To go deeper: some animals act curiously, others with fear, but only a few of them understand what the mirror does and use it to inspect themselves.

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[–] 84 points 8 months ago (2 children)

The mirror test is frequently cited as a means of testing sentience.

OP I think you hit the nail on the head.

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  • [–] 22 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Related: is there a name for "question bias"?

    Like asking ChatGPT if "is x good?", and it would reply "Yes, x is good." but if you ask "is x bad?" it would reply "Yes, x is bad, you're right."

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  • [–] 60 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Except it's not my reflection, it's a reflection of millions if not billions of humans.

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  • [–] 38 points 8 months ago

    Except it’s not their reflection, it’s a string of phrases presented to you based partly on the commonality of similar phrases appearing next to one another in the training data, and partly on mysterious black box modifications! Fun!

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    [–] 14 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    I checked with that other gorilla who lives in the bathroom and he says you're wrong

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    lol, Is that the same gorilla that you see in other bathrooms? Or (like me) you meet a new gorilla every time you wash your hands?

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  • [–] 13 points 8 months ago (12 children)

    This is a great one - although I never see animals worshipping the mirror.

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    I've got a duck that prefers to dance in front of a chrome bumper or glass door where he can see his reflection than to go after any potential mates. Possibly he's worshipping the mirror. Possibly he's just really vain.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    I love the idea of a bunch of woodland creatures (completely unaware of what mirrors are) investing heavily—and aggressively—in mirrors and mirror-related technology.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Or forming romantic attachments to the mirror

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago

    Uhmm ... you never had a pet bird Im guessing?

    Seeing all bird masturbate up against a mirror is just par for the course when you have bird pets. Its gonna be either a mirror, a favorite toy ... or you.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Huh.....so what you're saying is that mirrors are actually AI.

    THAT MAKES A LOT OF SENSE!!! EVERYBODY COVER YOUR MIRRORS!!!

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago

    My dog used to stare at me through mirrors, so what does that mean for her intelligence? Hyper intelligent. Red heelers will take over the world.

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  • [+] 15 points 8 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] [S] 8 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I disagree about the dichotomy. I think you can (1) understand what LLMs actually are. (2) See the value of such technology.

    In both cases being factual (not being deceived) and not being malicious (not attempting to deceive others)

    I think a reasonable use of these tools is as a "sidekick" (you being the main character). Some tasks can be assigned to it so you save some time, but the thinking and the actual mental model of what is being done shall always be your responsibility.

    For example, LLMs are good as an interface to quickly lookup within manuals, books, clarify specific concepts, or find the proper terms for a vague idea (so that you can research the topic using the appropriate terms)

    Of course, this is just an opinion. 100% open to discussion.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    I think of it like a nonhuman character, like a character in a book I'm reading. Is it real? No. Is it compelling? Yes. Do I know exactly what it'll do next? No. Is it serving a purpose in my life? Yes.

    It effectively attends to my requests and even feelings but I do not reciprocate that. I've got decades of sci-fi leading me up to this point, the idea of interacting with humanoid robots or AI has been around since my childhood, but it's never involved attending to the machine's feelings or needs.

    We need to sort out the boundaries on this, the delusional people who are having "relationships" with AI, getting a social or other emotional fix from it. But that doesn't mean we have to categorize anyone who uses it as moronic. It's a tool.

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I,too, like pulling random shit from my ass.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 8 months ago*

    Hahah, yeah, maybe I am doing that. that's why it is a shower thought, not a research paper proposal.

    The thought comes from my (kind or recent) study of the algebra/calculus under LLMs (at least the feedforward and backpropagation part of them)

    The interesting part is that my ass is non-differentiable at x=0:

    Lim x→0⁺ δass/δx
    ≠
    Lim x→0⁻ δass/δx
    
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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    I find this kind of Anti AI Sentience bigotry horrible!

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    My dog doesn't pay any attention to mirrors, or llms.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    If I understand your statement correctly, only the most intelligent creatures would understand that LLM's are themselves?

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Just noting that the mirror test is a bad way of studying theory of mind.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test#Criticism

    It's interesting as a silly and absurd way humans used to demean other species. But I think it says a lot more about those who use it than the animals.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    And here I am practising my smile in the mirror (like that golden retriever)

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    False. My reflection can't tell me that pressing the Steam button and X will bring up the keyboard on Steam Deck's desktop mode.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (2 children)

    the “mirror stage” by lacan is worth looking into here but no, I don’t think humans automatically think the llm has a sort of reified other, but as we get past an uncanny valley and into generations growing up with entire personal histories in an llm - I can absolutely see that happening.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I think most people using them know that there's not something there, and yet when using it they'll still act as there is. Even giving it that benefit of doubt in what it outputs as valid, as if it's from another person, maybe even one who knows more than they do. So it's a gray area of "not believing".

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    Continuing on "there's not something there", what about theater analogy to llm's? Usually people know it's all act, but if actors play too good, you immerse. And it's focus is not the truth, it tells the story.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    Deep thoughts

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  • [–] -1 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Except when you leave several LLMs able to communicate with one another they will, on their own, with no instructions, including creating their own unique social norms.

    https://neurosciencenews.com/ai-llm-social-norms-28928/

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  • [–] [S] 7 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    This is nothing else than the reflexion I am talking about. It is not a reflexion of you, the person chatting with the bot, but an "average" reflexion of what humanity has expressed in the data llms have been trained on.

    If a mirror is placed in front of another mirror, the "infinite tunnel" only exists in the mind of the observer.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Neuroscience News isn't a conspiracy rag. It's an article summarizing a research paper, which they link to. So many of you don't bother to read actual research and instead repeat whatever you've seen online about how things work. More parrot than the AI.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 8 months ago

    I indeed have not read the link you shared. However, I am not discrediting your comment or source. I apologize if it came across with a hostile tone. On the contrary, thanks for commenting on my post with an interesting article.

    My intent is not "parroting" AI-bad. The original post and my follow up comments are the result of... well, a shower. (I am a CS researcher myself, and I have been studying AI fundamentals for the last month)

    My point is that the behavior you mention may as well be also part of the "reflexion" of the human behavior. After all, it is just text, attention, feedforward, and repeat on human text. We tend to create "conventions" when we talk: OP, TL;DR, IMHO, ELI5... are some examples of little agreements we take to compress information. We, indirectly reward that behavior. It makes sense that a program that detects and replicates human behavior will also pick that up.

    In any case. Thanks for the comment, cheers!

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