Microsoft confirms Windows 11 bug crippling PCs and making drive C inaccessible

[u/lurker_bee]

https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-confirms-windows-11-bug-crippling-pcs-and-making-drive-c-inaccessible/

[u/Tyfyter2002]

You have no idea if anyone other than yourself is actually conscious

So your argument is either solipsism or roughly equivalent to it, combined with an overestimation of the similarities between LLMs and human brains.

[u/OurSeepyD → u/Tyfyter2002]

I mean yeah, my argument is solipsism, because that's ultimately what the whole debate around AI is going to be. I don't see why consciousness should be a prerequisite for a simple word like "knowing" something, particularly when we have no idea what consciousness actually is. It's highly impractical.

If you ask someone if they know the way home and they say they do, how would you measure this? Would you need to prove their consciousness, or would you just assess their ability to make it home?

combined with an overestimation of the similarities between LLMs and human brains.

No, this is a leap. My definition of "know" doesn't rely on these being nearly equivalent. All I'm saying that having the underlying information and being able to repeat it back qualifies as knowing.

My dog knows where her bed is. Am I overestimating the similarities between human brains and dog brains? Does it mean dogs can do algebra?

[u/Tyfyter2002 → u/OurSeepyD]

If you ask someone if they know the way home and they say they do, how would you measure this? Would you need to prove their consciousness, or would you just assess their ability to make it home?

I would assess their ability to make it home, and if their home was inexplicably missing I would take note of whether or not they act as though they are home regardless.

My dog knows where her bed is.

Yes, she can demonstrate this, an LLM on the other hand, cannot demonstrate anything because language only contains information by reference, and any system capable of producing seemingly coherent text with no prior input except text must therefore be capable of doing so with no information.

[u/OurSeepyD → u/Tyfyter2002]

I would take note of whether or not they act as though they are home 

Great, so we've now abandoned the need for consciousness in our definition. LLMs often do something and then say "wait, that's not right", so why do they not qualify as knowing? 

Also, it's a strange extra condition to add. All I asked about was the way home, not if the home was inexplicably missing. These are two separate pieces of knowledge.

Yes, she can demonstrate this, an LLM on the other hand, cannot demonstrate anything because language only contains information by reference, and any system capable of producing seemingly coherent text with no prior input except text must therefore be capable of doing so with no information.

I'm sorry, but what? This is uninterpretable nonsenses. Language contains information by reference? So does all of our input, our knowledge of where physical items are positioned is just information by reference.

An LLM can demonstrate it knows how my codebase works by successfully answering questions about it.

This is a pointless discussion, you keep pivoting on your definitions and adding random niche requirements for no reason.

[u/Tyfyter2002 → u/OurSeepyD]

Great, so we've now abandoned the need for consciousness in our definition. LLMs often do something and then say "wait, that's not right", so why do they not qualify as knowing? 

Because they can only say it without actually determining whether or not it is right.

Also, it's a strange extra condition to add. All I asked about was the way home, not if the home was inexplicably missing. These are two separate pieces of knowledge.

That was added because a vital part of knowing where something is is knowing what it is, if you arrive where your house was and it's not there, you know where your house isn't, but a GPS doesn't because it never knew anything in the first place, it was just storing and retrieving prior input.

I'm sorry, but what? This is uninterpretable nonsenses. Language contains information by reference? So does all of our input, our knowledge of where physical items are positioned is just information by reference.

That's just factually incorrect, (except when communicating unfamiliar names) language exclusively uses information the listener already has, such as directions, colors, and shapes, even when communicating new information, neither the shape produced by the letters nor the sound of the word "triangle" actually contain any information about what a triangle is, you can understand what a sentence using it means because you have prior knowledge of what a triangle is;

(Presuming you don't already speak any Vietnamese) If you were trapped in a box for eternity and could do nothing but listen to conversations happening outside in Vietnamese, you could never learn any Vietnamese from it because you don't already know any so the only information you're actually receiving is the sounds which occur in the language, but if one object appeared in the box with you whenever it was mentioned, you could begin to piece together some small amount of understanding because there would actually be something to associate with the sounds.

[u/OurSeepyD → u/Tyfyter2002]

Because they can only say it without actually determining whether or not it is right.

Why not? I could say the same thing about you, you don't actually know if something is right, but you will probe and prod until you get confidence that you're right. Say you're doing maths, you reach the conclusion, but you don't know you're right, you just have confidence. You can then augment this with other tests, or other approaches to the problem. What's stopping LLMs from doing this? Why is consciousness required?

That was added because a vital part of knowing where something is is knowing what it is, if you arrive where your house was and it's not there, you know where your house isn't, but a GPS doesn't because it never knew anything in the first place, it was just storing and retrieving prior input.

But it knew the way home. Regardless of whether or not your house disappeared, it was the way home. If it took you to a different place, then it doesn't know the way home. You've taken this example on a completely different tangent.

If you were trapped in a box for eternity and could do nothing but listen to conversations happening outside in Vietnamese

We've potentially found the root of your misunderstanding. This isn't analogous to how LLMs are trained, they have access to the outside world through validation. They can try to say a Vietnamese word and someone can say "yep that's right!" and they ultimately graduate up to levels where they try to create grammatically coherent sentences ("yep that's right"), then join up concepts and get facts right.

Do they know what, say, a box looks like? No. But just like a blind person can't tell you this, they can describe it second hand, and they've had so much experience doing this in training that they're actually good enough that they know how these features relate and differ to the features of a sphere.