What Is It Like to Be an LLM? - Matt Butcher, Fermyon
Channel: The Linux Foundation
Date: 2023-12-18

What Is It Like to Be an LLM? - Matt Butcher, Fermyon

Ethical thought experiments are a fundamental piece of modern moral philosophy. From trolley cars to evil deceivers, thought experiments help us understand the implications of a system.

In this session we’ll construct a thought experiment that helps us situate ourselves in the context of a Large Language Model (LLM). In doing so, we will gain a clearer understanding of how AI works, what its limits are, and how ethical reasoning is extrinsic to the system (and hence the responsibility of us, as developers and practitioners).

We’ll be drawing lightly from Nagel’s “What is it like to be a bat?” essay, and more heavily from contemporary and classical approaches to ethics. While this session doesn’t aim to “tell you want to do,” it equips attendees to bring their own moral reasoning to bear on today’s AI technologies.