Have you guys heard of Phyllis Wheatley? She was the first African American to publish a book of poetry, and before publishing her book she was examined by a panel of people to certify she really could write poetry because white men were just sure that a black women couldn’t do what she did. I think her case is a good illustration of how bad priors (black women can’t write poetry) can be difficult to update (to prove them wrong it wasn’t enough to have a book of poetry written by a black women, but she had to demonstrate the ability to spontaneous write poems on demand in the style requested because the bad priors of the white men were assigning a very high probability to the posterior of her somehow cheating). I suppose I feel this is germane to the conversation because it demonstrates how some feel that the art of thinking can only properly be assigned to humans where we know thier internal experience of the world is similar to ours (a bad prior IMHO), where as I think it is more or less self evident that LLMs can think (for my personal definition of thinking which bees and perhaps even paramecia do, though I have no idea how the latter pull it off).
Have you guys heard of Phyllis Wheatley? She was the first African American to publish a book of poetry, and before publishing her book she was examined by a panel of people to certify she really could write poetry because white men were just sure that a black women couldn’t do what she did. I think her case is a good illustration of how bad priors (black women can’t write poetry) can be difficult to update (to prove them wrong it wasn’t enough to have a book of poetry written by a black women, but she had to demonstrate the ability to spontaneous write poems on demand in the style requested because the bad priors of the white men were assigning a very high probability to the posterior of her somehow cheating). I suppose I feel this is germane to the conversation because it demonstrates how some feel that the art of thinking can only properly be assigned to humans where we know thier internal experience of the world is similar to ours (a bad prior IMHO), where as I think it is more or less self evident that LLMs can think (for my personal definition of thinking which bees and perhaps even paramecia do, though I have no idea how the latter pull it off).