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A comment on Language models can explain neurons in language models. Parent comment

Re:Language models can explain neurons in language models by ASalazarMX on Tuesday May 09, 2023 @05:53PM (#35880863)
> There's a vast difference in complexity between what ants do, and what humans do.

Interesting parallell with intelligence/sentience/sapience. Despite the means, isn't the end result what you have to judge? The end result looks like a rudimentary civilization. How much back in time would we have to go back to find more sophistication in ant societies than humans?

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Re:Language models can explain neurons in language models by TeMPOraL on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @08:31AM (#35886412)
> Despite the means, isn't the end result what you have to judge? The end result looks like a rudimentary civilization.

I'm indeed talking about the ends. The operative phrase here is "it looks like". It looks like a civilization, there are even some structural similarities to be found - but it is not a civilization, anymore than a Lego brick with a computer sticker on it is a PC.

This is not to deny that ants are awesome and very much worth studying - my point is to avoid following flawed analogies too far. "Ant colonies look like rudimentary civilization, and civilization is/does X, therefore..." is going to be a nonsense statements for most of possible values of X.

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