Even worse, IMHO... Are those who argue that LLMs an become sentient--I've seen this banter in other threads here on HN, in fact.
As far as I understand it, sentience is a property organic to beings that can do more than just reason. These beings can contemplate on their existence, courageously seek & genuinely value relationship and worship their creator. And yes, I'm describing HUMANS. In spite of all the science fiction that wondrously describes otherwise, machines/programs will not ever evolve to develop humanity. Am I right? I'll get off my soapbox now... just a pet peeve that I had to vent once again on the heels of said "literal anthropomorphosists"
I don't believe LLMs have become sentient, nor can it "contemplate on its existence".
That said, I find some of your claims less compelling. I'm an atheist, so there's no "creator" for humans to be worshipped. But also, human intelligence/sentience came from non-intelligence/non-sentience, right? So something appeared where before it didn't exist (gradually, and with whatever convoluted and random accidents, but it did happen: something new where it didn't exist before). Therefore, it's not implausible that a new form of intelligence/sentience could be fast tracked again out of non-intelligence, especially if humans were directing its evolution.
By the way, not all scifi argues that machines/programs can evolve to develop humanity. Some scifi argues the contrary, and good scifi wonders "what makes us human?".
You say that "I don't believe LLMs have become sentient" nor contemplate. But what is the basis for your belief in this? I would think than an atheist would be more likely to have opposite beliefs.
I also concede that a "form" of intelligence/sentience could emerge. Presently the form is called "artificial," I'd say.
And you're right... not all scifi argues machine evolves to humanity. I meant to refer to that body of scifi that does. And the body that explores the "what make us human," indeed that's the good stuff. Alex Garland's Ex Machina comes to mind. I absolutely loved that film. The ending was chilling!
Thanks for the respectful reply. We agree on scifi!
As for atheism: it's merely the lack of belief that god exists (or in some definitions, the active belief that it doesn't exist). Nothing else, nothing more. Individual atheists may believe some other things, or not.
I believe some kind of intelligence could arise again, much like ours arose "out of nonintelligence". I just don't think this is it -- LLMs are very impressive but they are likely a dead end, and regardless, I don't think they are conscious by any meaningful definition of the word. It's mostly hype and gullible people at this point.
See, I think your view is just as baseless as the people calling modern LLMs sentient. If I was to take a human, and gradual replace parts of him and his brain with electronics that simulated the behavior of the removed parts, I'd struggle to call that person not sentient. After all, is a deaf person who is given hearing by a cochlear implant "less sentient"? And if we were to skip the flesh part, and jump straight to building the resulting system, how could we not acknowledge that these two beings are not equals? We have no evidence whatsoever for anything at all so unique about oursleves that they could not be simulated. Hell, even a theological argument has issues: if God was able to create us in his image, complete with sentientience and humanity, what's to say we, too, can't so illuminate our own creations?
To claim we have already achieved machine sentience is preposterous hype swallowing. To assert that it is impossible is baseless conjecture.
But I never claimed that a person with synthetic augmentations was any less human/sentient than those with all their natural parts. I likewise never claimed that "we have already achieved machine sentience."
And here's some food for thought... Regardless if one believes in God or not, is it really that offensive to claim that our humanity is unique in its sentience? I find it offensive when some claim that aliens built the Egyptian pyramids. (It sure provides great fodder for some wondrous science fiction, indeed.)
I will re-assert in other words, for the sake of clarity... That sentience is not an emergent property. That is the foundational definition upon which I contemplate the mystery (i.e. the reality of our being that science will never develop sufficiently to fully explain) of our existence. I for one, enjoy the endeavor of employing my sentience to explore & investigate our wondrous universe and to equally explore & relate with you and call you a friend in spite of our disagreement. Cheers!
At this point I've seen various folks declare they've "bootstrapped consciousness" etc., somehow providing a sacred spark through just the right philosophical words or a series of pseudo-mathematical inputs.
I believe it's fundamentally the same as the people convinced "[he/she/it] really loves me." In both cases they've shaped the document-generation so that it describes a fictional character they want to believe is is real. Just with an extra dash of Promethean delusions of grandeur.
