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What is ChatGPT doing and why does it work?

writings.stephenwolfram.com

111–120 of 518 posts

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

#111
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> has little to do with the quality of the output. Non-snarky question: What else can you judge by? Isn't any alternative just putting more precise conditions on the output? With ChatGPT, it's still easy enough to see it's mistakes, and its attempts at fiction and poetry, impressive as they are, are still clumsy to a trained eye, relative to expert human work. But what if they weren't? What happens when they're indis…

>Non-snarky question: What else can you judge by? its architecure. A child is a living and autonomous agent. It has (or develops) meta cognition, an awareness of its own mental state (and by extension use of language). These models don't have the capacity to do this even in theory given that they're static and pretrained. When you ask ChatGPT what it feels like to speak, there isn't some neural activity within the mo…

I take your point. And agree there is still a huge gulf.

> Then the system is likely going to look a lot different than it does now

I think I agree with this too, but to challenge the idea: I would never have thought "a fancy autocomplete architecture" could give rise to something as sophisticated as ChatGPT, its flaws notwithstanding. So I don't feel so confident that further iterations of the idea, or iterations that involve other architectures that are "still obviously fake" won't give rise to results that far more terrifyingly convincing than ChatGPT.

Since we don't really understand these architectures, human or machine, I don't see how that can be used as the criteria. Ever more find-grained versions of "output" seem like the only ground truth. The goal posts can keep moving... they can do language but can't implement robots with proper voice or facial expressions, etc. But in theory if there were no more goal posts left, I feel like the architecture argument would ring hollow.

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

#112
I spent about an hour reading this. I know most people probably won't be able to do the same because of time constraints in their day, but seriously this is the most awesome post about large language models I've read.

Take a second to think about how much time it must have taken to write this, to prepare all of these examples.

This post gave me another way to look at something I already partially understood pieces of. It helps me understand how chatgpt can have these moments of greatness.

If you think of this like a long lecture you can get a lot out of it. It reminds me of a feynman lecture.

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

#113

It's a bunch of smoke and mirrors akin to blockchain, bitcoin (and the entire web3/crypto space in general) - a whole bunch of hype and "evangelists" who keep saying it's going to change the world (and make them a whole lot of money in the process, how convenient!) but if you do look at it critically even at a surface level you realize it's just a bunch of really computationally expensive BS that isn't any better or…

Its not, really. The major difference between this and web3/crypto is utility. Its actually useful. In our office we have people from three different teams using it near daily. Out of choice. As do many kids in our network for homework. For a recently released product effectively in beta thats insane.

Theres a bunch of snake oil salesmen jumping on the bandwagon which is very unfortunate. But lots of people sell fake pharmaceuticals online doesn't mean paracetamol wont help with your headache.

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

#114
I am a game programmer but in my spare time I like to learn and get experience in random interesting areas. Eg. recently I learned electronics and Arduinos.

Would ye recommend any projects I could do in order to get experience with and learn about this new AI stuff like ChatGPT?

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

#115

It’s Just Adding One Word at a Time I'm curious how do you write?

I was just trying to do some metacognition and observe how I write, but apparently it's really just word by word. I neither form full sentences, nor full words or even just abstract imagination in my head. The words just appear from the "darkness", with some kind of sophistication postprocessor that tries to make some output more verbose or use more appropriate adjectives. Is this how people with aphantasia live? I d…

That's how it looks like of your mind was below your consciousness level, i.e. if your focus was on higher ideas, and you just commanded the mind to produce specific thoughts. That's similar to how we control our body. However you might be at the ideas level already, but unable to see those ideas, so it looks like darkness to you. I believe you shpuld be able to see thoughts again simply by persistently focusing your attention on them, just like you could (but shouldn't) control low-level body functions by switching attention to them. If your consciousness was focused on thoughts, you'd see something like a very active 3d whiteboard filled with fine shapes, that you can create, change and destroy at will.

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

#116
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

That only applies if the headline is a yes or no question.

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

#117
post #87

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

We've known that for thousands of years. Any Dick and Jane can build a brain.

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

#118

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…

Chomsky proposed that decades ago. Universal grammar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar

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

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I'm sure if they focused on chess training for example it would be better.

That misses the point. Intelligent beings (humans) can learn the rules of any board game given enough time. We don't need special training. What your parent comment says is it can't even learn the rules, let alone be good at it.

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

#120
post #87

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

One of the things one might want to get out of this is a programming language that feels like human speech but is unambiguous to computers.

If the understanding is the hard part, that seems much less likely.

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