What if I told you I have a machine that takes 1 20k-dimensional vector and turns it into another meaningful 20k-dimensional vector, but the machine is made of a bunch of proteins and fats and liquids and gels? Would you be willing to call it sentient now?

That's ridiculous. You're asking me to believe in sentient meat?

https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...

Bro, I can't even do 5 dimensional vector math.

EDIT: I couldn't help but make the joke, but I am certain my brain is doing zero dot products as a type this. What these models do is just different.

We should consider what that means, and the 'sentience' jump is just lazy thinking to avoid that.

Sorry to tell you, but your brain is doing millions of dot products - it's what the biochemical reactions in the synapses between neurons amount to. We already know how the brain works on that level, we just don't know how it works on a higher level.

Sorry to tell you, but neurons do not follow a dot product structure in any way shape or form.

I mean fine I’ll play along - is it whole numbers? Floating points? How many integers? Are we certain that neurons are even deterministic?

The point I’m making is this whole overuse of metaphor (I agree it’s an ok metaphor) belittles both what the brain and these models are doing. I get that we call them perceptrons and neurons, but friend, don’t tell me that a complex chemical system that we don’t understand is “matrix math” because dendrites exist. It’s kind of rude to your own endocrine system tbh.

Transformers and your brain are both extremely impressive and extremely different things.

Oh cool, maybe you can explain how the brain works for us then? Since you have such a clear understanding of consciousness.

The people seeking to exclude numerical vectors as being possible to be involved in consciousness seem to me to be the ones that you should direct this ire at.

Yes, and you wouldn't believe you're made out of cells as well.

The brain can't see, hear, smell, etc directly and neither can it talk or move hands or feet. "All" it does is receive incoming nerve signals from sensor neurons (which are connected to our sensory organs) and emit outgoing nerve signals through motor neurons (which are connected to our muscles).

So the "data format" is really not that different.

Are you sure that is all the brain does?

As far as "inputs and outputs" are concerned, yes. (Well, not quite, I think there is also communication with the body going on through chemical signals - but even this doesn't have to do a lot with how we experience our senses)

Not a neurologist, but that's about what you can read in basic biology textbooks.

What is the value of ignoring the endocrine system?

There are plenty of inputs to the brain outside of neural signals and implying otherwise isn't even at the level of basic biology textbooks.

I'll put it this way - what are the 'sensor nerve signals' that make us tired pray tell? Do models 'get tired'?