There’s two aspects to the question and the answer you get depends on which aspect you are emphasizing.
If it’s a practical question, then the answer is that it doesn’t matter. This is as close as we will get to intent from an LLM that it’s indistinguishable.
If you are looking for actual intent, this is not that. It’s pseudo intent. Decided by what the expected words that should be generated in that situation are.
The models didn’t intend to do anything other than create the next word based on previous words.
So the question is whether it matters to you if it is, or isn’t, a simulation.
In physical reality, intent is more complex than simply being a function of variables: the nature vs nurture debate comes to mind as an example of the multiple variables that drive intent.
> If you are looking for actual intent, this is not that. It’s pseudo intent. Decided by what the expected words that should be generated in that situation are.
> In physical reality, intent is more complex than simply being a function of variables: the nature vs nurture debate comes to mind as an example of the multiple variables that drive intent.
Regardless of nature vs nurture, it really isn't more complex. The universe (and all biological and non-biological entities within it) is just calculating the next state of the universe based on the prior state. There's no line you can draw between human intent and an LLM's "intent" except the atomic numbers of the materials on which they were computed, which seems completely irrelevant to me.
"Assume humans are different; therefore humans are different" is not a very compelling argument.
There is literally zero (zilch, nada, zip) evidence for free will, which is the actual distinction I believe you're trying to make with "intent."
There is no way (at all) in which a meat-based computation's yielding of goal-directed behavior must be categorically different from a silicon-based computation's yielding of goal-directed behavior.
If it’s a practical question, then the answer is that it doesn’t matter. This is as close as we will get to intent from an LLM that it’s indistinguishable.
If you are looking for actual intent, this is not that. It’s pseudo intent. Decided by what the expected words that should be generated in that situation are.
The models didn’t intend to do anything other than create the next word based on previous words.
So the question is whether it matters to you if it is, or isn’t, a simulation.
In physical reality, intent is more complex than simply being a function of variables: the nature vs nurture debate comes to mind as an example of the multiple variables that drive intent.