If a LLM had constant inputs from cameras, microphones, chemical sensors, and sensiomotor feedback, and was continuously training and performing inference, could it have free will?
From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of Jochen Fromm Sent: Monday, February 24, 2025 1:08 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] free will Actually I don't care much about views or traffic. I don't think many people read it except the ones from this list. But I like discussions about interesting topics. I mentioned the blog post here because I wasn't sure if I have (maybe unconsciously) stolen an idea from one of you. Humans often forget where they have first seen or heard an idea. Daniel Dennett mentions in his book "I've been thinking" that he was afraid of plagiarism (on page 61-63) and describes it as the great academic sin. I believe LLMs work like humans in this respect: they are like money laundering machines for copyrighted ideas who wash away the copyright. They also tend to hallucinate, like we do in dreams at night. And they are excellent in predicting the next word in a sentence (or action in a sequence), similar to the motor cortex. They are in many ways similar to us. It is fascinating and a little bit frightening what these LLMs and AIs can do already today. To come back to the question of free will: I am not sure if free willed actions are only those that are caused by conscious thoughts. I believe conscious thoughts can be used to prevent actions that we do not want. The first steps to a free will is to become aware of all the hidden influences that try to control it. We have an "Influenceable will". When we become aware that our will is influenced by ads or propaganda or some kind of marketing, we can take steps to reduce this hidden influence for example by making the conscious decision to stop doing what the ads ask for (for example stop buying McDonald's Big Macs although the ads promise us happiness and joy if we do it). -J. -------- Original message -------- From: Nicholas Thompson <thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > Date: 2/23/25 11:59 PM (GMT+01:00) To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com <mailto:friam@redfish.com> >, Jochen Fromm <j...@cas-group.net <mailto:j...@cas-group.net> > Subject: free will I put a comment Jochen's blog. Why dont we carry on over there and help him generate traffic. I have attached here a couple of papers that support the view that people are lousy predictors of their own behavior. If we [and only if] we take free willed actions to be those that are caused by conscious thoughts, then surely we must know what we are going to do before we start to do it and be much better at making such predictions than are the people around us. N -- Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology Clark University nthomp...@clarku.edu <mailto:nthomp...@clarku.edu> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
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