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Are We Just Advanced Predictive Models? (The Science)
In this riveting episode, Malcolm and Simone delve into groundbreaking research suggesting that the human brain functions similarly to large language models (LLMs). They challenge the idea of sentience, proposing that our consciousness may be an illusion crafted by a token-predicting brain. They explore experimental evidence, including split-brain studies, choice blindness experiments, and neurosurgeon simulations, to highlight how our internal narratives and decisions are often post-rationalized. The episode uncovers the astonishing parallels between AI and human brain architecture, advocating for a reevaluation of what makes us human and the ethical implications of this understanding for AI. Dive into a thought-provoking discussion that bridges neuroscience and AI, debunking myths about human cognition and sentience.
[00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone! Today is going to be an exciting episode. I implore our listeners to stop anthropomorphizing humans.
Simone Collins: Oh, but seriously, actually though. But seriously and actually,
Malcolm Collins: this is going to be a real study heavy episode. We're going to be going over a lot of research and a lot of data.
And if you do not come into this, Believing that the human brain, or at least large parts of it, is just a token predictor working architecturally potentially similar to A. I. s. We know the, the, where their difference in architecture even and we'll go into that. I mean, I'm fairly sure I'll convince most people who actually watched to the end.
So today we're going to be going over a number of recent papers that show clear evidence The human brain is a token predictor or at least the most complicated parts of it are But before that we have to go over an old theories of ours Because the first thing you the [00:01:00] viewer are likely thinking is but hey I have an internal subjective experience of thinking and making decisions that an LLM would not.
Well, that's probably an illusion. Or, I should be more clear. Your conscious subjective experience of reality is real. It just happens after reality and in response to it. And we actually have a ton of experimental evidence that this is the case. This is a theory that Simone convinced me of early in our marriage, and now is key to how I see the world.
So for any who think all of our ideas go from me to Simone, this is not the case. I used to value sentience above all else when I first met Simone. This is
Simone Collins: true.
Malcolm Collins: And now, I'm thinking like the core goal of humanity was to preserve and expand sentience, and now I see sentience as Not particularly important to the human condition.
The first thing I'm going to be doing here is going over a lot , of stuff in a condensed format that we went over a video that we created. It was like the fourth video on the channel or something. You're [00:02:00] probably not sentient. And a lot of our modern viewers won't have watched it in
the studies that we cite in our necessary context to understand that you believing that you have a subjective internal experience of the world is not a sign that that internal experience of the world is particularly important to the human condition.
Or at least the broad pattern of thinking that your brain has.
So, to be more clear, in this model, your conscious subjective experience is not a guy driving your brain, but more like a nerdy court historian watching a bunch of video feeds of what the different parts of your brain are doing, then synthesizing it into a singular narrative, but writing himself in as the key player in every scene.
Yeah. So, like, so, like, if he is writing about what a general did in a war Now, , what's written into memory is, I was a great general who had all these amazing plans, even though he had nothing to do with any of
Published on 9 months, 2 weeks ago