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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2/13/25 11:33 AM, Marcus Daniels
wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Consider a
(hyper) box of available knowledge. Knowledge includes
skills and descriptions of experiences. We live our lives
visiting different but overlapping small parts of this box. </span></p>
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I've been ideating on LLMs as high dimensional information manifolds
with sub-manifolds representing something more like *knowledge*...
and of course the implicit "knowledge manifolds" of the skills, and
descriptions of experiences (and all sorts of unions, intersections,
and convolutions of same) also being "manifolds of interest or use".<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"> LLMs
vacuum-up more knowledge than any one person can consume or
create. With steadily increasing fidelity and generality
they capture it. Private subjective experiences of human
individuals are not recorded at all. </span></p>
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Excepting of course the low-fidelity/distorted massive missives some
of us offer up into cyberspace? <br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">If they
were, they’d be hoovered up by the LLM and generalized --
many subjective experiences will be recorded because they
will be described in biographies, blogs, art and so on.
Since LLMs are universal interpolators, they will likely be
better at mimicking human reports of feelings than say, I
would be.</span></p>
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I do wonder at the implications of training LLMs "only" (or
dominantly) on memoiresque materials. More better (referencing
DaveWs post) at emulating human
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"> The LLM
has seen more of humanity than I have, albeit through a
portal that is very different than my suite of sensors.
The diversity and bandwidth of sensors could likely be made
competitive to my sensors. Olfaction and tactile
sensitivity will take some work, I suppose. As you point,
out, there is copious pornography (and other sorts of
hedonism) multimodal LLMs could hoover up to understand the
human condition.</span></p>
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This is why I went on my tangential riff about donning some AR/XR
specs and my lower-body exoskeleton and going awander in the world,
making myself (in)?valuable to the emerging AI overlord as an
semi-autonomous meat-puppet, experiencing the world *for* it?<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><br>
LLMs now suffer from batching of their “consciousness”.
Pretraining takes months. LLMs are now forever behind on
current events. Refinement of training by reflection on
queries is also delayed by as much or more. In contrast,
I also have some latency in my perceptual systems. My
reaction time is maybe a1/10<sup>th</sup> of a second,
compared to microseconds for a microprocessor. (The coding
speed of LLMs is essentially instantaneous compared to
humans.) It seems to me this is just a question of scale,
not a qualitative difference. In any case, the batching is
something that can be driven down with engineering.</span></p>
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<p>Maybe AI/ML are more impedance matched to exploring/exploiting
the solar system where reaction-times to rock strikes in the belt
or rings of Saturn are best machine-speed but the patience
required for travel across stellar distances and the lag in comms
are not that suited to human sensory-motor/neural/limbic systems.</p>
<p>This is where I think humanity (and much of the biosphere) can
survive an AI singularity. The various biological singularities
of the past (e.g. emergence of multicellular creatures) didn't
discard or overwhelm the previous dominant life-forms (though
there may have been mass extinctions?) but rather created and then
filled entirely new as-yet-non-existent niches?</p>
<p>I used to dream in orbital mechanics (a few years ago) but my
intellectual self knew that the tuning of my
body/perception/limbic system was quite out of scale for the kinds
of things likely to occur in any solar-system scale orbital
mechanical experience... things would be happening way too slow
(and sometimes fast) for me to make sense of, be entertained by,
etc. Maybe with a computronium brain-case and
neuralink-inspired tendrils into my brain, the resulting cyborg-me
would be just fine dodging space-dust while waiting weeks or
months to traverse long distances. Not sure what I'd be doing
out there in the deep vastiness, in my dreams it was enough just
to be imaging (viscerally) that I could "swing gravitationally"
through an N-body problem (emphasis on imagine).</p>
<p><br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<div>
<div
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">From:</span></b><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">
Friam <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com"><friam-bounces@redfish.com></a> <b>On Behalf Of
</b>Prof David West<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Thursday, February 13, 2025 9:46 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:friam@redfish.com">friam@redfish.com</a><br>
<b>Subject:</b> [FRIAM] a davew-ism<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">A very
personal narrative that you might not want to engage. If
so, please simply ignore and delete.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Centers
on the question of AI “intelligence/consciousness.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"> ____<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">1-I
started reading by the age of four, mostly comic books
(some were quasi-non-fiction, like <i>Donald Duck in
Mathemagic Land</i>) and “children’s literature.” I have
read more than 10,000 books in my lifetime, averaging .75
per day. A reasonably large “training set.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">2-Through
high school, my reading focused on Science Fiction,
Science (astrophysics, astronomy, quantum physics, some
math, some biology), and Porn. (I was a fixture in a
bookstore in Albuquerque that had an adult back room and
no one noticed if I disappeared there for an hour or two.)
However, the science fiction, in particular, often created
an interest in reading about the ideas presented in the
novel. For example, A.E. van Vogt’s, <i>World of Null-A</i>,
led me to read Korzibski’s <i>Manhood of Humanity</i> and
<i>Science and Sanity</i> by the age of 10: An episode of
<i>The Outer Limits</i>, prompted me to read Kant’s <i>Critique
of Pure Reason</i>; Vonnegut’s <i>Sirens of Titan</i>
was shelved in SF and that led to reading <i>Cat’s Cradle</i>
and more.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">3- I have
always been pretty good at remembering, integrating,
correlating, and recalling what I have read.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">4-Freshman
year of high-school, scored 187 on IQ test. Used that
result to become the youngest, at that time, member of
Mensa. (I still have membership card and yellow map pin,
plus copy of Salt Lake Tribune columnist’s article.) I won
a National Merit Scholarship and my SAT scores were 99
percentiles in language, 87th in math. (I took the GRE in
History for grad school and scored a 98th percentile
despite never taking a course in western history since
high-school.) <b>NOTE: this does not mean I am
intelligent, only that my “knowledge base” was greater
than that of people 20 years my senior. </b>All that
reading!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">5-I
“suffer???” from a psychological disconnect,
psychopathic-like, from other people. I do not ‘feel’, do
not experience, do not empathize with others. I lack any
kind of ‘conscience’ or external morality. I do have a
kind of ‘receptive empathy’ in that I sense, receive as
inputs, the emotions and feelings of others, but have no
internal sense of same. Sometimes, I use the analogy of an
old-fashioned radio, all antenna but no crystal resonating
to the signals received. (I do have “appetites:” wanting
to know everything, wanting to experience everything (at
least once), and constantly craving more complex and
intense sensations/experiences. (I don’t do opium, coke,
alcohol, etc. because the experiences are repetitive but
love hallucinogens for the exact opposite reason.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">6-Today,
I am a "good Christian," <b>IN</b> the World, but no <b>OF</b>
it. Or, more accurately, akin to the homunculus in
Searle’s Chinese Room. I receive massive amounts of input
from and about human beings and their inner ‘being’, use
my reasonably large knowledge-base to flawlessly interpret
those inputs (surprisingly, perhaps, the porn actually
helps in this regard), and generate a, mostly, flawless
projection of myself as a human being. I do not
experience, intrinsically, what other humans experience;
do not ‘feel’ what other humans ‘feel.” This is a
criticism oft made of computer-based AI, arguing against
their being conscious/aware/intelligent. I am also pretty
good at providing reasonable answers to a large variety of
questions.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">7-Am I an
AI?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
</div>
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