I’m not sure if you’re disagreeing with the essay or not? But in any case what you’re describing is in the same vein, that is simply repeating a word without knowing what it actually means in context is exactly what LLMs do. They can get pretty good at getting it right most of the times but without actually being able to learn the concept and context of ‘table’ they will never be able to use it correctly 100% of the time. Or even more importantly for AGI apply reason and critical thinking. Much like a child repeating a word without much clue what it actually means.
Just for fun, this is what Gemini has to say:
Here’s a breakdown of why this “parrot-like” behavior hinders true AI:
Lack of Conceptual Grounding: LLMs excel at statistical associations. They learn to predict the next word in a sequence based on massive amounts of text data. However, this doesn’t translate to understanding the underlying meaning or implications of those words.
Limited Generalization: A child learning “table” can apply that knowledge to various scenarios – a dining table, a coffee table, a work table. LLMs struggle to generalize, often getting tripped up by subtle shifts in context or nuanced language.
Inability for Reasoning and Critical Thinking: True intelligence involves not just recognizing patterns but also applying logic, identifying cause and effect, and drawing inferences. LLMs, while impressive in their own right, fall short in these areas.
I mostly agree with it. What I’m saying is the understanding of the words come from the self dialogue made of those same words. How many times has a baby to repeat the word “mom” until they understand what a mother is? I think that without that previous repetition the more complex "understanding is impossible. That human understanding of concepts, especially the more complex concepts that make us humans, come from we being able to have a dialogue with ourselves and with other humans.
But this dialogue initiates as a Parrot, non-intelligent animals with brains that are very similar to ours are parrots. Small children are parrots (are even some adults). But it seems that after being a Parrot for some time it comes the ability to become an Human. That parrot is needed, and it also keeps itself in our consciousness. If you don’t put a lot of effort in your thoughts and says you’ll see that the Parrot is there, that you just express the most appropriate answer for that situation giving what you know.
The “understanding” of concepts seems just like a complex and big interconnection of Neural-Network-like outputs of different things (words, images, smells, sounds…). But language keeps feeling like the more important of those things for intelligent consciousness.
I have yet to read another article that other user posted that explained why the jump from Parrot to Human is impossible in current AI architecture. But at a glance it seems valid. But that does not invalidate the idea of Parrots being the genesis of Humans. Just that a different architecture is needed, and not in the statistical answer department, the article I was linked was more about size and topology of the “brain”.
A baby doesn’t learn concepts by repeating words over and certainly knows what a mother is before it has any label or language to articulate the concept. The label gets associated with the concept later and is not purely by parroting and indeed excessive parroting normally indicates speech development issues.
I’m not sure if you’re disagreeing with the essay or not? But in any case what you’re describing is in the same vein, that is simply repeating a word without knowing what it actually means in context is exactly what LLMs do. They can get pretty good at getting it right most of the times but without actually being able to learn the concept and context of ‘table’ they will never be able to use it correctly 100% of the time. Or even more importantly for AGI apply reason and critical thinking. Much like a child repeating a word without much clue what it actually means.
Just for fun, this is what Gemini has to say:
I mostly agree with it. What I’m saying is the understanding of the words come from the self dialogue made of those same words. How many times has a baby to repeat the word “mom” until they understand what a mother is? I think that without that previous repetition the more complex "understanding is impossible. That human understanding of concepts, especially the more complex concepts that make us humans, come from we being able to have a dialogue with ourselves and with other humans. But this dialogue initiates as a Parrot, non-intelligent animals with brains that are very similar to ours are parrots. Small children are parrots (are even some adults). But it seems that after being a Parrot for some time it comes the ability to become an Human. That parrot is needed, and it also keeps itself in our consciousness. If you don’t put a lot of effort in your thoughts and says you’ll see that the Parrot is there, that you just express the most appropriate answer for that situation giving what you know.
The “understanding” of concepts seems just like a complex and big interconnection of Neural-Network-like outputs of different things (words, images, smells, sounds…). But language keeps feeling like the more important of those things for intelligent consciousness.
I have yet to read another article that other user posted that explained why the jump from Parrot to Human is impossible in current AI architecture. But at a glance it seems valid. But that does not invalidate the idea of Parrots being the genesis of Humans. Just that a different architecture is needed, and not in the statistical answer department, the article I was linked was more about size and topology of the “brain”.
A baby doesn’t learn concepts by repeating words over and certainly knows what a mother is before it has any label or language to articulate the concept. The label gets associated with the concept later and is not purely by parroting and indeed excessive parroting normally indicates speech development issues.