From Catholic News Agency [1], for your convenience:
The history of the white smoke, which indicates that the cardinals have elected a new successor of St. Peter, is ancient. In 1274, at the Second Council of Lyons, Pope Gregory X, in a document titled Ubi Periculum, determined the procedure for holding a conclave.
There he specified that the election would be done in isolation and with strict secrecy. For this reason, and to avoid any communication with the outside, the smoke signal was eventually adopted as part of the ritual. The tradition of burning ballots goes back to at least 1417, and likely before then, according to historian Frederic J. Baumgartner. The addition of the white spoke to announce the election of a new pope is more recent, however. Baumgartner traces it to 1914, with the election of Pope Benedict XV.
If the smoke coming out of the chimney of the Sistine Chapel is black, it means that none of the proposed candidates has reached two-thirds of the votes needed to be elected. If the smoke is white, the Church has a new universal pastor.
In ancient times, the method to give the smoke these colors was to burn the ballots used in the voting with a bit of wet straw so that it would come out black, or dry so as to obtain white smoke.
Nowadays, and due to some episodes that caused confusion, special chemical compounds and a procedure that includes two different tubes, one for each color of smoke, are used.
In addition, a bell is rung, part of the ritual introduced when Pope Benedict XVI was elected, which confirms the smoke is white and a new pope has been elected.
> The addition of the white smoke to announce the election of a new pope is more recent, however. Baumgartner traces it to 1914 [...]
but also
> In ancient times, the method to give the smoke these colors was to burn the ballots used in the voting with a bit of wet straw [...]
In ... the ancient times of 1914? Something's wrong here.
(For what it's worth, the Wikipedia article about this says that before 1914 black smoke meant "we held a ballot but it didn't successfully choose a new pope" and no smoke meant something other than that, though it's not clear there what the "we got one" signal was. The Wikipedia article, unlike the Catholic News Agency one, cites some references, but I haven't checked them.)
It definitely can’t be “ancient times” because the Sistine Chapel chimney was only added in the 18th century to protect Michelangelo’s frescos from the soot of burning ballots (1417 is just the oldest known reference to the practice, it’s likely older than that).
The whole black smoke/no smoke didn’t start out as a signal but everyone kept trying to interpret them as such in the 19th century. Black smoke meant no election and no smoke was ambiguous so they eventually switched to white smoke to keep the public from going crazy speculating. L
The first reference to non-black smoke I can find is in "Conclave di Leone XIII" by Raffaele De Cesare about the 1878 conclave (Leo XIII’s election):
> "Cardinal Borromeo, tasked with burning the ballots, burned them without straw, and the smoke was barely visible. There were few people in the square. The external steps of St. Peter's were full of onlookers until midday, but after the smoke, it slowly emptied. No one supposed that the Pope had been elected." (translated from Italian)
The 1914 conclave is the commonly accepted date because Pius X decreed in 1904 that all papers relating to the election (not just the ballots themselves) were to be burned after the voting. Since they’d burn all the others papers (without wet straw) only after a successful election, it would produce a lot more white smoke so the Catholic church made an administrative decision to make that into an explicit signal (though I think they use something to “enrich” the color now).
The recommendation I've seen is to include a LinkedIn profile URL on your resume. This was with the intent that those reviewing said resume would be able to verify that a real person was behind it.
I suppose that's reasonable, no?
It just occurred to me... Why have I not seen an Escape Room with this type of theme?
I'm in LA, Calif. I would think there would have to be something like this in LA. Who would go to experience this ingenious hellscape?
I would imagine this kind of game - and thus escape room experience - is very solitary. Short of having someone be a stenographer for writing down the oppressively long bitcoin^W crypto addresses for you, I don't know what kind of teamwork would be involved
Now maybe if you have to secretly swindle your co-incarcerated peers out of their crypto to win, like a "werewolf meets Bernie Madoff" scenario, that could be interesting
If I recall correctly, a number of years ago, plenty prior to ChatGPT, there was an incident with a scientific journal (don't recall the name though). Perhaps others here may know of this incident too...
