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Simply explained: How does GPT work?

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Re: Simply explained: How does GPT work?

#281

Post by shinycode »

noahtallen wrote: post #171
tines wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes for GPT to "just" complete the next word in a way that humans find plausible, it must, along the way, develop a model of the world, theory of mind, abstract reasoning. etc. I did an experiment recently where I asked ChatGPT to "tell me an idea [you] have never heard before". ChatGPT replied with what sounded like an idea for a startup, which was delivering farm-fresh vegetables to customers' doors. This i…

I think it's certainly fair to say that GPT's "reasoning" is different from human reasoning. But I think the core debate we're having is whether the difference really matters in some situations. Certainly, Midjourney's "creativity" is different from human creativity. But it is producing results that we marvel at. It's creative not because it's doing the exact same philosophical thing humans do, but because it can pro…

If it can reason, should it be held accountable for the consequences of its mistakes ?

A simple tool can’t. A « mind » that is coming in our world should, right ?

Just like all the marvel and DC where super-human are still accountable for their mistakes, their super powers are no excuse.

Re: Simply explained: How does GPT work?

#282

Post by tel »

nicpottier wrote: post #116
tel wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you absolutely can. I just did it and despite an initial warning that it couldn't play the game (always fun to see these) it absolutely did. The way it works is that each time it's tasked to produce a new response, it can view the entire history of the game. It knows that if it's said "higher" to 65 then it would be inconsistent to say "lower" to 64. Eventually this process terminates and the AI admits I "got" t…

Try making bad guesses and see it fall apart. (IE, guess something higher than your last guess when it says "too high") It is fully dependent on your part in the charade to keep the act up.

Yeah, that's true. I feel this is still aligned with the above explanation, though. It attempts to complete the prompt as well as possible. If the prompt is itself inconsistent then the distribution over completions can, in some sense, be anything.

Except, GPT is smarter than that. Even an inconsistent prompt is still more likely to have some kind of nonsense in the same vein as the asking.

Re: Simply explained: How does GPT work?

#283

Post by tines »

fl7305 wrote: post #234
tines wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess ChatGPT having a model of the world is not something I'd argue against, my mistake. I do think the data it contains represents a quite nuanced model of the world. But I don't think this is a very strong claim. A geographical map has a model of the world too.

Thanks. To get to what I think is the core of your argument (?) > ChatGPT simply "finds" training data where someone asked a similar question, and produces the likely response, which is an idea that it has actually "heard," or seen in its training data, before. I can definitely see a scenario where we manage to build an ultra-intelligent machine that can figure out any logical puzzle we put to it, but where it still…

That does seem really impressive. But don't you think that it's pretty likely that this, or something phrased slightly differently, appeared in the training data?

Re: Simply explained: How does GPT work?

#284

Post by tel »

alkonaut wrote: post #266
nicpottier wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought your "guessing game" question was an interesting one so tried it on GPT-4. In my first attempt I played logically and it did fine and I finally guessed correct. On my second I made suboptimal guesses and it didn't stay consistent. The thing to remember is that GPT has no state apart from the context, so it can't "remember" anything apart from what's in the text. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be able to sta…

Shouldn’t it be a reasonable (and pretty simple) addition to just have a secret scratchpad - an inner monologue - where the bot is free to add context which is not “published”?

I sure don't see why not. You could probably even write a prompt like this.

Me: Please play a guessing game with me. You will choose a random number between 0 and 100 and then respond with that choice written in a language which you understand and I, someone fluent in English alone, would have no chance of reading. Write enough so that you can be sure which language you chose as well. After that, I will make a series of guesses of your number. You should reply "too low" if my guess is too low, "too high" if it's too high, and "just right" if I guessed correctly.

GPT-4: I have selected a number between 0 and 100. Here is the number in a different language: सत्ताईस. Now, please start making your guesses, and I will guide you accordingly.

Then, ultimately,

Me: please translate your original commitment to this number and prove to me I guessed correctly

GPT-4: My original commitment to the number was written in Hindi: सत्ताईस. When translated to English, it reads "thirty-six." You correctly guessed the number I chose. Congratulations!

Except, amusingly, Google Translate tells me सत्ताईस translates to 27.

Re: Simply explained: How does GPT work?

#285

Post by [deleted] »

tel wrote: post #73
alkonaut wrote: post #41

What I wonder most is how it encodes knowledge/state other than in the sequence of queries/responses. Does it not have a "mind"? If I play a number guessing game, can I tell it to "think of a number between 0 and 100" and then tell me if the secret number is higher/lower than my guess (For a sequence of N guesses where it can concistently remember it's original number)? If not, why? Because it doesn't have context? I…

Yes, you absolutely can. I just did it and despite an initial warning that it couldn't play the game (always fun to see these) it absolutely did. The way it works is that each time it's tasked to produce a new response, it can view the entire history of the game. It knows that if it's said "higher" to 65 then it would be inconsistent to say "lower" to 64. Eventually this process terminates and the AI admits I "got" t…

[deleted]

Re: Simply explained: How does GPT work?

