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What is ChatGPT doing and why does it work?

writings.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: What is ChatGPT doing and why does it work?

#51

Post by calf »

I think what is interesting is even in the 1st sentence of Wolfram's essay, he acknowledges what ChatGPT is doing could merely be superficial. So we can't even tell if ChatGPT actually learned "language" in a superficial versus nontrivial/substantial sense.

Lots of people say, I asked ChatGPT to write me a poem/essay, and it did! But was it really a poem/essay, or did it just look like one and on closer examination it is more like a fake out of a poem/essay? A piece of writing is not merely its form, but also its content.

Re: What is ChatGPT doing and why does it work?

#52

Post by sillysaurusx »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #22
bheadmaster wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My brain knows where it's going to go by the end of the sentence as well How would you know that? Sincere question, because to me it feels like my brain is improvising word by word when typing out this sentence. I often delete and retype it until it feels right, but in the process of typing a single sentence, I'm just chaining words one after another the way they feel right. In other words, my brain doesn't exactly…

In my case it's because my internal dialogue is saying the sentence before I get to the end of it. I usually have the entire sentence in my inner dialogue before I even start typing. Will I edit during typing? Sure, but I have a first version in my head before I start.

Your eyes are telling you what color that shade of red is on the wall. But if you put it next to a different color, you’ll suddenly get a different answer from your eyes.

I think if our eyes can deceive us at a fundamental level, it’s arrogant to think we aren’t deceived by our thoughts.

Re: What is ChatGPT doing and why does it work?

#53

Post by visarga »

jw1224 wrote: post #42
codeulike wrote: post #32

Wow this is 19,000 words. I like his summary at the end: At some level it’s a great example of the fundamental scientific fact that large numbers of simple computational elements can do remarkable and unexpected things. And this: ... But it’s amazing how human-like the results are. And as I’ve discussed, this suggests something that’s at least scientifically very important: that human language (and the patterns of th…

> Yeah I've been thinking along these lines. ChatGPT is telling us something about language or thought, we just havent got to the bottom of what it is yet. Something along the lines of 'with enough data its easier to model than we expected'. I’ve been thinking similarly, and am coming to understand and accept we’ll never get to the bottom of it :) The universe is fractal-like in nature. It shouldn’t be a surprise, th…

> 'with enough data its easier to model than we expected'

> a self-similar process is ultimately responsible for granting us our own intelligence

In my view, intelligence essentially resides within language, specifically in the corpus of language. Both humans and AIs can be effectively colonized by language, as there are innumerable concepts and observations that are transmitted from one mind to another, and now even from mind to LLM. Initially, ideas were limited to human minds, then to small communities, followed by books, computers, and now LLM stands as the ultimate epitome of language replication, in fact one model could contain the whole culture.

To be sure, there is a practical intelligence that is learned through personal experiences, but it constitutes only a tiny fraction of our overall intelligence. Hence, both AI and humans have an equal claim to intelligence, because a significant part of our intelligence arises from language.

Re: What is ChatGPT doing and why does it work?

#54

Post by ttctciyf »

So, I listened to Wolfram explaining ChatGPT on his youtube channel[1] - a pretty great account for a live streamed impromptu Q&A, IMO - and was amused to hear he has been training an LLM exclusively on his own copious written output: essays, emails, books and so on. Such a Wolframesque move!

Not sure how many are aware of the sheer amount of streamed output he uploads to youtube[2]; quite a collection ranging from high quality science explainers on a variety of topics to eavesdropping on product management for his software empire.

1: I think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLnhg9kir3Q

2: https://www.youtube.com/@WolframResearch/streams as well as https://www.youtube.com/@WolframResearch/videos

Re: What is ChatGPT doing and why does it work?

#55

Post by svachalek »

calf wrote: post #51

I think what is interesting is even in the 1st sentence of Wolfram's essay, he acknowledges what ChatGPT is doing could merely be superficial. So we can't even tell if ChatGPT actually learned "language" in a superficial versus nontrivial/substantial sense. Lots of people say, I asked ChatGPT to write me a poem/essay, and it did! But was it really a poem/essay, or did it just look like one and on closer examination i…

When you ask a child to write a poem or essay, is it real or fake? I think if we accept that as real, it's hard not to accept ChatGPT as real. Sometimes its writing is not very good, sometimes its not even all that consistent, but from what I've seen the quality level is better than the average non-professional human writer.

