Seems like a pretty stupid argument. If I sat in a room and wrote what a native speaker told me to write, I wouldn’t understand the conversation, but the native speaker would. How is that different than doing what an LLM says?
If you got a spare minute and then 600 of those you could read Peter Watts Blindsight, the main viewpoint character is basically a chinese room which is not a spoiler but an important keypoint of the whole story. Its also sci-fi and a bit weird
While we are at it, there is this page that is an interesting display of the making of a fan movie trailer https://blindsight.space/
In the second scenario, there is no “native speaker” that is telling you what to write. There is a list of instructions that you are following that is the same as the instructions that the computer was following with the first scenario.
The argument is that if, by following the exact instructions that the computer is following, you still do not understand the Chinese conversation, why would you say that the machine understands?
I haven’t thought about the idea enough to say I agree or disagree, but I hope I understood your comment and that the explanation helps.
A lot of things seem trivial with 50+ years of hindsight.
Even then, most people right now still don’t grasp the nuances of the debates around machine intelligence that have been occurring for the past hundred years.
Technically right in that it doesn’t necessarily translate audio into text, but that’s hardly the point. The point is someone gives the LLM a giant table that directs its response.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
Seems like a pretty stupid argument. If I sat in a room and wrote what a native speaker told me to write, I wouldn’t understand the conversation, but the native speaker would. How is that different than doing what an LLM says?
If you got a spare minute and then 600 of those you could read Peter Watts Blindsight, the main viewpoint character is basically a chinese room which is not a spoiler but an important keypoint of the whole story. Its also sci-fi and a bit weird
While we are at it, there is this page that is an interesting display of the making of a fan movie trailer https://blindsight.space/
In the second scenario, there is no “native speaker” that is telling you what to write. There is a list of instructions that you are following that is the same as the instructions that the computer was following with the first scenario.
The argument is that if, by following the exact instructions that the computer is following, you still do not understand the Chinese conversation, why would you say that the machine understands?
I haven’t thought about the idea enough to say I agree or disagree, but I hope I understood your comment and that the explanation helps.
A lot of things seem trivial with 50+ years of hindsight.
Even then, most people right now still don’t grasp the nuances of the debates around machine intelligence that have been occurring for the past hundred years.
I think you grasp the point, it is exactly what an LLM does
An LLM doesn’t transcribe what someone else writes for a given input.
Technically right in that it doesn’t necessarily translate audio into text, but that’s hardly the point. The point is someone gives the LLM a giant table that directs its response.