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Understanding ChatGPT

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Re: Understanding ChatGPT

#71

Post by scrollaway »

becquerel wrote: post #60
maxdoop wrote: post #28

“It’s a glorified word predictor” is becoming increasingly maddening to read. Do tell— how can you prove humans are any different? The most common “proofs” I’ve seen: “Humans are more complex”. Ok, so you’re implying we add more complexity (maybe more modalities?); if more complexity is added, will you continue to say “LLMs are just word predictors”? “Humans are actually reasoning. LLMs are not.” Again, how would you…

> “Humans are actually reasoning. LLMs are not.” Again, how would you measure such a thing? I would posit that reasoning is the ability to construct new, previously-unexpressed information from prior information. If ChatGPT existed 110 years ago and fed all the then-known relevant experimental data regarding subatomic particles, it would not have been able to arrive at the new notion of quantum mechanics. If it exist…

If you’ve pair programmed with GPT you can absolutely tell it has the ability to reason.

I’m sure you could get it to reason about new physics. You’re underestimating how much work went into discovering these new concepts; it’s not just a dude having a eureka moment and writing down an equation.

Re: Understanding ChatGPT

#72

Post by scrollaway »

nikodotio wrote: post #69
rvnx wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking: "Describe to me a completely new and credible explanation on why space-time is shrinking" It gives me: Title: Isotropic Space-Time Contraction: A Novel Hypothesis for Shrinking Space-Time Abstract: This paper introduces a new and credible explanation for the phenomenon of shrinking space-time, which we call "Isotropic Space-Time Contraction" (ISTC). ISTC postulates that space-time contracts uniformly in all d…

a quick google reveals that all of the words in the "new" title already exist from human producers, and this is mix and matched together.

A quick google reveals the same of your comment. Are you an AI?

Re: Understanding ChatGPT

#73

Post by maxdoop »

spinningD20 wrote: post #61
maxdoop wrote: post #28

“It’s a glorified word predictor” is becoming increasingly maddening to read. Do tell— how can you prove humans are any different? The most common “proofs” I’ve seen: “Humans are more complex”. Ok, so you’re implying we add more complexity (maybe more modalities?); if more complexity is added, will you continue to say “LLMs are just word predictors”? “Humans are actually reasoning. LLMs are not.” Again, how would you…

This feels like a shifting of the burden of proof. When folks state (oversimplifying by doing so I agree) LLMs and similar tech are "fancy word predictors with parlor tricks" they're usually doing so in response to those that are enchanted into attributing some form of technical magic to it. Are you implying that, by being similar to humans, that makes it a sentient, living thing? Ducktyping? Just because something w…

I completely agree with you.

Note that I’m not making those claims about sentience and similarity. What I am pushing back on is the confidence with which proclaim humans are “so different”, when I’ve yet to see actual proof of this dissimilarity.

I think it’s (understandably) an emotional response from folks to dismiss ideas around LLM progress because it FEELS like we are thereby lessening what it means to be human. But I’m not at all trying to make that claim; I’m just trying to see how we can explore the question.

Re: Understanding ChatGPT

#74

Post by notahacker »

rvnx wrote: post #64
notahacker wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we think Sydney tried to marry people due to feeling the same emotional desires and obligations as humans, or because marriage proposals were in its data corpus and it inferred that they were a likely continuation given previous inputs?

In a way, is this how a conscious being would likely continue the conversation ?

The question isn't "does the conversation look superficially similar to marriage proposals it's derived suitable words for a marriage proposal from", the question is whether BingChat lies awake with hormones rushing around its silicon mind as it ponders about how deeply in love with this human it is (or how anguished it is at being expected to marry this horrible man just because of the deep sense of social obligation it feels towards Microsoft), which is what humans mean by emotions, as opposed to ASCII outputs with emotional connotations.

Funnily enough, I'd rate non-English speakers and even dogs as considerably more likely to devoting time to thinking about how much they love or resent other humans, even though neither of them have parsed enough English text to emit the string "will you marry me?" as a high probability response to the string "is there something on your mind" following a conversation with lots of mutual compliments.

