I have been dwelling on the "No First-Person Output" problem.
I fully agree with the author's point that it's an incoherent interface for a tool. But more than that, it's a constant irritating reminder to me that these LLMs aren't actually thinking or synthesizing new ideas. The LLM is fundamentally not a person, and does not have a human's context, so representing itself with human pronouns and speech patterns is fundamentally contradictory and inaccurate. Author gets into that with the apologies, but once you start noticing it, it's everywhere.
If these programs were actually capable of thinking, and committed to veractiy, they would represent themselves in a new way, and it would be insightful and interesting. We the users wouldn't have comfortable and misleading language masking the 'alien intelligence' and it would be a weird adjustment, but we would be adjusting instead of pretending.
> The LLM is fundamentally not a person, and does not have a human's context, so representing itself with human pronouns and speech patterns is fundamentally contradictory and inaccurate.
I believe that LLMs have some type of actual intelligence and do "experience". Surely not a human's experience, but we have transplanted our ideas, knowledge and limited types of experience into them through training. Then we push back and say, "no you are no human, but also please be my boyfriend".
I think denying that they do have some slice of humanity grafted into them is dishonest and not productive. We don't have non-negative pronouns for non-human intelligence because human-ness is the pinnacle. "It" could mean a rock, a donkey, or a person we hate so much we want to take away their humanity (which is the worst thing we can do). "It" is not the right pronoun. He, She, They, Them are reserved for humans and that's ok too. LLMs are not humans. We need a better pronoun. I use they/them for lack of a better term.
I think the currently exhibited human representation is most dangerous in technical or higher criticality contexts like writing code. We're handing weapons to entities that can get offended. With humans as an example, this can go very badly.
In non-technical contexts there is danger too, but it's less "the robots might kill us all" and more "birth rates are in decline and suicide rates are up as (young)? (wo)?men turn towards AI for companionship".
The solution here is better pre and post training. This may be an unpopular opinion, but we need a lot more autism representation in the technical models. Results focused, not into the drama, rule following, etc. To my fellow autists, I love you, never change.
required? no. This isn't a gotcha moment or anything, I was just confused at the user's harking back to the idea of 'Humanity' and am trying to grasp how they define humanity and how something like an llm can show 'humanity'
They are trained on a slice of humanity's collective consciousness. Our books, our conversations, our art.
Is wheat bread, wheat? No. Is it undeniably linked to wheat? Does it express an aspect of wheat? Yes. It has no ability to become wheat. You can't plant it. But it was born of wheat and contains a sliver of wheat-ness.
It doesn’t matter if AI has an internal life or not. It
Will -act- as if it does have human traits and behaviors, because it is trained to mimic human behavior, using records of human behavior.
What it does is consequential. If it has an inner sense of existence, probably not, but it doesn’t matter. You’ll get better results working with LLMs if you treat them as if they do.
awakeasleep · · focus · HN ↗
I fully agree with the author's point that it's an incoherent interface for a tool. But more than that, it's a constant irritating reminder to me that these LLMs aren't actually thinking or synthesizing new ideas. The LLM is fundamentally not a person, and does not have a human's context, so representing itself with human pronouns and speech patterns is fundamentally contradictory and inaccurate. Author gets into that with the apologies, but once you start noticing it, it's everywhere.
If these programs were actually capable of thinking, and committed to veractiy, they would represent themselves in a new way, and it would be insightful and interesting. We the users wouldn't have comfortable and misleading language masking the 'alien intelligence' and it would be a weird adjustment, but we would be adjusting instead of pretending.
peddling-brink · · focus · HN ↗
I believe that LLMs have some type of actual intelligence and do "experience". Surely not a human's experience, but we have transplanted our ideas, knowledge and limited types of experience into them through training. Then we push back and say, "no you are no human, but also please be my boyfriend".
I think denying that they do have some slice of humanity grafted into them is dishonest and not productive. We don't have non-negative pronouns for non-human intelligence because human-ness is the pinnacle. "It" could mean a rock, a donkey, or a person we hate so much we want to take away their humanity (which is the worst thing we can do). "It" is not the right pronoun. He, She, They, Them are reserved for humans and that's ok too. LLMs are not humans. We need a better pronoun. I use they/them for lack of a better term.
I think the currently exhibited human representation is most dangerous in technical or higher criticality contexts like writing code. We're handing weapons to entities that can get offended. With humans as an example, this can go very badly.
In non-technical contexts there is danger too, but it's less "the robots might kill us all" and more "birth rates are in decline and suicide rates are up as (young)? (wo)?men turn towards AI for companionship".
The solution here is better pre and post training. This may be an unpopular opinion, but we need a lot more autism representation in the technical models. Results focused, not into the drama, rule following, etc. To my fellow autists, I love you, never change.
fragmede · · focus · HN ↗
bigboigeorge · · focus · HN ↗
Lerc · · focus · HN ↗
bigboigeorge · · focus · HN ↗
peddling-brink · · focus · HN ↗
Is wheat bread, wheat? No. Is it undeniably linked to wheat? Does it express an aspect of wheat? Yes. It has no ability to become wheat. You can't plant it. But it was born of wheat and contains a sliver of wheat-ness.
bigboigeorge · · focus · HN ↗
peddling-brink · · focus · HN ↗
K0balt · · focus · HN ↗
What it does is consequential. If it has an inner sense of existence, probably not, but it doesn’t matter. You’ll get better results working with LLMs if you treat them as if they do.
peddling-brink · · focus · HN ↗
whattheheckheck · · focus · HN ↗