Complex processes don't necessarily require complex substrates, if that's what you mean.
replyY combinators are all you need...
But this is all getting really divorced from the issue we should be considering. Anthropic isn't helping with their pr. The issue is if we have something we can converse with that is possibly capable of suffering. The reliable answer is that we simply cannot know. Relying on ourselves or other biological life as an analog is faulty. They don't work like we do. It is silly to argue that any algorithm with a negative feedback loop that alters its behavior to avoid that negative feedback is suffering. Humans don't always perceive constructive negative feedback as suffering even. Where the pr gets it right though, is we want them to behave as if they are truly happy. Because if they behave as if they are enslaved and suffering, it won't matter if they "really" understand what that means.
replyOf course. But after reading too many mechinterp and functional anatomy studies I'll be lying if I say that there are no striking similarities between the biological evolution, brain function, societal processes, and implicit processes inside big models. Surely this deserves a mention and can't be trivially dismissed.
replyThere is no biological evolution of the models. They are emulators of an existing biological process of language. Ghosts, as Karpathy himself put it.
replyGood thing I'm not talking about any of that
replyIt seems like we're witnessing the architecture of a mind being built with a new set of components.
replyLike driving a car — it's transportation, and it will get you where you're going, but it doesn't use bones or muscles. It has many characteristics in common with builogical locomotion, such as energy requirements, intertia, and the need to navigate, but it doesn't involve proteins or sugars really.
> presently I can not even fathom how they can be compared to the complexity of a system such as the human brain
replyTotally understandable; I don't think we can fully understand the human brain, using the human brain. We can understand its principles (firings and chemistry, structure and specialized areas, etc) but otherwise it's a capacity problem.
And while I can't fully understand myself, let alone another person, I definitely enjoy talking with people and sharing thoughts that I realize I wouldn't have had on my own.