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ChatGPT: A Mental Model

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Re: ChatGPT: A Mental Model

#11

Post by SanderNL »

TuringTest wrote: post #9
sorokod wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does, in your personal opinion, GPT-4 has an underlying model of the world?

It has a model, but it is not a rational model. This difference is something that often throws engineers off track when thinking about generative AI. LLMs models work more like intuitions. They are able to make statements about a problem in context, but they are generated from ideas that "instinctively" make sense given the prior statements and learned corpus (similar to Daniel Kahneman's fast mode of thinking), not…

Rationality’s building blocks are themselves not rational. I don’t know where this idea came from that logical thought somehow springs into life fully formed at once. Logos?

I find it more helpful to think of human thought as consisting of multitudes of little patterns, all wired up together to correlate but individually unrecognizable and certainly not traceable to some concrete part of a problem. At some unknown and slightly fuzzy point our dreamlike mentations start resembling some form of rational thought. But it’s a mirage that will fade again in time. Like how clouds suddenly and instantly look like a rabbit, it’s a trick. Thousands of patterns that are not rabbitlike in any way had to help that activation along the way.

I think the trick is building so much margin, so much room between dreamlike mentations and “rationality” that the entity stays coherent most of the time under normal circumstances. I think this is vaguely what happens with moving from gpt3 to gpt4, it got some breathing room.

Remember it is quite easy to trick a human into decoherence as well.

Re: ChatGPT: A Mental Model

#12

Post by [deleted] »

TuringTest wrote: post #9
sorokod wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does, in your personal opinion, GPT-4 has an underlying model of the world?

It has a model, but it is not a rational model. This difference is something that often throws engineers off track when thinking about generative AI. LLMs models work more like intuitions. They are able to make statements about a problem in context, but they are generated from ideas that "instinctively" make sense given the prior statements and learned corpus (similar to Daniel Kahneman's fast mode of thinking), not…

[deleted]

Re: ChatGPT: A Mental Model

#13

Post by LightBug1 »

jiggawatts wrote: post #2

Jiggawatts’ second rule: “Unless an opinion on LLM technology includes the specific phrase ‘GPT 4’, it can be dismissed.” The author tried older, thoroughly outdated models, and has decided to publicly state an opinion without bothering to check if it’s still valid or not. Ironically confirming that humans are just as susceptible to writing false statements as Chat AIs. Remember boys and girls: self driving cars don’…

//Remember boys and girls: self driving cars don’t need to be perfect, just better than humans.

Fudamentally disagree.

Self driving cars need to be effectively perfect (almost impossible) for me to consider them.

I would rather be in a situation where the circumstances mean that there is a greater probability of me crashing, but under my control, rather than a "random" coding error or AI hallucination taking me and my family out.

Slow traffic auto stop/start, cruise control and lane assist were always enough, and they've been around for a decade or more.

But then, I actually enjoy driving when not in traffic or long drives.

Ymmv, literally.

Re: ChatGPT: A Mental Model

#14

Post by jiggawatts »

allisdust wrote: post #10
jiggawatts wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my personal opinion? Yes. I’m happy to argue the finer points of the philosophy of the mind and consciousness, but: I’ve talked to people that have a weaker mental model of the world than GPT 4. Many people compare these AIs against an idealised human, a type of Übermensch, something like a Very Smart Person that doesn’t lie and doesn’t make mistakes. Random humans aren’t remotely like that, and are a more realist…

I was able to get gpt4 to do a lot of useful work. But for some reason it completely falls apart for this scenario. May be because it has to think in second order to achieve the task. Perhaps you could take a crack at this: Prerequisite (for you the human)> You have a file at src/SampleReactComponent.jsx that has below simple react component: const SampleReactComponent = (props) => { const [var1, setVar1] = React.use…

Dude. Dude.

I’m an IT professional and I have no idea how to begin answering that request! Pose that question verbatim to a dozen random people[1] and I guarantee you that you’ll get zero answers.

Also, I find it hilarious that sed and awk are so counterintuitive that not even the AIs can do useful things with them. The same AIs that speak Latin, and can explain quantum mechanics.

[1] I mean specifically not random Silicon Valley coworkers. Go talk to random relatives and the barista at the cafe.

Re: ChatGPT: A Mental Model

#15

Post by seszett »

jiggawatts wrote: post #2

Jiggawatts’ second rule: “Unless an opinion on LLM technology includes the specific phrase ‘GPT 4’, it can be dismissed.” The author tried older, thoroughly outdated models, and has decided to publicly state an opinion without bothering to check if it’s still valid or not. Ironically confirming that humans are just as susceptible to writing false statements as Chat AIs. Remember boys and girls: self driving cars don’…

GPT4 still isn't freely available, is it? So it's not that surprising people aren't using it as much as the older ones.

