Maybe it's a good idea to listen to someone who publishes papers on this very subject, and is a professor of both philosophy and psychiatry and directs an Institute for Cognitive Science. That person is Dr. Chandra Sripada and his insights are fascinating.

Sean Carroll (interviewer, scientist and science communicator) says this interview made him lean towards the answer being "yes, they think like humans" whereas previously he favored the opposite view.

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[–] ZMoney@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago (3 children)

We have no idea how consciousness works, and also we have no idea how LLMs work. So they must be the same!

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 3 days ago

we have no idea how LLMs work

Give me a break. LLMs are completely 100% understood. People developed weighted functions using very very basic statistics. There is absolutely no mystery here.

[–] Iconoclast@feddit.uk 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Consciousness gets mentioned the first time at 1 hour and 26 minutes into the episode. The discussion is about cognition - they're not the same thing and nobody is claiming that they are.

[–] ZMoney@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

Your comment inspired me to actually listen to it and there's a lot more evidence for LLM-mindbrain convergence than I thought. Still seems like we invented something too complex to characterize directly so we're interrogating it the way we do our own cognition... I wonder what kind of biases this introduces.

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

The discussion is about cognition

Ah yes the foundation of "AI" research - retreating from obvious meanings to redefining words in order to make absurd claims.

[–] Iconoclast@feddit.uk 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I have no idea what you're even talking about. Neither of these people is an AI researcher and neither is making the claims you're here arguing against.

[–] nymnympseudonym@piefed.social -2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

We have no idea how consciousness works

Misleading.

We have many very plausible, evidence-driven models of how consciousness works: global workspace, CTM (Conscious Turing Machine), IIT, ... the problem is figuring out which have the best predictive power. And that problem is being very actively worked.

and also we have no idea how LLMs work

Patently false. Look up "mechanistic interpretability", CLiP, etc.

There is very much a back and forth synergy right now between the communities of researchers interpreting neural network activations, and biological brain patterns.

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

We have many very plausible, evidence-driven models

"Plausible" counts for jack shit in science.

There are many models because there's no convincing evidence for any of them.

the problem is figuring out which have the best predictive power. And that problem is being very actively worked.

Yes, these models have no experimental or "predictive" use even after decades of "research".