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Orthorogonal:

1. Is the brain deterministic and lacking free will.

2. Does a brain use matmul or something else.






1. almost certainly yes

2. completely irrelevant. GP said that LLMs share nothing in common with brains. responding probabilistically to text is something in common with brains. even if we don't want to get into the nuts and bolts of how ANNs work, the actual input/output structure is common with LLMs


But the thing LLMs have in common with brains is they process data and produce data that with additional processing a subset of which can be interpreted as words. It is a pretty loose link.

Like saying an aeroplane is like a squirrel because they both perform aerobic respiration.

Original comment that I agree with, for reference:

> As far as anyone can tell, there is virtually no similarity between brains and LLMs. Neural nets were named such because they have connected nodes. And that’s it.


>Like saying an aeroplane is like a squirrel because they both perform aerobic respiration.

except that the primary societal function of a brain is to process and react to information using language. the primary function of an LLM is the same. the primary functions of squirrels and aeroplanes, such as they are, cannot be said to be even remotely similar

neural nets were not named as such because they have connected nodes, they were named as such because they're made up of artificial neurones designed to function and learn like those of a brain. if you unsure of this, you can literally watch people making simple neural nets using rat neurones on youtube.

once again, these kinds of comments are so far from the truth that the only explanation I can think of for them is that emotion--likely fear or arrogance, potentially both--is clouding judgment




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