May 29, 2026, 5:39 PM@MissConstrue @complexmath @nelson @benjamineskola hypothetically it is possible for an artificial agent (read: "AI") to be capable of accurately modeling the world and "thinking", however it seems that this is not currently even remotely the case.
@solonovamax @MissConstrue @complexmath @nelson I would not expect a large language model to be capable of doing so, no matter how advanced. An ‘AI’ ‘agent’ based on some other technology? Perhaps. But at that point we’re literally just saying ‘technically it’s not impossible for this to exist in future’; we’re in the realm of science fiction.
May 29, 2026, 5:47 PM@benjamineskola @MissConstrue @complexmath @nelson I'm using the word "agent" to not necessarily refer to "AI agents"
see: https://tech.lgbt/@solonovamax/116659064720106166
but yes, I currently believe that an artificial agent capable of thought and accurately modeling the world is science fiction
however I believe it is possible, only based on the fact that the transformer architecture is turing complete. but it might not be efficient for this, it might require like a model that's 10,000x larger than what is currently the largest possible model. I do not believe it is something that is possible in the near future (well, I hope it isn't).
May 29, 2026, 5:49 PM@benjamineskola @MissConstrue @complexmath @nelson the word "agent" is used to mean an actor performing actions to achieve their goal
it can be from something as simple as a thermometer that measures the inside temperature to adjust an HVAC system to remain within a given range (the actions being turning on/off the heat/cooling & the goal being to achieve a given temperature), to as complex as a human
@solonovamax yeah but that’s what I’m saying: if we’re discussing actually-existing “AI” agents it’s impossible and if you want to discuss hypothetical future AI it’s kind of unrelated.
@solonovamax @benjamineskola @MissConstrue @complexmath @nelson
"Turing-complete" and "capable of actually representing reality and reasoning about it" are two very different statements.
@eestileib @solonovamax @benjamineskola @MissConstrue @complexmath reminds me of how much brains actually suck as computers, real brains are full of noise, operate in non-linear scales and are mostly "single-threaded" even though every single neuron works somewhat independently
i think our first mistake was to mistake computation with consciousness
@nelson @eestileib @solonovamax @benjamineskola @complexmath
I think you're on to something there. A lot of AI hype can be seen as a mass pareidoliac hallucination. We're seeing dragons in the clouds.
@MissConstrue @nelson @solonovamax @benjamineskola @complexmath
I don't blame random non techy people or people who don't claim to know any philosophy for thinking chatbots are intelligent when all of their social sources of proof (rich people, relatives, the people on tv and YouTube) say it is and it seems like it is.
I rely on social proof to pick what food I eat all the time, it's not such a bad reasoning method for stuff you can't research yourself.
But people with CS or math or history or philosophy degrees (including all PhDs) should be ashamed of themselves if they tell other people that chatbots "think" or are "alive" or "apologize" or "feel bad".
That is a failure to use their intellectual training, and it is fucking over people who use their social status to form opinions on these matters.
Generative Textual Functionalism is just yet another extractive religion.
@solonovamax @complexmath @nelson @benjamineskola
Theoretically, yes. But I point you towards one of my favorite long term AI projects, Cyc. (Whom I haven’t checked up on since Doug died.). I knew Doug since the 80s, and sort of stayed in the loop with what they were doing, because trying to develop an ontological system fascinates me. I want it to happen, I just don’t think we have the compute yet. I’m not sure it can be done with anything less than quantum.
But Doug’s vision of AI had nothing really in common with current LLM, especially since nobody has come up with a way for it to be commercially viable, because that wasn’t the vision. Knowledge was the dream. As electric dreams go, it was a pretty groovy one.
May 29, 2026, 5:57 PM@MissConstrue @complexmath @nelson @benjamineskola I don't think you necessarily need anything quantum for it, just some very powerful classical computational device (based on the fact that given our current understanding of the human brain, they do not do any quantum-like processing. also the fact that quantum computers have been "just a few years away" for what, like 30 years now?)
but yeah, I find AI in concept quite interesting. if you'd asked me pre-chatgpt, that's what I wanted to specialize into.
now? god, that shit just sounds so fucking exhausting. I do not want anything to do with it. I want to stay as far away from it as possible.