GPT-4: A Copilot for the Mind
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GPT-4: A Copilot for the Mind
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Re: GPT-4: A Copilot for the Mind
#2"For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise."
- Socrates, from Plato's dialogue Phaedrus
Yes, this is going to make us smarter. Just like the personal computer was the 20th century "bicycle for the mind", large language models will be the 21st century "copilot for the mind". The only scary part it it feels like we're handing over some of the reins.
Re: GPT-4: A Copilot for the Mind
#3I've just watched the Microsoft 365 copilot presentation. They never mentioned hallucinations, and talked about errors maybe once?
This thing will definitely make stupid errors and will make up things when summarizing, doing presentations etc. - unless it achieves near human level intelligence of course - but in this case everyone'll lose their job.
I'm really curious what'll eventually happen? How are we going to live with it - strange presentation points, wrong numbers in reports, enormous amount of auto-generated business talk texts? Will the knowledge be corrupted more and more?
Re: GPT-4: A Copilot for the Mind
#4I've just watched the Microsoft 365 copilot presentation. They never mentioned hallucinations, and talked about errors maybe once? This thing will definitely make stupid errors and will make up things when summarizing, doing presentations etc. - unless it achieves near human level intelligence of course - but in this case everyone'll lose their job. I'm really curious what'll eventually happen? How are we going to li…
You're looking at this in a black and white way, overlooking all of the uses where it doesn't have to be perfect. If it saves humans even a few minutes, it's a good tool.
Re: GPT-4: A Copilot for the Mind
#5I've just watched the Microsoft 365 copilot presentation. They never mentioned hallucinations, and talked about errors maybe once? This thing will definitely make stupid errors and will make up things when summarizing, doing presentations etc. - unless it achieves near human level intelligence of course - but in this case everyone'll lose their job. I'm really curious what'll eventually happen? How are we going to li…
> I'm really curious what'll eventually happen?
Maybe it will produce fewer errors than humans and also improve over time.
Re: GPT-4: A Copilot for the Mind
#6HN algorithm promotes broken links?
Re: GPT-4: A Copilot for the Mind
#7Productivity junkies need to remind themselves that their goals aren't necessarily useful or practical goals.
The mind is working exactly how it should: there is no practical need to remember everything you've read or seen (it has been like this ever since Google Search existed and since 2008 even more so with the ability to google the entire world from your pocket). The mind does a great job at filtering all the noise already and ensures you only remember the most important stuff.
Re: GPT-4: A Copilot for the Mind
#8Warning, this is blatant content marketing.
Re: GPT-4: A Copilot for the Mind
#9So, note-taking? I already use Google Keep as an extension of my long-term memory, for storing everything from book recommendations to birthdays. For short-term "volatile" memory, a pen and paper or a .txt on my computer works great.
In addition, I have hundreds of pages of typed notes in per-topic gdocs that I can refer to quite handily using Ctrl+F.
I actually wouldn't want GPT to summarize or reduce these notes for me because I would always doubt the accuracy, and reading the exact words that I've typed invokes much better contextual recall than reading a rephrasing. Also, usually when I can't find something immediately using Ctrl+F, it means it's time to reorganize and that grows the body of knowledge.
Not to mention, much of the good that comes from note-taking comes from the act of writing notes. Sending off large chunks of other people's text for an AI to summarize defeats this benefit.
GPT is impressive in some ways but such "pockets" of the GPT ecosystem are very reminiscent of web3/blockchain - forcing inferior solutions on already well-solved problems.
Re: GPT-4: A Copilot for the Mind
#10> In Jose Luis Borges’ short story “The Library of Babel,” he creates an infinite library that contains all possible books … a book that predicts your future accurately, a book that unifies quantum mechanics with general relativity … But again, this library contains every possible book. So it also contains a lot of gibberish. Most of the books, in fact, are complete gibberish.
Google is converging on this "Library of Babel" now, and if it isn't there already LLMs will ensure that is its final state.
This idea of LLMs + curated authoritative sources is an interesting and potentially really powerful antidote.