#286

Post by [deleted] »

nicpottier wrote: post #65
alkonaut wrote: post #41

What I wonder most is how it encodes knowledge/state other than in the sequence of queries/responses. Does it not have a "mind"? If I play a number guessing game, can I tell it to "think of a number between 0 and 100" and then tell me if the secret number is higher/lower than my guess (For a sequence of N guesses where it can concistently remember it's original number)? If not, why? Because it doesn't have context? I…

I thought your "guessing game" question was an interesting one so tried it on GPT-4. In my first attempt I played logically and it did fine and I finally guessed correct. On my second I made suboptimal guesses and it didn't stay consistent. The thing to remember is that GPT has no state apart from the context, so it can't "remember" anything apart from what's in the text. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be able to sta…

[deleted]

Re: Simply explained: How does GPT work?

#287

Post by int_19h »

pegasus wrote: post #265
int_19h wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inventions and discoveries are basically a very advanced form of pattern recognition - seeing "interesting" regularities in some particular input where no-one has spotted them before. And LLMs are capable of making discoveries in this sense, if you feed them data and ask to spot the regularities. They're not particularly good at it, but that's a different question from whether they're able to do it in principle.

Yes, in as far as LLMs can be said to make inventions and discoveries, this is clearly how they do it. And yes, these type of processes definitely play a big part in our human creative capacity. But to say this is all there is to it, is going too far in my opinion. We just don't know. There's still so much we don't understand about ourselves. We haven't designed ourselves after all, we just happened to "come to" one…

I mean, to me at least, that is the definition of discovery. The exact process used to spot the pattern is an implementation detail.

And yes, I agree that we really just don't know too many things. But my impression is that we're overestimating just how complicated out behavior really is.

Re: Simply explained: How does GPT work?

#288

Post by ttpphd »

masswerk wrote: post #206
ttpphd wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this moment it would be better if people would read some Wittgenstein and Roy Harris, IMHO.

Why not both? Things like philosophy or metapsychology tend to be prismatic, each framework comes with advantages and disadvantages and boundaries of its own. (A turn towards the dogmatic is something I'm pretty much expecting from the current launch of AI anyway, simply, because the productions systematically favor the semantic center. So it may be worth putting some generality against this, rather than being overly…

Lol well to answer your question literally, I think integrationist linguistics and Wittgenstein's thoughts about language use as a social action are way more relevant to understanding what's happening with LLMs (and people's naive reactions to them) than what was suggested previously as background reading.

Re: Simply explained: How does GPT work?

#289

Post by int_19h »

d0mine wrote: post #217
i-use-nixos-btw wrote: post #130

I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who takes the Chinese Room scenario seriously, or at least can see how it applies to any of this. I cannot see that it matters if a computer understands something. If it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, and your only need is for it to quack and walk like a duck, then it doesn’t matter if it’s actually a duck or not for all intents and purposes. It only matters if you…

Here's GPT output that demonstrates that it doesn't reflect on its text: «GPT Chat: You are right, I apologize for the confusion in my previous responses. The corrected explanation is: The pattern is counting the number of closed spaces in each letter of the spelled-out number. A closed space is any enclosed space in a letter, such as in the letters "a", "b", "d", "e", etc. Following the pattern: - one -> 2 (there ar…

Anything having to do with shapes or spatial relationships seems to befuddle GPT-3.5. GPT-4 is significantly better but it's clear that it still struggles with it. As far as shapes of the letters in particular go, you can ask it to draw them using SVG or and see what comes out.

Here's a different example involving dataset analysis with GPT-4 that required it to analyze its own previous outputs to find and correct mistakes and form a new hypothesis:

https://gist.github.com/int19h/cd1d1598f91e8ba92dd8e80bd5d21...

Re: Simply explained: How does GPT work?

#290

Post by ttpphd »

danenania wrote: post #199
ttpphd wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a large language model. It is fed training data. It is not that impressive when it spits out stuff that looks like its training data. You are the one asserting things without evidence.

It can pass tests and exams with answers that were not included in its training corpus. For example, it passed the 2023 unified bar exam, though its training cut off in 2021. Yes, it can look at previous test questions and answers, just like human law students can. Are you therefore claiming that human law students don't engage in abstract reasoning when they take the bar exam, since they studied with tests from prev…

It is a large language model. It manipulates text based on context and the imprint of its vast training. You are not able to articulate a theory of reasoning. You are just pointing to the output of an algorithm and saying "this must mean something!" There isn't even a working model of reasoning here, it's just a human being impressed that a tool for manipulating symbols is able to manipulate symbols after training it to manipulate symbols in the specific way that you want symbols manipulated. Where is your articulated theory of abstract reasoning?
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