Comment by sidewndr46
Comment by sidewndr46 2 days ago
This was my thought as well when I read this. Using the word 'know' implies an LLM has cognition, which is a pretty huge claim just on its own.
Comment by sidewndr46 2 days ago
This was my thought as well when I read this. Using the word 'know' implies an LLM has cognition, which is a pretty huge claim just on its own.
"Know" doesn't have any rigorous precisely-defined senses to be used! Asking for it not to be used colloquially is the same as asking for it never to be used at all.
I mean - people have been saying stuff like "grep knows whether it's writing to stdout" for decades. In the context of talking about computer programs, that usage for "know" is the established/only usage, so it's hard to imagine any typical HN reader seeing TFA's title and interpreting it as an epistemological claim. Rather, it seems to me that the people suggesting "know" mustn't be used about LLMs because epistemology are the ones departing from standard usage.
I think you should be more precise and avoid anthropomorphism when talking about gen AI, as anthropomorphism leads to a lot of shaky epistemological assumptions. Your car example didn't imply intelligence, but we're talking about a technology that people misguidedly treat as though it is real intelligence.
The toaster thing is more as admission that the speaker doesn't know what the toaster does to limit charring the bread. Toasters with timers, thermometers and light sensors all exist. None of them "know" anything.
Yeah, I agree, but I think that's true all the way up the chain -- just like everything's magic until you know how it works, we may say things "know" information until we understand the deterministic machinery they're using behind the scenes.
I'm in the same camp, with the addition that I believe it applies to us as well since we're part of the system too, and to societies and ecologies further up the scale.
Does it though? I feel like there's a whole epistemological debate to be had, but if someone says "My toaster knows when the bread is burning", I don't think it's implying that there's cognition there.
Or as a more direct comparison, with the VW emissions scandal, saying "Cars know when they're being tested" was part of the discussion, but didn't imply intelligence or anything.
I think "know" is just a shorthand term here (though admittedly the fact that we're discussing AI does leave a lot more room for reading into it.)