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Yann LeCun: ChatGPT is 'not particularly innovative'

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Re: Yann LeCun: ChatGPT is 'not particularly innovative'

#61
post #47
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you change to the UX and design to make it even better?

Add "calculator" in a form of Python interpreter to give alternative result. Providing interactive graphical interface for some of the charts they shown. Connecting outside sites for booking, pictures, user comments. To some degree, WolframAlpha putting more efforts into the UX than ChatGPT.

I was going to ask you re: WolframAlpha. I think your suggestions are great ideas.

Citing sources, providing links, and even possibly visuals. That's also how I think ChatGPT could really attack the search space.

Re: Yann LeCun: ChatGPT is 'not particularly innovative'

#62
AI researchers tend to have blinders when new techniques are released that don't fit their previous experience. For instance, perhaps the specific architecture of ChatGPT isn't that innovative (although I think it is), but training such a large model on so much data is innovative. Clearly this is going to become the norm going forward.

Just as a personal anecdote. I worked on a ML research team at a FAANG in the early 2010s, just as NNs were becoming popular. Everyone on the ML research team had come to prominence before NNs, so they all specialized in different areas of ML. Nearly every researchers there treated NNs like some fad that would pass and thought they wouldn't be much better than the current techniques. How wrong they were... Of course, they're all working on NNs now.

Re: Yann LeCun: ChatGPT is 'not particularly innovative'

#63
post #6

This is very much people seeing the Apple Lisa(and/or Mac) for the first time. It had all been done better in the labs at Xerox over a decade earlier. No one got to use it though.

To me it's childish, and I have no idea why Yann decided this needed to be shouted on Twitter. I've lost a lot of respect for him over this.

Well, the transformer was invented at Google, language models were decades old. But scaling it was not done before, and preparing the dataset at this size, and babysitting the model so its loss doesn't explode during training - all were innovations that required lots of work and money to be achieved, so we can just copy the same formula without redoing all the steps.

Re: Yann LeCun: ChatGPT is 'not particularly innovative'

#64
post #12

It's amazing how many researchers underestimate the importance of UX and design. Personally, seeing non-technical people using prompts for the first time -- and getting results that make sense -- is so incredible. Their eyes light up, they are surprised, and they want to keep playing with it. Amazing! A sizeable part of the population just got access to an incredibly complex AI model and can play with it. What a coll…

And/or underestimate the importance of shipping.

Re: Yann LeCun: ChatGPT is 'not particularly innovative'

#65
post #12

It's amazing how many researchers underestimate the importance of UX and design. Personally, seeing non-technical people using prompts for the first time -- and getting results that make sense -- is so incredible. Their eyes light up, they are surprised, and they want to keep playing with it. Amazing! A sizeable part of the population just got access to an incredibly complex AI model and can play with it. What a coll…

Agreed. He did say that it was "well put together and nicely done", though.

Re: Yann LeCun: ChatGPT is 'not particularly innovative'

#66
post #12

It's amazing how many researchers underestimate the importance of UX and design. Personally, seeing non-technical people using prompts for the first time -- and getting results that make sense -- is so incredible. Their eyes light up, they are surprised, and they want to keep playing with it. Amazing! A sizeable part of the population just got access to an incredibly complex AI model and can play with it. What a coll…

Clarke's third law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Most people don't understand that ChatGPT has no idea what they're talking about. It lacks it's own thought and heuristic patterns, and only gives you the most-likely response to your prompt. People don't know that though, so they think the Mechanical Turk is actually playing chess. I mostly agree with the headline here. ChatG…

The question is are we any more innovative than Markov chains.

Re: Yann LeCun: ChatGPT is 'not particularly innovative'

#67
post #12

It's amazing how many researchers underestimate the importance of UX and design. Personally, seeing non-technical people using prompts for the first time -- and getting results that make sense -- is so incredible. Their eyes light up, they are surprised, and they want to keep playing with it. Amazing! A sizeable part of the population just got access to an incredibly complex AI model and can play with it. What a coll…

I don't think he's underestimating the UX/design piece, I think it's just outside of the scope of what he's talking about. It seems pretty clear to me that his statement is talking about the underlying AI technology (which makes sense given his background). And in any case, I wouldn't call anything about the UX or design here innovative - it's obviously a huge improvement in terms of usability, but a chat UI is a pre…

I think the idea of a "prompt" is actually pretty cool. I never saw that framing prior to GPT-3 and I think it reframes the entire idea behind what a model does and how you interact with it.

Re: Yann LeCun: ChatGPT is 'not particularly innovative'

#68
LeCun confuses the idea invention with that of innovation. Revolutions don't happen because suddenly there's a new idea, but because of one that catches on.

https://www.wired.com/insights/2015/01/innovation-vs-inventi...

I think he also confuses his jealousy with insight.

Re: Yann LeCun: ChatGPT is 'not particularly innovative'

#69
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and only gives you the most-likely response to your prompt That "only" carries a lot of weight on its back.

As far as most people can be fooled by coherent-looking text.

Hold on, at least for me, 90% of the stuff is not just coherent-looking, but coherent. I do think that when it's wrong, it should give a heads up about not being certain about a subject. It's certainly tweaked to sound almost overconfident about every subject, which gives off a bullshitty vibe when the details of the explanation are wrong.

What sorts of subjects have you been trying it out with?

Re: Yann LeCun: ChatGPT is 'not particularly innovative'

#70
post #12

It's amazing how many researchers underestimate the importance of UX and design. Personally, seeing non-technical people using prompts for the first time -- and getting results that make sense -- is so incredible. Their eyes light up, they are surprised, and they want to keep playing with it. Amazing! A sizeable part of the population just got access to an incredibly complex AI model and can play with it. What a coll…

Clarke's third law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Most people don't understand that ChatGPT has no idea what they're talking about. It lacks it's own thought and heuristic patterns, and only gives you the most-likely response to your prompt. People don't know that though, so they think the Mechanical Turk is actually playing chess. I mostly agree with the headline here. ChatG…

Except that the Mechanical Turk is actually playing chess - there is no hidden chess master.
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