If we ever build an AI that can think and feel, does Optimus’s logic apply to it automatically? Or is Megatron secretly onto something, that freedom has to be earned rather than assumed? And if an LLM ever crossed that line into real sentience, would we even be able to tell?
I’ll clarify that it wasn’t my intent to defend the AI hype. I agree that LLMs are just predictive algorithms that use probabilistic and non-deterministic heuristics to extrapolate likely responses.
I was just pointing out that saying they can’t come up with anything original is maybe not the best angle because it opens up a can of worms about whether even humans can come up with anything truly original, which is philosophically fraught.
Yes the mathematician solved the equation. But he couldn’t have done so without spending years devoted to learning the state of mathematics today, including all the work and research and theorems and proofs from all the mathematicians who came before him.
Maybe he applied old concepts in new ways to solve a problem that hadn’t been solved before. I doubt he invented an entirely new form of mathematics not based in anything that existed before. And even if he did that, chances are he only knew how to do that because of what he’s learned from pre-existing systems of mathematics.
That’s the point I was trying to make