Microsoft researcher builds goat-powered LLM in Age of Empires II to challenge AI sentience claims

A Microsoft researcher built a goat-powered LLM in Age of Empires II to prove it's not sentient

* A researcher rebuilt an LLM using goats and NAND gates inside Age of Empires II, proving LLMs can be reimplemented. * Humanlike tone is based on presentation; anthropomorphism doesn't prove sentience. * Persuasiveness and self-consistency can be measured, yet don't imply real or simulated behaviour. What does it mean when something is 'sentient'? It's a debate that has raged for years, and it's not something I can really squeeze into this article. What I can say, however, is that the creation and distribution of LLMs have added another area of discourse to the pot. When you ask Gemini a question about how to cook a chicken, or you sic Claude on your coding project, are you asking a program, or a person? Well, one researcher has an answer for you. They've recreated how an LLM works using nothing but goats in the game Age of Empires II, and thus pose the challenge: if you think an LLM is sentient, then so is the videogame. A researcher reduced an LLM to goats in Age of Empires II And makes some compelling arguments against calling one 'sentient' As spotted by 404 Media, researcher Adrian de Wynter of Microsoft and The University of York had an axe to grind. People were interfacing with LLMs for the first time in human history, and because of how the LLM speaks and interacts with them, they naturally anthropomorphise it. Now the LLM is no longer a system in people's minds; they're almost like a person, and, as such, aren't as understood as they should be. Want to stay in the loop with the latest in AI? The XDA AI Insider newsletter drops weekly with deep dives, tool recommendations, and hands-on coverage you won't find anywhere else on the site. Subscribe by modifying your newsletter preferences! In his paper, "If LLMs Have Human-Like Attributes, Then So Does Age of Empires II," he aims to strip away the anthropomorphic layer of LLMs by showing how he made an LLM using Age of Empires II's scenario editor to create NAND gates using goats. With this, Wynter then argues that if you can build an LLM using assets in a video game (or Lego bricks, or even people in Greater Boston working together), then an LLM isn't human-like by default. Instead, it's part of the presentation of the LLM. It's easy for someone to look at a chat window, see an LLM speaking to them in a human tone, and anthropomorphize it. But as soon as you remove that layer and all you're left with is looking at goats acting as NAND gates, that illusion falls apart: We argue that many anthropomorphic measurements in AI are measurements of presentation, rather than of an actual system's behaviour. Moreover, these measurements are irrespective of their quality of being real. Indeed, attributes such as persuasiveness and self-consistency are objectively measurable, but from our work it follows that these cannot imply real (or simulative) behaviour under this setup. If you want to read more about how the goats work and watch them scuttle around, be sure to head over to Adrian de Wynter's blog for all the details. I asked Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT to build a customer landing page, and only one nailed the brief Only one is most likely not to lose me any customers Posts 5 By Abhinav Raj

Microsoft researcher builds goat-powered neural network in Age of Empires 2 to show why we should 'stop assuming that LLMs behave like humans just because they were trained with natural language'

"I have this tendency to dial up things to 11 when I really think I need to make a point." Since large-language models like ChatGPT can generate natural language responses that appear human-like in tone, this has led to considerable discussion over whether LLMs might themselves be sentient. At present, there are far more reasons to conclude that AIs are not and will never be conscious. But the idea persists regardless. This is partly because of our broader tendency to perceive human-like qualities in non-human things, and partly because AI companies have equivocated over the issue. In any case, one Microsoft researcher has become particularly fed up with it, to the point where he decided to demonstrate how ridiculous the notion is by building an LLM in Age of Empires 2 powered by goats. As reported by 404 Media, Microsoft AI researcher Adrian de Wynter built a neural network within Microsoft's strategy classic, then wrote a paper describing the results titled 'If LLMs Have Human-Like Attributes, Then So Does Age of Empires II'. If you think this title is preposterous, that is entirely the point. "I have this tendency to dial up things to 11 when I really think I need to make a point," de Wynter told 404 media, observing that "absurdism is pretty standard in philosophy and theoretical computer science." De Wynter constructed the LLM in AoE 2's scenario editor, building a functioning NOT AND gate and 1-bit perceptron (a simple form of neural network) using objects in the game world to represent computer binaries. Grass represents 0, bridges represent 1, and goats play the role of bits. It's similar to how some players have built neural networks using Minecraft redstone, but de Wynter specifically wanted to use Age of Empires 2 because it is a less obvious choice. There are videos of De Wynter's goat-powered LLM in action on his GitHub page. To the casual observer, the processes look completely baffling, which de Wynter reckons demonstrates his point. The processes going on here are, fundamentally, those which power tools like ChatGPT, Claude, etc. But because the fundamentals are goats and grass rather than natural language, it prevents observers from perceiving the resulting behaviours and output as human. "The point of the paper is to formally show that we anthropomorphise too readily, and that sometimes the claims we make with regards to LLMs capabilities are too strong," de Winter said, going on to add that. "This is why I used the goats: there are things which make the LLMs what they are in themselves (i.e., the relationship between weights as defined by some operation), and there are things which make them what they are perceived as." The reason this is important is that assuming LLMs have human-like properties without demonstrative proof could lead us to all manner of problems, such as in scientific research. In his paper, de Wytner says he has peer reviewed more than 300 computer science papers in the last two years, finding that over half of them began with the assumption that LLMs have human-like traits. "I propose that we need to stop assuming that LLMs behave like humans just because they were trained with natural language," de Wynter said. "Instead, we should perform experiments that allow us to see LLMs as how they are, not how we believe they should be."