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A comment on Artificial Intelligence How Do Machines 'Grok' Data. Parent comment

Re:Artificial Intelligence How Do Machines 'Grok' Data by ang_cire on Sunday April 14, 2024 @02:14PM (#40033114)
Yep. Computers are just binary-state machines. Everything you can do with a computer, you could do with water channels and pulleys and gates (if you could assemble trillions and trillions of them). No one would ask whether the water-channel system 'groks' things, but because they are miniaturized and (to 99.9999% of people) esoteric in their actual workings, people treat them like magic.

Clarke was right, but sadly it doesn't take alien technology for people to start anthropomorphizing computers or thinking that they magically have transcended mere (though obviously very complexly-arranged) logic gates, it just takes a GUI that spits out algorithmically-generated pictures and text.

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Re:Artificial Intelligence How Do Machines 'Grok' Data by __MatrixMan__ on Sunday April 14, 2024 @03:00PM (#40033463)
> No one would ask whether the water-channel system 'groks' things

I would. It's very common to describe the flow of electricity as similar to the flow of water. If it's electricity in my brain that allows me to understand, why couldn't there be an analogous system involving water which also understands?

Any substrate which supports the necessary logical operations ought to be sufficient. To believe otherwise seems needlessly anthropocentric.

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Re:Artificial Intelligence How Do Machines 'Grok' Data by jrflowers on Sunday April 14, 2024 @05:04PM (#40034463)
> Any substrate which supports the necessary logical operations ought to be sufficient. To believe otherwise seems needlessly anthropocentric.

This makes sense. Anything that performs logic using electricity is conscious and comparable to the human brain. This is obviously true because there is no word or concept for anthropomorphizing

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Re:Artificial Intelligence How Do Machines 'Grok' Data by munchausen42 on Sunday April 14, 2024 @02:34PM (#40033250)
I think most of what a brain cell effectively does could be simulated with water channels, pulleys and gates - so don't expect humans to grok either.
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Re:Artificial Intelligence How Do Machines 'Grok' Data by ang_cire on Sunday April 14, 2024 @07:48PM (#40035570)
> I think most of what a brain cell effectively does

I would love to see a source for your belief of this.

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