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ChatGPT Hype Is Proof Nobody Understands AI

nabilalouani.substack.com

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Re: ChatGPT Hype Is Proof Nobody Understands AI

#41

Post by Joeri »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #30
Aperocky wrote: post #14

I've find two groups of people on this subject, first one has taken a graduate level stat course and/or ML course, and may have work experience in machine learning/data science. The latter camp is more numerous and did not do those things. The latter group are far more hyped about ChatGPT et al, despite explanation by the first group. Don't get me wrong, ChatGPT is very exciting, just not in the way it is frequently…

“development on this model will not lead to General Intelligence, which is not a data training/stat problem altogether” Why is everyone so damn sure about this? Not to pick on you—I’ve read so many self-backpatting comments that feel the need to reassuringly say something like: “we all know this isn’t AGI and couldn’t possibly be and won’t lead to it.” I don’t think this is so clear cut.

It is because of alan turing. The turing test has arbitrarily put the bar at “must successfully emulate a human being to be labeled general intelligence”.

I don’t find the turing test useful at all as a benchmark. We don’t need something to successfully emulate a human to do useful intelligent work. ChatGPT can already do that work in many domains and many languages, if working as an assistant to a human. I honestly don’t know why we shouldn’t call that general intelligence.

The argument “but it doesn’t understand” is not useful either, and it is the one I read most from people who deeply understand how it works. Many (most?) people don’t really understand what they do for a living either, they’re just going through the motions and need supervision to prevent then going off the rails. Just like ChatGPT. And still someone finds their “intelligence” useful enough to pay them for it.

Re: ChatGPT Hype Is Proof Nobody Understands AI

#42

Post by dr_dshiv »

The author says: “Large Language Models don’t understand anything — and they can’t get better at something they can’t do.”

Yet, LLM’s can understand (unless one claims that understanding requires consciousness): https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.06573

And, strangely enough, LLM’s can get better at something they can’t do.

https://news.mit.edu/2023/large-language-models-in-context-l...

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2211.15661.pdf

Re: ChatGPT Hype Is Proof Nobody Understands AI

#43

Post by ofrzeta »

roboy wrote: post #34
ofrzeta wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the fact that it's not reliable? Seems unusable to me if you are not a domain expert that just gets help from the system and who is able to judge whether its advice is true or made up.

It’s reliable for many many use cases (e.g. anything that transforms text into a different representation), but not for a few others (e.g. anything that requires logical reasoning) - a F1 car is great on race tracks, we don’t see people taking them on gravel roads and then complain they’re unreliable …

I'd say it's unreliable if you can't decide apriori for which use cases it's reliable. For instance take this example where it makes contradictory assertions

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34288209

Re: ChatGPT Hype Is Proof Nobody Understands AI

#44

Post by smallnix »

labrador wrote: post #37
dr_dshiv wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do! So long as we don’t appeal to consciousness as the basis for understanding but measure it with benchmarks, LLMs understand many things. Maetschke, S., Iraola, D. M., Barnard, P., Shafiei Bavani, E., Zhong, P., Xu, Y., & Yepes, A. J. (2021). Understanding in artificial intelligence. arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.06573.

I saw this example on Twitter today which shows ChatGPT doesn't understand: Mike's mother had 4 kids; 3 of them are named Luis, Drake and Matilda. What is the name of the 4th kid? I'm sorry, but I don't have information about the fourth kid. The information you provided is that Mike's mother has 4 kids, and three of them are named Luis, Drake, and Matilda. However, the name of the fourth child is not specified in the…

I perceive that as: misunderstood a riddle, but understood the language

Re: ChatGPT Hype Is Proof Nobody Understands AI

#45

Post by khmii »

m348e912 wrote: post #2

Sigh. This guy can chirp about how "ChatGPT doesn't understand what it's been asked" as much as he wants but he is missing the forest for the trees. I'll use myself as example. ChatGPT can write better than me, it can summarize better than me, it can research quicker than I can, and it is more creative than I can ever be. I don't care if it "understands" in a way that would satisfy Nabil Alouani, its ability to produ…

The amusing thing to me is the article just made me think of the people in the 80s that would argue rap isn't music but just a form of noise and how rappers aren't even singing!

