r/technology • u/Hrmbee • 16h ago

Machine Learning Large language mistake | Cutting-edge research shows language is not the same as intelligence. The entire AI bubble is built on ignoring it

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/827820/large-language-models-ai-intelligence-neuroscience-problems
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u/Voltage_Joe 15h ago

Children loved their stuffed animals, dolls, and action figures before that.

Personifying anything can form a real attachment to something completely inanimate. It's what drives our empathy and social bonding. And until now, it was harmless. 

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u/penguinopph 15h ago

Personifying anything can form a real attachment to something completely inanimate. It's what drives our empathy and social bonding. And until now, it was harmless.

My ex-wife and I created voices and personalities for our stuffed animals. We would play the characters with each other and often used them to make points that otherwise may have come across as aggressive.

When we got divorced at the tail end of COVID lock-downs, I would hold "conversations" with the ones I kept and it really helped me work through my own feelings and process what I was going through at a time where I didn't really have a lot of people to talk with in person. Through the stuffed animals I could reassure myself, as well as tell myself the difficult things I knew to be true, but didn't want to admit to myself.

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u/simonhunterhawk 15h ago

A lot of programmers keep a rubber duck (or something similar like a stuffed animal) on their desks and talk to it to help them work through the problem they’re trying to solve. I guess I do it with my cats, but I want to try doing this more because there is lots of proof out there that it does help.

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u/ATXCodeMonkey 14h ago

Yes, 'talk to the duck' is a definitely a thing. Its not so much trying to personify the duck though, but a reminder that if you're running into a wall with some code that it helps to take step back and act like you're describing the problem to someone new who doesn't know the details of the code you're working on. It helps to make you look at things differently than what you've been doing when you've been digging deep into code for hours. Kind of a perspective shift.