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What is ChatGPT doing and why does it work?

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

#101

Post by QuantumSeed »

bottlepalm wrote: post #96

The easiest way for ChatGPT to generate good output is to plain understand it. Given the vast amount of input data fed into it, it has no choice, but to start reducing the input into fundamental rules which is basically what understanding is. Understanding is a form of compression. More efficient for a neural network to understand a concept than memorize permutations. Same with statistics and markov chains, people fo…

I wonder if integrating integrating something like Lenat's Cyc predicate database into Chat-GPT would have this effect.

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

#102

Post by leereeves »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #83
leereeves wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Disagree with the theory that we are overgrown text prediction all you want, but you can't deny that it is an "understanding" in the sense that knowing it lets you build and test it. Yeah, and it helps us understand how "overgrown text prediction" works, but not how humans work. In the same way that building a robotic arm won't help you understand how muscles work. > If you can't build anything out of an "understan…

Building a robot arm does help understand how muscles work. By having a robot arm to play with, you can pinpoint exactly the abilities which aren't accounted for by your current understanding. Boston Dynamics built that robot dog thing. It took decades to make robotic kinematics that good. The dog demonstrates an understanding of a system of muscles that solves the same problems as its biological counterpart. You say…

> Building a robot arm does help understand how muscles work.

I think we're talking about different levels. A robotic arm helps understand the mechanics of an arm, but not cell metabolism, myosin motors, etc. Any understanding of muscles you might get from a robotic arm is superficial.

> You say that overgrown text prediction isn't how humans work.

To be fair, I did say that, but what I meant was that humans don't work the way ChatGPT does. Maybe we do use "overgrown text prediction" but we don't use word vectors, tensor calculus, and transformers.

We know that humans have some pure text prediction ability. People who've seen Mary Poppins can complete supercalifragili... even though it has no meaning. But how? We don't know, even after building LMs.

> What types of things can't be done with just overgrown text prediction

That's a different claim and not one I'm making. What types of things do humans not do with text prediction? Anything that doesn't involve the language processing parts of the brain, at least.

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

#103

Post by bottlepalm »

Dr_Birdbrain wrote: post #99
bottlepalm wrote: post #96

The easiest way for ChatGPT to generate good output is to plain understand it. Given the vast amount of input data fed into it, it has no choice, but to start reducing the input into fundamental rules which is basically what understanding is. Understanding is a form of compression. More efficient for a neural network to understand a concept than memorize permutations. Same with statistics and markov chains, people fo…

I used to believe this, but then I saw the demo of ChatGPT attempting to play chess. The rules of chess are much simpler than any structure of the real world we might hope for it to understand—and yet it failed to learn the rules of chess. Based on this, I am pretty sure it has not learned any meaningful structure.

ChatGPT is version 1, super rough, very broad training, more of a shotgun approach. They already made some quick math improvements. I'm sure if they focused on chess training for example it would be better. I myself am pretty crap at chess and could use some training as well.

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

#104

Post by [deleted] »

jmoak3 wrote: post #87
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…

I saw a great comment here, and I will repeat it without the attribution it deserves: We may have realized it's easier to build a brain than to understand one

[deleted]

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

#105

Post by thomashop »

bottlepalm wrote: post #96

The easiest way for ChatGPT to generate good output is to plain understand it. Given the vast amount of input data fed into it, it has no choice, but to start reducing the input into fundamental rules which is basically what understanding is. Understanding is a form of compression. More efficient for a neural network to understand a concept than memorize permutations. Same with statistics and markov chains, people fo…

Totally agree.

I think Juergen Schmidthuber has developed a lot of ideas around compression being the basis for consciousness and understanding.

There was the paper that showed that when showing a language model Othello moves it ends up building an internal representation of the board.

And now I was reading this abstract:

```Theory of mind (ToM), or the ability to impute unobservable mental states to others, is central to human social interactions, communication, empathy, self-consciousness, and morality. We administer classic false-belief tasks, widely used to test ToM in humans, to several language models, without any examples or pre-training. Our results show that models published before 2022 show virtually no ability to solve ToM tasks. Yet, the January 2022 version of GPT-3 (davinci-002) solved 70% of ToM tasks, a performance comparable with that of seven-year-old children. Moreover, its November 2022 version (davinci-003), solved 93% of ToM tasks, a performance comparable with that of nine-year-old children. These findings suggest that ToM-like ability (thus far considered to be uniquely human) may have spontaneously emerged as a byproduct of language models' improving language skills.```

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

#106

Post by williamcotton »

the_af wrote: post #63
chx wrote: post #41

Wasn't there a humorous law which said "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no" and indeed, what makes you think it works? It fools people into thinking it works but have you seen that chess match between Stockfish and ChatGPT? It's the best, most succinct demonstration of what ChatGPT is. https://pastebin.com/X6kBRTa9 https://i.redd.it/fl4puwzxt9ha1.gif https://youtu.be/rSCNW1OCk_M

In my experience, ChatGPT is unsuitable even for tic tac toe. When I tried it, it hallucinated completely incorrect board positions (e.g. forgot about moves already made or wanted to continue playing after I had won).

You (or running software you interface with ChatGPT) needs to maintain the state of the game between moves. LLMs aren’t computers but they can interact with computers.

LLM(InitialInstructions)->Computer(CodeWrittenByLLM)->LLM(InstructionsOutputByComputer)->LoopUntilWin

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

#107

Post by 8note »

efitz wrote: post #40
mr_toad wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That’s your conscious experience, but it doesn’t necessarily match what your subconscious mind has actually been doing. I’d hazard a guess…

I don’t generally think in individual words when writing. When I want to write a sentence, the first thing I think about is the idea that I want to convey. Then clusters of words start to come into my mind, as ways of expressing that idea, and I select and organize those fragments into a sentence, sometimes fine tuning words to avoid undesirable connotations or emphasize desired ones. Finally I glue the tuned fragmen…

I usually start with point form notes, then fill in the gaps with paragraphs or words

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

#108

Post by jonahbenton »

jmoak3 wrote: post #87
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…

I saw a great comment here, and I will repeat it without the attribution it deserves: We may have realized it's easier to build a brain than to understand one

Define understand, and does an analog to Godel's incompleteness apply.

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

#109

Post by triggercut »

jmoak3 wrote: post #87
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…

I saw a great comment here, and I will repeat it without the attribution it deserves: We may have realized it's easier to build a brain than to understand one

I like a similar one from the great (and sweaty) Tim Harrington -

"Knowing how the world works / Is not knowing how to work the world"

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

#110

Post by bottlepalm »

goatlover wrote: post #97
bottlepalm wrote: post #96

The easiest way for ChatGPT to generate good output is to plain understand it. Given the vast amount of input data fed into it, it has no choice, but to start reducing the input into fundamental rules which is basically what understanding is. Understanding is a form of compression. More efficient for a neural network to understand a concept than memorize permutations. Same with statistics and markov chains, people fo…

Disagree when it comes to anything in the real world how we experience things.

What do you mean? Your brain takes in very raw input from air pressure, two eye cameras, chemical sensors, etc.. and reduces that input into a coherent singular experience.. same with reading words, you just 'understand' it, after being trained for many years by your parents and consuming vast amounts of input from your surroundings.
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