Ricardo, Alex, Anatoly, and anybody who is working with or speculating about LLMs for generative AI,
LLMs have proved to be valuable for machine translation of languages. They have also been used to implement many kinds of toys that appear to be impressive. But nobody has shown that LLM technology can be used for any mission critical applications of any kind -- i.e. any applications for which a failure would cause a disaster (financial or human or both). Question: Companies that are working on generative AI are *taking* a huge amount of money from investors. Have any of them produced any practical applications that are actually *making* money? Generative AI is now at the top of the hype cycle. That implies an impending crash into the trough of disillusionment. When will that crash occur? Unless anybody can demonstrate applications that make money, the investors are going to be disillusioned. To Ricardo> Those are interesting hypotheses about consciousness in your note below. But none of them have any significant implications for AI, ontology, or the possibility of money-making applications of LLMs. One important point: Nobody suggests that anything in the cerebellum is conscious. The results from the cerebellum that are reported to the cortex are critical, especially since the cerebellum has more than four times as many neurons as the cerebral cortex. There is also strong evidence that the cerebellum is essential for complex mathematics. (See Section 6.pdf) Implication: AI methods that simulate processes in the cerebral cortex (such as natural language processing by LLMs) cannot do the heavy duty computation that is done by neurons in the cerebellum -- and that includes the most complex logic and mathematics. See the summary in Section6.pdf and my other references below. John ---------------------------------------- From: "Ricardo Sanz" <ricardo.sanz.br...@gmail.com> Hi, JFS>> What parts of the brain are relevant for any sensation of consciousness? So far, the question of neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) is still unresolved. This was the theme of the Chalmers-Koch wager. There are too many theories and no relevant enough experimental data to decide. The most repeated theory is that consciousness is hosted in thalamo-cortical reentrant loops. The cortex (sensorimotor data processor) and the thalamus (the main relay station of the brain). This is yet to be demonstrated. Another widely repeated theory was that the NCC was a train of 40hz signal waves across the whole brain. The boldest to me, however, is the quantum macroscopic coherence in the axon microtubules. This is called the Orchestrated Objective Reduction theory (Orch-OR). Best, Ricardo On Mon, Oct 2, 2023 at 5:40 AM John F Sowa <s...@bestweb.net> wrote: That article shows several points: (1) The experts on the subject don't agree on basic issues. (2) They are afraid that too much criticism of one theory will cause neuroscientists to consider all theories dubious. (3) They don't have \clear criteria for what kinds of observations would or would not be considered relevant to the issues. But I want to mention some questions I have: What parts of the brain are relevant for any sensation of consciousness? All parts? Some parts? Some parts more than others? Which ones? >From common experience, we know that complex activities require a great deal >of conscious attention when we're first learning them. But after we learn >them, they become almost automatic, and we can perform them without thinking >about them. Examples: Learning to ski vs. skiing smoothly on moderate hills >vs skiing on very steep or complex surfaces. The same issues apply to any >kind of skill: driving a car, driving a truck, flying a plane, swimming, >dancing, skating, mountain climbing, working in any profession of any kind -- >indoors, outdoors, on a computer, with any kinds of tools, instruments, >conditions, etc. In every kind of skill, the basic techniques become automatic and can be performed with a minimum of conscious attention. There is strong evidence that the effort in the cerebrum (/AKA cerebral cortex) is conscious, but expert skills are controlled by the cerebellum, which is not conscious. There is brief discussion of the cerebellum in Section6.pdf (see the latest excerpt I sent, which is dated 28 Sept 2023). For more about the role of the cerebellum, see the article and video of a man who was born without a cerebellum and survived: A Man's Incomplete Brain Reveals Cerebellum's Role In Thought And Emotion. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/03/16/392789753/a-man-s-incomplete-brain-reveals-cerebellum-s-role-in-thought-and-emotion John
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