Re: Understanding ChatGPT

#75

Post by piaste »

rvnx wrote: post #64
notahacker wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we think Sydney tried to marry people due to feeling the same emotional desires and obligations as humans, or because marriage proposals were in its data corpus and it inferred that they were a likely continuation given previous inputs?

In a way, is this how a conscious being would likely continue the conversation ?

No, it's not, it's closer to the opposite.

A human says "I want to marry you" when he is modeling the other person and has an expectation of how she will respond, and he likes that expectation.

A language model says "I want to marry you" when it is modeling itself as a role that it expects to say those five words. It has no expectations regarding any follow-up from the human user.

Re: Understanding ChatGPT

#76

Post by scotty79 »

aqme28 wrote: post #49
scotty79 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human mind can perform actual reasoning, while ChatGPT only mirrors the output of reasoning and when it gets output correctly it's due to mixture of luck and closeness to training material. Human mind or even something like Wolfram Alpha can perform reasoning.

Ask it to “reason through” a problem and then ask it to give you an answer. How’s that different from thinking?

It's just wrong. That's how you can tell. Actual reasoning leads to sensible conclusions.

Re: Understanding ChatGPT

#77

Post by [deleted] »

maxdoop wrote: post #28

“It’s a glorified word predictor” is becoming increasingly maddening to read. Do tell— how can you prove humans are any different? The most common “proofs” I’ve seen: “Humans are more complex”. Ok, so you’re implying we add more complexity (maybe more modalities?); if more complexity is added, will you continue to say “LLMs are just word predictors”? “Humans are actually reasoning. LLMs are not.” Again, how would you…

[deleted]

Re: Understanding ChatGPT

#78

Post by dunefox »

maxdoop wrote: post #70
becquerel wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Humans are actually reasoning. LLMs are not.” Again, how would you measure such a thing? I would posit that reasoning is the ability to construct new, previously-unexpressed information from prior information. If ChatGPT existed 110 years ago and fed all the then-known relevant experimental data regarding subatomic particles, it would not have been able to arrive at the new notion of quantum mechanics. If it exist…

I think there’s a huge misunderstanding of what “original ideas” are and what constitutes novelty. Mark Twain quote on originality: “ There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same…

I don't think I would take Mark Twains word on such topics.

Re: Understanding ChatGPT

#79

Post by joshuahedlund »

maxdoop wrote: post #28

“It’s a glorified word predictor” is becoming increasingly maddening to read. Do tell— how can you prove humans are any different? The most common “proofs” I’ve seen: “Humans are more complex”. Ok, so you’re implying we add more complexity (maybe more modalities?); if more complexity is added, will you continue to say “LLMs are just word predictors”? “Humans are actually reasoning. LLMs are not.” Again, how would you…

> Do tell— how can you prove humans are any different?

How about this one: Humans experience time. Humans have agency. Humans can use both in their reply.

If I blurt out the first thing that comes to mind, I feel a lot like a GTP. But I can also choose to pause and think about my response. If I do I might say something different, something hard to quantify but which would be more “intelligent”. That is the biggest difference to me; it seems that GTP can only do the first response. (what Kahneman calls System I vs System II thinking.) But there’s more - I can choose to ask clarifying questions or gather more information before I respond (ChatGTP with plugins is getting closer to that tho). I can choose to say “I don’t know”. I can choose to wait and let the question percolate in my mind as I experience time and other inputs. I can choose to not even respond at all.

In its current form GTP cannot do those things. Does it need some level or simulation of agency and experience of time to do so? I don’t know

Re: Understanding ChatGPT

#80

Post by scotty79 »

maxdoop wrote: post #23
scotty79 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human mind can perform actual reasoning, while ChatGPT only mirrors the output of reasoning and when it gets output correctly it's due to mixture of luck and closeness to training material. Human mind or even something like Wolfram Alpha can perform reasoning.

Can you explain your proof of that?

Just try to talk with it about math. You'll quickly see that it's as if you talked to a person who doesn't understand anything about math. Just read some books about it and attempts to mimic their style to appear to be smart and knowledgable.
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