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Re:More Agents Is All You Need: LLMs performance scales with... by ToValueFunfetti on Sunday April 07, 2024 @01:44AM (#39958426)
Intelligence breaks the pattern here. A simulated intelligence is intelligent, just as simulated math is math and simulated computers are computers. The point of contention shouldn't be whether LLMs are intelligences or simulated intelligences, but whether they're simulating something else.
Re:More Agents Is All You Need: LLMs performance scales with... by qarl on Sunday April 07, 2024 @02:16AM (#39958563)
Right. This is Searle's "a simulated plane won't get you to Japan" argument.

That's true. But a simulated calculator is perfectly effective for doing your taxes.

Re:More Agents Is All You Need: LLMs performance scales with... by ckcheng on Sunday April 07, 2024 @03:42PM (#39963227)
Like Searle’s Chinese Room argument [0]?

I think a challenge with the simulated-is-real math/calculator argument is that the simulation operates syntactically thru derivation without meaning.

E.g. a simulation of ZF set theory cannot tell you the truth value of the Axiom of Choice - because it’s independent of the ZF axioms (it is undecidable in the Gödel incompleteness sense).

But “Although originally controversial, the axiom of choice is now used without reservation by most mathematicians” [1] - I guess it’s truth is self-evident semantically.

So because of incompleteness, simulated math/calc will always be “missing” something.

Of course a LLM will happily say A of C is true (or not) but is it just parroting from the dataset or hallucinating?

[0]: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_of_choice

Re:More Agents Is All You Need: LLMs performance scales with... by qarl on Sunday April 07, 2024 @05:12PM (#39963972)
Eh - I'm not really interested in rehashing this old argument. I'm just trying to point out the flaw in Searle's plane analogy.