So apparently someone submitted a paper that was entirely nonsense. This was intentional but not explicit as it was just a stunt. The paper had all the right fancy/technical words, the right structure, likely even images, and apparently a convincing conclusion. But it was all about nothing, nothing substantial at all, nada. Had a peer reviewer actually read the paper, it would have not been published and summarily tossed. But it did go print and oh boy, the journal's board/powers-that-be were pissed. I didn't follow the story much past that point but I think something was supposedly proposed to prevent this.
I guess that would be it! Thanks for pointing out that Wikipedia entry.
I was in college at the time majoring in Physics, and yep, that was one of the headline news among a journal or two that arrived there. Good memories, indeed...
Hate seems to be such a strong word. I mean, as a man of faith myself, I have encountered HN posts that are compel me to consider "how can anyone, God-fearing or not, not see the disappointing hubris in this claim (that summarily and dogmatically counters the mystery of God)?" For one to express the pursuit and fruits of a relationship with the Creator, on the other hand, is quite the opposite and most admirable and NOT delusional, IMHO.
@GallenErso: I celebrate your positive (sans skepticism, that is) investment in the mystery of Life! In the final analysis, I trust that you'll find more than just satisfaction in this supernatural pursuit--myself, I have found an alarming and disarming hope, beauty & suffering in charity and meaning & purpose in every single endeavor.
Lasty... I'd encourage you to check out the Magis Center. God bless!
I've had an eye on the Huawei Matebook X Pro on Swappa. My other eye is on the XPS, new from Amazon. The latter is certainly more expensive and yet, doesn't impress me as much as the Matebook.
But as we all know, Huawei is not trusted much here lately in the U.S. Is this in fact another Chinese company that's best we avoid? I was considering starting an Ask HN just for Huawei given not much has been posted here on this topic for a couple of years now.
Yes I remember the router situation where they accidentally left telnet listening on the WAN.
I worked at Vodafone and all the routers get a security review, so it is highly doubtful that they left it in on purpose because they would have known that it would have been found. It was test engineering firmware that got left on some routers, and makes spurious claims even though in the article it points out that Vodafone didn't believe it was a backdoor.
And your first link talks about how someone appears to have added an additional chip to the design, which is unlikely to have come from Huawei. Sounds suspiciously similar to this
I would say that the Wireguard issue is worse than the speculation that pre-production firmware on unreleased routers was backdooring as they actually shipped it.
Of the three links about Huawei, one is someone in India claiming IP theft, one where they made up a claim of backdooring which the original security researchers rejected that claim, and one where it appears that hardware may have been tampered at the manufacturing stage by Americans.
Not exactly smoking gun, Huawei are evil and want to steal your data. I don't trust them, but then I don't trust a lot of the networking providers to not be compromised by a state actor.
Otherwise, they are probably the best of the bunch, purely because of the stack being mostly BSD.
As nuclearnice1 has noted... "Catholics seem almost the same as the US population overall to believe in evolution." I am a practicing Catholic, happily formed and informed. There is nothing in Church teaching that prevents the faithful from studying and defending evolution(1) (or any of the natural sciences, for that matter--contrary to popular belief, the Church does not condemn science that is true to its discipline). Some will reject it (often out of ignorance of what evolution actually teaches(2) or simply as a matter of choice) while others will prayerfully accept it. Myself, I am fascinated by science and always in appreciation to those who genuinely "stick to the science."
(1) But there is an important provision to be considered by the faithful: the teaching of evolution cannot patently claim that there is no God. It is outside the scope of any science to disprove (or prove) the existence of God. And thus it is a misrepresentation of the science for any of the faithful to claim otherwise. The Church respects science in its endeavor to sincerely discover truth; Pope John Paul II once put it as such in his writings (I am paraphrasing here): "Faith forms reason, reason informs faith."
(2) Darwin's work was in fact not motivated by a sense of atheism [1]. In fact, I believe that I once discovered that in the Forward to On the Origin of Species, he references God in a positive note. The exact comment escapes me--perhaps someone with the actual text can verify this.
Good chatter I find here of Mailspring--I use it as well. What do y'all think of SparkMail? It's not been brought up here yet. I'm quite fond of it on my mobile device. This came to mind as I looked over Shortwave