Re: What is ChatGPT doing and why does it work?

#56

Post by [deleted] »

ionwake wrote: post #38

It was kinda long so I uhh fed it into chatgpt for a summary : The author, Stephen Wolfram, describes the process of training ChatGPT using large amounts of text data, which allows the model to learn patterns and associations between words and phrases. He explains that ChatGPT uses a multi-layered approach to generate responses, starting with analyzing the input text and then generating a response based on the learne…

[deleted]

Re: What is ChatGPT doing and why does it work?

#57

Post by [deleted] »

ttctciyf wrote: post #54

So, I listened to Wolfram explaining ChatGPT on his youtube channel[1] - a pretty great account for a live streamed impromptu Q&A, IMO - and was amused to hear he has been training an LLM exclusively on his own copious written output: essays, emails, books and so on. Such a Wolframesque move! Not sure how many are aware of the sheer amount of streamed output he uploads to youtube[2]; quite a collection ranging from h…

[deleted]

Re: What is ChatGPT doing and why does it work?

#58

Post by melagonster »

visarga wrote: post #53
jw1224 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah I've been thinking along these lines. ChatGPT is telling us something about language or thought, we just havent got to the bottom of what it is yet. Something along the lines of 'with enough data its easier to model than we expected'. I’ve been thinking similarly, and am coming to understand and accept we’ll never get to the bottom of it :) The universe is fractal-like in nature. It shouldn’t be a surprise, th…

> 'with enough data its easier to model than we expected' > a self-similar process is ultimately responsible for granting us our own intelligence In my view, intelligence essentially resides within language, specifically in the corpus of language. Both humans and AIs can be effectively colonized by language, as there are innumerable concepts and observations that are transmitted from one mind to another, and now even…

Ludwig Wittgenstein had same idea. but finally he found human experience is more then our language.

Re: What is ChatGPT doing and why does it work?

#59

Post by robocat »

bheadmaster wrote: post #30
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case it's because my internal dialogue is saying the sentence before I get to the end of it. I usually have the entire sentence in my inner dialogue before I even start typing. Will I edit during typing? Sure, but I have a first version in my head before I start.

> I usually have the entire sentence in my inner dialogue before I even start typing Interesting. Perhaps the question then becomes, does your inner dialogue simply chain the words one after another, or does it come up with sentences as whole?

I have a friend who listens carefully and starts to mouth and even mumble his brain’s predictions for the next words I am going to say. So, I fuck with him by unexpectedly (even to myself) changing my words (or even the sentence) half way through when I catch him doing it. Predictably, I don’t like being predictable.

The fact that ChatGPT does so well is perhaps a sign we do somewhat generate sentences on the fly. Obviously we mostly listen and read sequentially.

One could test it by using an external random bell to signal you should try and make a significant sentence change e.g. from English to Spanish. How much practice would it take?

From 1984: In the middle of Hate Week, the speaker is halfway through a sentence about hating Eurasia, he is given a note, and he continues the sentence except now Oceania is not, and has never been, at war with Eurasia, and it is Eastasia that is now hated.

Re: What is ChatGPT doing and why does it work?

#60

Post by twayt »

codeulike wrote: post #32

Wow this is 19,000 words. I like his summary at the end: At some level it’s a great example of the fundamental scientific fact that large numbers of simple computational elements can do remarkable and unexpected things. And this: ... But it’s amazing how human-like the results are. And as I’ve discussed, this suggests something that’s at least scientifically very important: that human language (and the patterns of th…

It’s by emergent construction that language has this property. It’s no accident.

In order to be able to communicate at all across the arbitrary range if subjective human experience, we had to come up with sounds / words / concepts / phrases that would preserve meaning across humans to whatever functional standard necessary.

Thus language is fundamentally constructed to be “modelable” whether it be humans or machines doing the modeling.

There is a whole other realm of ineffabilities that we screen out because they aren’t modelable by language

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