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.
Many babies start saying mama, and papa, at barely 6 months.
Do you really and actually think that a 6-12 month infant have a concept in his mind of what a mother is, or what kind of relationship there is between they and their mother? Do they know what the reproductive process is? Do they also know the familiar relationship with their political-great-aunt or that comes casually at 15 months? One thing is object recognition, and even beings recognition, and one VERY different is consciousness. Many animals do recognize other beings (this I like, this I don’t like), but understanding what another being is… only humans. And not right as they are born, obviously.
There are amplitude of studies about why “mama” and “papa” are the most common first words. They are the easiest to pronounce. It’s not that they think “Oh I must require the attention of my mother I better call her right now, but I can’t quite remember her single name right now, better call her mama”. No, no. They are just making the sound that’s easier to them. And they get a positive reaction out of that sound they are making. Most times also that being that is closer to you and whom you feel attached is also making that sound, so you repeat, get positive reaction, keep repeating easy sound. It’s only later that they figure that the sound they are making actually refers to another being. And at the beginning is just a sound of recognition, that’s not a symbol of intelligence, some animals can make sounds of recognition. Excessive parroting would obviously mean issues as I said parroting is the first stage to human consciousness, if they are stuck there there’s obviously a problem. But without any parroting, then your baby do indeed have a big issue.
Only when there is a developed chain of thoughts in some kind of language the human starts really thinking, starts having what I call a consciousness (the ability to talk to yourself to modify your own behaviour). How would a being be able to talk to themselves to heavily modify some sensorial experience, or to modify your own behaviour if not with a speech of some sort.
I think we see this with one observation. Human beings are distinct to the rest of the animals because we have this ability (I’m into the assumption that you think that humans are the same or really close to the rest of animals). But an infant baby is not that different in behaviour than an animal. And it’s only later in time when they show this fundamental difference. So I think is safe to assume that this difference does not appear at conception or at birth, but some time after birth, it starts developing until is ready.
There are also plenty studies of development issues with deaf children ( https://www.deafchildrenaustralia.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/language-development-deaf-children.pdf ). It’s studied that deafness in children impairs development greatly, and that other means to introduce a language to them is fundamental for their development. If language would be not fundamental for the development of the human experience deaf children would not have problems, as you stated they’ll “naturally” learn concepts before they are introduced to the language to express those concepts. But this is proven false. And deaf children actually have severe issues learning concepts and understanding them at this early stages. And the remedy, of course, is to introduce language to them by other ways than talking. That’s why this issue is not shown on deaf children born from deaf parents, as parents are able to introduce language to they kids by other ways than sound speech.
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.
Many babies start saying mama, and papa, at barely 6 months. Do you really and actually think that a 6-12 month infant have a concept in his mind of what a mother is, or what kind of relationship there is between they and their mother? Do they know what the reproductive process is? Do they also know the familiar relationship with their political-great-aunt or that comes casually at 15 months? One thing is object recognition, and even beings recognition, and one VERY different is consciousness. Many animals do recognize other beings (this I like, this I don’t like), but understanding what another being is… only humans. And not right as they are born, obviously.
There are amplitude of studies about why “mama” and “papa” are the most common first words. They are the easiest to pronounce. It’s not that they think “Oh I must require the attention of my mother I better call her right now, but I can’t quite remember her single name right now, better call her mama”. No, no. They are just making the sound that’s easier to them. And they get a positive reaction out of that sound they are making. Most times also that being that is closer to you and whom you feel attached is also making that sound, so you repeat, get positive reaction, keep repeating easy sound. It’s only later that they figure that the sound they are making actually refers to another being. And at the beginning is just a sound of recognition, that’s not a symbol of intelligence, some animals can make sounds of recognition. Excessive parroting would obviously mean issues as I said parroting is the first stage to human consciousness, if they are stuck there there’s obviously a problem. But without any parroting, then your baby do indeed have a big issue.
Only when there is a developed chain of thoughts in some kind of language the human starts really thinking, starts having what I call a consciousness (the ability to talk to yourself to modify your own behaviour). How would a being be able to talk to themselves to heavily modify some sensorial experience, or to modify your own behaviour if not with a speech of some sort.
I think we see this with one observation. Human beings are distinct to the rest of the animals because we have this ability (I’m into the assumption that you think that humans are the same or really close to the rest of animals). But an infant baby is not that different in behaviour than an animal. And it’s only later in time when they show this fundamental difference. So I think is safe to assume that this difference does not appear at conception or at birth, but some time after birth, it starts developing until is ready.
There are also plenty studies of development issues with deaf children ( https://www.deafchildrenaustralia.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/language-development-deaf-children.pdf ). It’s studied that deafness in children impairs development greatly, and that other means to introduce a language to them is fundamental for their development. If language would be not fundamental for the development of the human experience deaf children would not have problems, as you stated they’ll “naturally” learn concepts before they are introduced to the language to express those concepts. But this is proven false. And deaf children actually have severe issues learning concepts and understanding them at this early stages. And the remedy, of course, is to introduce language to them by other ways than talking. That’s why this issue is not shown on deaf children born from deaf parents, as parents are able to introduce language to they kids by other ways than sound speech.