Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

LaMDA: Google's New Conversation Technology

blog.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 157 posts

Re: LaMDA: Google's New Conversation Technology

#101

Post by lygaret »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #76
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the “Facebook is listening” position is common because realizing how predictable people’s current interests are is a bit unsettling.

I think what's even more unsettling is realizing people's interests aren't as much predictable as they're being made predictable . My wife and I, we experience a "Facebook is listening" event roughly every month these days. Of course I know they aren't, but these too-well-targeted ads or post recommendations aren't about generic, easy-to-guess interests - they're about completely random things that we just happened t…

Couldn't that just be availability bias though? as in, these ads for _things_ were shown to you anyway, because there's hundreds of ads shown to you in some way or another every week and some percentage of them are for _things_, but because you were recently engaged in a conversation about _thing_, ads for _thing_ stood out in your perception enough to get past your attention filter?

Re: LaMDA: Google's New Conversation Technology

#102

Post by throwaway_dcnt »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #76
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the “Facebook is listening” position is common because realizing how predictable people’s current interests are is a bit unsettling.

I think what's even more unsettling is realizing people's interests aren't as much predictable as they're being made predictable . My wife and I, we experience a "Facebook is listening" event roughly every month these days. Of course I know they aren't, but these too-well-targeted ads or post recommendations aren't about generic, easy-to-guess interests - they're about completely random things that we just happened t…

Why do you think they are NOT listening? Whatsapp and facebook messenger/chatter thing both have mic access for a lot of people and it is truly bizzare how topics of conversations, even the first time they are broached, end up in facebook ads.

Re: LaMDA: Google's New Conversation Technology

#103

Post by actually_a_dog »

joe_the_user wrote: post #62
raphlinus wrote: post #52

Disclosure: work at Google, opinions my own. I've had a chance to play with this and it's eerie how good it is. Most impressive to me, it was able to defend itself persuasively when confronted with evidence of how its previous answers were inconsistent (in the version I played with, it tends to be very coherent but frequently wrong).

Does it have to defend itself a lot? I've noticed contradictory statements are kind of standard for GPT-3. I can well believe you could come up with a system that's better at defending itself against the charge of contradiction than it is at avoiding contradictions in the first place.

Oh, like a politician, then.

Re: LaMDA: Google's New Conversation Technology

#104

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

throwaway_dcnt wrote: post #102
TeMPOraL wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what's even more unsettling is realizing people's interests aren't as much predictable as they're being made predictable . My wife and I, we experience a "Facebook is listening" event roughly every month these days. Of course I know they aren't, but these too-well-targeted ads or post recommendations aren't about generic, easy-to-guess interests - they're about completely random things that we just happened t…

Why do you think they are NOT listening? Whatsapp and facebook messenger/chatter thing both have mic access for a lot of people and it is truly bizzare how topics of conversations, even the first time they are broached, end up in facebook ads.

I think the data/power usage would be noticeable.

Re: LaMDA: Google's New Conversation Technology

#106

Post by ehsankia »

practicalpants wrote: post #105

Solving conversational intelligence is the same as solving general intelligence (AGI), so unless google has solved the latter I would expect any chatbot system to still be pretty annoying for any nuanced or real world conversation.

Not necessarily. GPT-3 for example can put out entire articles, even generate images or generate valid HTML, doesn't mean it has reached AGI, and while it's far from perfect, it can still have utility.

As per the demo, I can imagine learning about a topic through conversations with an AI. It would still be regurgitating existing knowledge, but in a conversational back and forth way, which to some can have value.

Re: LaMDA: Google's New Conversation Technology

#107

Post by cmrdporcupine »

raphlinus wrote: post #52

Disclosure: work at Google, opinions my own. I've had a chance to play with this and it's eerie how good it is. Most impressive to me, it was able to defend itself persuasively when confronted with evidence of how its previous answers were inconsistent (in the version I played with, it tends to be very coherent but frequently wrong).

Also a Googler. I spent hours talking with this thing. About everything. It's absolutely mind boggling how conversational it is.

Re: LaMDA: Google's New Conversation Technology

#108

Post by staticassertion »

Mizza wrote: post #27
moralestapia wrote: post #24

>“I just started taking guitar lessons.” >You might expect another person to respond with something like: >“How exciting! My mom has a vintage Martin that she loves to play.” Not really IMO, I think they just pushed it to just say "whatever's related to the topic". People who behave like that irl come off as self-absorbed and obnoxious most of the time, hope future AIs are not like that!

I came here to point this out - this is how people from California communicate. They simply take turns talking about themselves, orbiting around the same subject until somebody says something with enough gravity to drag the conversation into its next orbit. It was really off-putting when I first arrived, I got used to it over time, though I still don't like it and it's sad to see it used as the default model for this…

When I talk to someone and they share an experience, I like to ask questions, or relate to the experience by sharing my own. This is not "self absorbed" it's really normal...

Mountains out of molehills here.

Re: LaMDA: Google's New Conversation Technology

#109

Post by staticassertion »

goliatone wrote: post #79
Mizza wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to point this out - this is how people from California communicate. They simply take turns talking about themselves, orbiting around the same subject until somebody says something with enough gravity to drag the conversation into its next orbit. It was really off-putting when I first arrived, I got used to it over time, though I still don't like it and it's sad to see it used as the default model for this…

I often interpreted this as a conservative interpersonal communicative approach. It is safer to talk about yourself than to ask questions from people because there risk of inadvertently saying something offensive. Sure, you will find people that are a bit more self absorbed and would just pong about themselves. But there are so many conversational constraints- asking “why” is aggressive, direct feedback is discourage…

I think if you find that engaging with people is such a minefield that's probably on you. It's not hard at all to have an engaging conversation with someone without accidentally offending them...

People talk about themselves because conversations can be intimate - they're a two way street where both parties are sharing and relating.

Re: LaMDA: Google's New Conversation Technology

#110

Post by staticassertion »

optymizer wrote: post #44
moralestapia wrote: post #24

>“I just started taking guitar lessons.” >You might expect another person to respond with something like: >“How exciting! My mom has a vintage Martin that she loves to play.” Not really IMO, I think they just pushed it to just say "whatever's related to the topic". People who behave like that irl come off as self-absorbed and obnoxious most of the time, hope future AIs are not like that!

A lot of this is cultural, imo. I grew up in Eastern Europe, where it's very common to have two people talking exactly in that way about a common topic: "X? Yeah, my mom Y". It took me a while to learn that I can come across as self-absorbed and obnoxious in the US when speaking that way, so I have to consciously remember to ask questions about the person or the topic they presented, and avoid introducing my own rela…

I strongly suggest not worrying about what some HN users believe is self absorbed.
Post reply on HN