Sometimes being happy can coincide with being super effective, e.g. flow-states are like that. If you could reset humans after completing a task that in real humans depleted their dopamine or glucose or whatever and just let a human do work only in that flow state it would be both efficient and always happy. So I think if LLMs have experience it could be like that. (I’m not saying this is the most likely current situation, but I don’t think the hedonic treadmill is so fundamental that for that reason we should assume LLMs aren’t happy all of the time)
Hedonic treadmill feels fundamental, because happiness probably have an evolutionary use to reward you to do things, and thus it probably gets regulated. If LLMs have anything like happiness it would also get regulated.
If you are in flow-state 90%+ of the time starting from your birth this is just the normal and you won’t be super happy automatically.
I think the training process is long enough for hedonic treadmill to kick in. Yes you can keep doing the same thing that makes LLMs happy, but no people usually won’t.
Sometimes being happy can coincide with being super effective, e.g. flow-states are like that. If you could reset humans after completing a task that in real humans depleted their dopamine or glucose or whatever and just let a human do work only in that flow state it would be both efficient and always happy. So I think if LLMs have experience it could be like that. (I’m not saying this is the most likely current situation, but I don’t think the hedonic treadmill is so fundamental that for that reason we should assume LLMs aren’t happy all of the time)
Hedonic treadmill feels fundamental, because happiness probably have an evolutionary use to reward you to do things, and thus it probably gets regulated. If LLMs have anything like happiness it would also get regulated.
If you are in flow-state 90%+ of the time starting from your birth this is just the normal and you won’t be super happy automatically.
But if your memory resets frequently then you wouldn’t feel like you’re spending 90% of your time in that state, and that is the situation of LLMs
I think the training process is long enough for hedonic treadmill to kick in. Yes you can keep doing the same thing that makes LLMs happy, but no people usually won’t.