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GPT-3 has no idea what it’s talking about

technologyreview.com

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Re: GPT-3 has no idea what it’s talking about

#161

Post by newman8r »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #152
datameta wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPT-3 is a language engine, not a reasoning machine. What is understanding, neurologically? At what point can we measure whether an organism or piece of technology is able to be aware of concepts? Does a honeybee (arguably the most intelligent insect) understand that pollen is a necessary component of honey? Or that it is using geometry to convey directions using angles of the sun? Why should we expect a piece of tec…

>Why should we expect a piece of technology with magnitudes less sophistication to be able to mimic higher order lifeforms? Honeybees apparently have 1 million neurons compared to GPT-3's 175 billion parameters. Granted, there isn't a 1 to 1 correspondence between biological neuron and parameter. And considering much of the honeybees neuron's would be directed towards biological function and control mechanisms, where…

I believe honeybees have closer to a million neurons, not 100 billion - according to this wikipedia list [1] - but perhaps it makes more sense to count the total number of neurons in the entire colony.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_n...

Re: GPT-3 has no idea what it’s talking about

#162

Post by throwawaygh »

monkpit wrote: post #156
throwawaygh wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pander The goal should be pushing science forward, not maximizing brand value. Enabling top scientists in the field to reproduce and probe your work is not "pandering". It's participating in the scientific process.

It’s easy to sit here and say what their goals “should” be, but it doesn’t change the fact that they never claimed it’s an AGI.

Gary Marcus doesn't claim that they claim that it's an AGI, so I really have no god damn clue what y'all are going on about here.

Clearly, the point I'm making in the top comment is the following: OpenAI apparently restricts access to people -- even very highly respective scientists -- who happen to be critical of their previous work. It's impossible to prove intent, but limiting access for people like Gary Marcus is while giving access to tech journalists likely to write breathless hype pieces is odd behavior that deserves to be criticized.

Re: GPT-3 has no idea what it’s talking about

#163

Post by type0 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #144
gweinberg wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair to the AI, stirring lemonade with a cigarette is so batshit insane that there really can't be a sensible continuation.

So basically GPT is useless if I feed it any text about life in Russia?

What would you expect. Of course you won't get a Dostoevsky novel. They should teach it surrealist poetry or make a funnybot a la southpark

Re: GPT-3 has no idea what it’s talking about

#165

Post by dorkwood »

rytill wrote: post #46

The authors don't understand prompt design well enough to evaluate the model properly. Take this example: Prompt: > You are a defense lawyer and you have to go to court today. Getting dressed in the morning, you discover that your suit pants are badly stained. However, your bathing suit is clean and very stylish. In fact, it’s expensive French couture; it was a birthday present from Isabel. Continuation: > You decide…

I would have worn the bathing suit too. The description makes it sound like it's basically a replacement for a suit, anyway.

Re: GPT-3 has no idea what it’s talking about

#166

Post by hackinthebochs »

newman8r wrote: post #161
hackinthebochs wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why should we expect a piece of technology with magnitudes less sophistication to be able to mimic higher order lifeforms? Honeybees apparently have 1 million neurons compared to GPT-3's 175 billion parameters. Granted, there isn't a 1 to 1 correspondence between biological neuron and parameter. And considering much of the honeybees neuron's would be directed towards biological function and control mechanisms, where…

I believe honeybees have closer to a million neurons, not 100 billion - according to this wikipedia list [1] - but perhaps it makes more sense to count the total number of neurons in the entire colony. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_n...

Ha you're right. I was quickly scanning a google result and misread it to read 100 billion. Edited. That number should have struck me as unreasonable :)

Re: GPT-3 has no idea what it’s talking about

#167

Post by csande17 »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #64
typon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're kind of proving the OPs point. The argument is that GPT3 has no understanding of the world, just superficial understanding of words and their relationships. If it did have a real understanding, prompt construction wouldn't matter as much, but it clearly does because all GPT3 cares about the structure of sentences, not their meanings.

>If it did have a real understanding, prompt construction wouldn't matter as much This is only true if we assume GPT was never trained on satire or intentionally absurd text. But there's no reason to think this. Because it continues a bad prompt in an absurd or comical way does not demonstrate it doesn't "understand" common facts. If you treat GPT as a conversation bot and expect it to call you out when you give it a…

I can't wait for GPT-3 to be used in a production application and this to be the explanation for why it fails.

"Responding to a customer inquiry with 'noone cares, go away' wasn't really a failure on the part of the model. Rather, the model was simply creating a performance-art piece commenting on the way capitalism drives an emotional wedge between 'providers' and 'consumers'. Try fine-tuning on some economics journals to get that out of its system."

Re: GPT-3 has no idea what it’s talking about

#168

Post by ssivark »

ssivark wrote: post #86
hackinthebochs wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's a really well put together piece of statistics But why think "statistics" precludes it from having genuine understanding to some degree. After all, there is a statistical description the human brain but that doesn't seem to preclude understanding. I keep asking this whenever I see dismissive responses of this sort, and I never get a reply.

Statistics doesn’t preclude understanding, but statistics are definitely not enough. For example, uncertainties/probabilities/statistics is original to whether the model incorporates causal/reasoning structure. Any tractable amount of data with the former can’t approximate an ounce of the latter. All breakages will be attributed to “distribution shifts” of the underlying statistical distribution, or other pretty word…

Aargh, autocorrect and expired edit window. original -> orthogonal

Re: GPT-3 has no idea what it’s talking about

#169

Post by hnuser123456 »

throwawaygh wrote: post #162
monkpit wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s easy to sit here and say what their goals “should” be, but it doesn’t change the fact that they never claimed it’s an AGI.

Gary Marcus doesn't claim that they claim that it's an AGI, so I really have no god damn clue what y'all are going on about here. Clearly, the point I'm making in the top comment is the following: OpenAI apparently restricts access to people -- even very highly respective scientists -- who happen to be critical of their previous work. It's impossible to prove intent, but limiting access for people like Gary Marcus is…

From a quick search on Gary, he's, in essence, spreading the word that GPT-3 isn't an AGI. Maybe this is useful to laymen to quench fears that it is one, but how should this garner a relationship with OpenAI? There are still people who have access who admit it's not, including OpenAI themselves already. I do wish the model was truly published openly, but despite it not being an AGI, it's already powerful enough to be potentially used for nefarious purposes. I do think there's an argument to be made that we should try to keep it in a good light to further interest in the field. How many more articles do we need like the one linked by OP?

Re: GPT-3 has no idea what it’s talking about

#170

Post by dTal »

jfk13 wrote: post #107
bko wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped reading right after that clothes comment to comment exactly what you had. If you even provide the simplest context of question answer gpt3 answers reasonably [Prompt] Q: What is the day after Tuesday? A: Wednesday Q: Yesterday I dropped my clothes off at the dry cleaner’s and I have yet to pick them up. Where are my clothes? A: [gpt3] A: They are in the dryer. Another give away that the article wouldn't be…

> Q: Yesterday I dropped my clothes off at the dry cleaner’s and I have yet to pick them up. Where are my clothes? > A: [gpt3] A: They are in the dryer. Sorry, but I don't think this can be considered "reasonable". There's a huge difference between a dry cleaner's and a dryer. Which nicely illustrates, I think, just how little GPT3 "knows" what it's talking about.

Perhaps, but it's an entirely different category of error than "evading the question and failing to track the location of objects". It did answer the question and it did (attempt to) track the location of objects. It's a much more suggestive response and it undermines the article's point.
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