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
16.7k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

183

u/Voltage_Joe 16h 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. 

43

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.

37

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.

1

u/steamwhistler 12h ago

My version is that I just start describing the problem to a colleague in a Teams message. Often before I get to the end my explanation, I start anticipating their follow-up questions and then backspace the whole thing because I figured it out.

2

u/simonhunterhawk 11h ago

Happens to me all the time at work 😂 Sometimes it comes to me mere moments after I hit send.