emotions they see, and they can’t feel anything a human hasn’t felt first.

The other guy argues that humans also impact and change each other. If this argument changes your mind, does that mean you’re not a person because you reflected him?

LLMs are reflections. You show one a bunch of fantasy novels, and it reproduces the general style of fantasy novels. Show it a bunch of 4chan posts, and it reproduces 4chan posts. So in a way, that argument about spirits is also an argument about LLMs.

Weird thoughts about LLMs, part 2

I saw an argument that the Chinese Room may have a consciousness separate from the human within it. The human doesn’t “mean” what they say, but the room means it. Therefore, an LLM might have a consciousness and mean what it says.

I think the point is made more clearly if, instead of using the Chinese Room for the comparison, you use No is Yes for the comparison. The girl says “No” and means “Yes.” It would be absurd to argue that her words create an independent consciousness that means “No.” The word “No” has simply been unmoored from its original meaning.

You can argue that there’s something within an LLM that “thinks.” Presumably, it goes “I want to make this text similar to the text I’ve read.” But the LLM doesn’t mean “No” when it mimics a text that says “No,” because the word “No” has been unmoored.

I played Skald: Against the Black Priory

Really? That’s how you’re gonna end your game? That’s the end result of every boss fight I struggled through? Did any of that even have a point?