I actually don't understand how someone thinks we understand understanding well enough to write this article.

Re: ChatGPT Hype Is Proof Nobody Understands AI

#46

Post by choeger »

m348e912 wrote: post #2

Sigh. This guy can chirp about how "ChatGPT doesn't understand what it's been asked" as much as he wants but he is missing the forest for the trees. I'll use myself as example. ChatGPT can write better than me, it can summarize better than me, it can research quicker than I can, and it is more creative than I can ever be. I don't care if it "understands" in a way that would satisfy Nabil Alouani, its ability to produ…

> ChatGPT can write better than me, it can summarize better than me,

Probably. But you still need to give some input about what to write and proof-read the output.

> it can research quicker than I can

I don't think so. AFAIK, it doesn't research at all right now. When google and bing add such models to their search engines, I doubt they will be able to research quicker than a human mind. Most research queries are not responded by plain text: Search for a hotel price in a specific room for a specific date, for instance, or check the weather in a specific place at a specific time. Language models will help you to ingest and query large volumes of text, but that's something we don't do that often.

All in all, Chat-GPT is a tool to work with text. It certainly can be useful in that context, but I don't see any world-changing properties.

Re: ChatGPT Hype Is Proof Nobody Understands AI

#47

Post by [deleted] »

fintechie wrote: post #13

> Both Google and Microsoft are pulling the same shady technique [...] They will ship free bullshit-generators and say it’s up to everyday people to sift through the mess. Can't really understand the meltdown some people are having... Honestly, what you get from well trained GPTs doesn't seem that different than getting search results and and sifting through human-generated bs yourself... including biased mainstream…

[deleted]

Re: ChatGPT Hype Is Proof Nobody Understands AI

#48

Post by benlivengood »

The article doesn't understand large language models. It makes an assumption about how they work and uses that assumption to draw a conclusion.

Most likely, as found in small models [0], large autoregressive transformers understand machine learning algorithms well enough to apply them to their inputs to achieve in-context learning (few-shot prompting) by performing gradient descent within the overall network [1]. This is fundamentally different from static predictors; LLMs are dynamic modelers that learn from context in order to better predict tokens.

[0] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2211.15661 [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.07677

Re: ChatGPT Hype Is Proof Nobody Understands AI

#49

Post by dr_dshiv »

labrador wrote: post #37
dr_dshiv wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do! So long as we don’t appeal to consciousness as the basis for understanding but measure it with benchmarks, LLMs understand many things. Maetschke, S., Iraola, D. M., Barnard, P., Shafiei Bavani, E., Zhong, P., Xu, Y., & Yepes, A. J. (2021). Understanding in artificial intelligence. arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.06573.

I saw this example on Twitter today which shows ChatGPT doesn't understand: Mike's mother had 4 kids; 3 of them are named Luis, Drake and Matilda. What is the name of the 4th kid? I'm sorry, but I don't have information about the fourth kid. The information you provided is that Mike's mother has 4 kids, and three of them are named Luis, Drake, and Matilda. However, the name of the fourth child is not specified in the…

I had to read that 3-4 times before I understood that it was a riddle. So I put it in GPT3–and it got the answer right away:

“Mike's mother had 4 kids; 3 of them are named Luis, Drake and Matilda. What is the name of the 4th kid?

The fourth kid is Mike.”

So, maybe they just needed to try again.

Re: ChatGPT Hype Is Proof Nobody Understands AI

#50

Post by yCombLinks »

ofrzeta wrote: post #32
cheeselip420 wrote: post #6

These articles are all the same. It's like complaining how the Ford Model T couldn't drive you to England in the early 20th century while ignoring how it would revolutionize cities and life within America. Whether you believe it's 'real' or not is irrelevant. It's here, it's useful and the world will not be the same as it was.

What about the fact that it's not reliable? Seems unusable to me if you are not a domain expert that just gets help from the system and who is able to judge whether its advice is true or made up.

How reliable was it a few years back? Oh yeah, it didn't exist! AI is improving at breakneck speeds and will only get better
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