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0 pointsiainmerrick23d ago0 comments

No, the original "they're made out of meat" works because we're confident that we are in fact intelligent and conscious, despite how ridiculous and unlikely the author manages to make it sound.

"They're made out of weights" works precisely because LLMs really do have this mysterious property that they seem somehow intelligent even though nobody can explain exactly why, and there's active debate over whether they could be considered conscious.

The thing being discussed isn't simply an arbitrary MacGuffin; in both cases the nature of the thing is central to the impact of the story.

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Planktonne23d ago· 2 in thread

I disagree; it works in the original because it's the unlikely consciousness that produces the text itself; in the LLM case, it's produced by the likely consciousness.

"Imagine how other intelligences would view us", written by us, hits a lot less hard when it's "imagine how our intelligences view a thing we are claiming is intelligent", not written by it.

wredcoll22d ago

> Imagine how other intelligences would view us", written by us, hits a lot less hard when it's "imagine how our intelligences view a thing we are claiming is intelligent", not written by it

This is well put. We don't need to imagine how a human views a llm because we can ... just do that. Everyone capable of reading the story is also capable of thinking about how they feel abouy llms that exist right now and you've probably used.

The trick of the original story is inverting your perspective, moving your view point fron yourself to an "other" (which I think is a primary qualifier for most good fiction).

erg0s4m22d ago

The article ends with this disclaimer "Weights helped me draft and proof this story.". So it is at least partially written by LLM.

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