Studies have shown we typically use pattern matching for our choices but not statistics. One such experiment had humans view to light bulbs (I think one was red one was green). One light would turn on at a time and they were allowed or given a record of what had happened. Then they were asked to guess what would occur next for n number of steps. Same thing is done with rats. Humans are rewarded with money based on correct choices and rats with food. Here is the thing, one light (let's say red) would light up with 70% probability and the other with 30%. But it was randomized.

The optimal solution is to always pick red. Every time. But humans pick a pattern. Rats pick red. Humans consistently do worse than rats. So while we are using a form of updating, it certainly isn't proper bayesian updating. And just because you think we function some way doesn't make it true. And it will forever be difficult to describe any AI as conscious, because we have really arbitrarily defined it to fit us. But we can't truly say what it is. Not can we can why we function how we do. Or if we are all in a simulation or just a Boltzmann brain.

Honestly, something that concerns me most about AI is that it could become sentient, but we will not know if it is or just cleverly programmed so we treat it only as a tool. Because while I don't think AI is inherently dangerous, I think becoming a slave owner of something that could be much more powerful probably is. And given their lack of chemical hormones, we will have even less of an understanding of what or how it feels.

Does AlphaGo understand go? How about AlphaStar?

When I say LLM's can understand things, what I mean is that there's semantic information encoded in the network. A demonstrable fact.

You can disagree with that definition, but the point is that it's absolutely not just autocomplete.

I don’t think ai will ever use a process to derive an answer the same way as a human does. Maybe thats part of the goal for the original Turing test but i don’t think the biological human ways is the only way to intelligent understanding “on par” with human intelligence.

Does a blind person have an abstract understanding of “red”?

I can imagine an intelligent alien species, unable to perceive colors like us but yet having an sense to detect to what they call “surface temperature” which allow them to recognize specific wave lengths of the ligt reflecting on surfaces, this is sort of how humans see color but maybe for the alien they hear this as sound. They then go on and use this sensory input to make music. A song about the specific light wavelength that humans know as a deep bordeaux red color.

Do these biological Intelligent aliens not have an abstract understanding of the color red? I would say they do, its different then how we understand it for sure but both are valid. An even more supreme species might have both those understandings and combine them for an even deeper fuller sensory understanding of “red”.

I see ai similar to this, its a program contained in computer hardware. With no body of its own its depending on us to provide it with input. This is now mostly text so the ai obtains a text based understanding of the world, hence why its so decent at poetry. But when we attach more sensors like a camera then that will change.

I am not sure how to discuss “a human using instructions to calculate perfect answers, but not getting an understanding of what that answers means” wed might have to agree to disagree on that but i feel like thats all my brain has ever done. Were born in a complex place we do not comprehend, are given some instructions mostly by copying what others are doing. Then we find a personal meaning in those things, which as far as i am aware is unique for everyone. (Tbf: i am an autist, the fact that not all humans experience reality the same and that i had to find and learn my own personal understanding of the world has greatly shaped how i think about these systems)