Re: ChatGPT: A Mental Model

#16

Post by bamboozled »

jiggawatts wrote: post #2

Jiggawatts’ second rule: “Unless an opinion on LLM technology includes the specific phrase ‘GPT 4’, it can be dismissed.” The author tried older, thoroughly outdated models, and has decided to publicly state an opinion without bothering to check if it’s still valid or not. Ironically confirming that humans are just as susceptible to writing false statements as Chat AIs. Remember boys and girls: self driving cars don’…

Who is Jigawatt and why is he relevant at all?

Re: ChatGPT: A Mental Model

#17

Post by mft_ »

jiggawatts wrote: post #4
sorokod wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does, in your personal opinion, GPT-4 has an underlying model of the world?

In my personal opinion? Yes. I’m happy to argue the finer points of the philosophy of the mind and consciousness, but: I’ve talked to people that have a weaker mental model of the world than GPT 4. Many people compare these AIs against an idealised human, a type of Übermensch, something like a Very Smart Person that doesn’t lie and doesn’t make mistakes. Random humans aren’t remotely like that, and are a more realist…

A lot of the people on the left of the curve are likely doing different shades of manual work. This is often work that automation is struggling to replicate --think grasping and packing in a warehouse, or tidying up a messy shelf of goods-- and the GPTs won't change this.

I'd argue it's maybe the middle and even the right of the curve that's threatened. Is your job writing marketing copy, or communications materials or press releases, or relatively simple moulding and counting of data, or HR administration (or many other examples)? GPT's coming for your job in a short space of time.

(Which brings us to mft's second rule: if your job is threatened by the current generation of GPTs, it should probably have been largely automated by simpler means --or just eliminated-- already.)

Re: ChatGPT: A Mental Model

#18

Post by somewhereoutth »

jiggawatts wrote: post #4
sorokod wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does, in your personal opinion, GPT-4 has an underlying model of the world?

In my personal opinion? Yes. I’m happy to argue the finer points of the philosophy of the mind and consciousness, but: I’ve talked to people that have a weaker mental model of the world than GPT 4. Many people compare these AIs against an idealised human, a type of Übermensch, something like a Very Smart Person that doesn’t lie and doesn’t make mistakes. Random humans aren’t remotely like that, and are a more realist…

It's meaningless to compare a LLM to a human, anymore than it is to compare a wheelbarrow to a human. To do so betrays both a fantasy projected onto LLMs and a lack of understanding of humans.

Re: ChatGPT: A Mental Model

#19

Post by _a_a_a_ »

LightBug1 wrote: post #13
jiggawatts wrote: post #2

Jiggawatts’ second rule: “Unless an opinion on LLM technology includes the specific phrase ‘GPT 4’, it can be dismissed.” The author tried older, thoroughly outdated models, and has decided to publicly state an opinion without bothering to check if it’s still valid or not. Ironically confirming that humans are just as susceptible to writing false statements as Chat AIs. Remember boys and girls: self driving cars don’…

//Remember boys and girls: self driving cars don’t need to be perfect, just better than humans. Fudamentally disagree. Self driving cars need to be effectively perfect (almost impossible) for me to consider them. I would rather be in a situation where the circumstances mean that there is a greater probability of me crashing, but under my control, rather than a "random" coding error or AI hallucination taking me and m…

While I'm perhaps with you on "Self driving cars need to be effectively perfect (almost impossible) for me to consider them", we aren't the market which, by typical human nature, will accept 'good enough'. So IMO you wouldn't make a good salesman or company exec.

Re: ChatGPT: A Mental Model

#20

Post by jiggawatts »

mft_ wrote: post #17
jiggawatts wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my personal opinion? Yes. I’m happy to argue the finer points of the philosophy of the mind and consciousness, but: I’ve talked to people that have a weaker mental model of the world than GPT 4. Many people compare these AIs against an idealised human, a type of Übermensch, something like a Very Smart Person that doesn’t lie and doesn’t make mistakes. Random humans aren’t remotely like that, and are a more realist…

A lot of the people on the left of the curve are likely doing different shades of manual work. This is often work that automation is struggling to replicate --think grasping and packing in a warehouse, or tidying up a messy shelf of goods-- and the GPTs won't change this. I'd argue it's maybe the middle and even the right of the curve that's threatened. Is your job writing marketing copy, or communications materials…

> and the GPTs won't change this.

I suspect but cannot prove that the opposite will be the case.

We can make bipedal robots now, but we can’t give them instructions, not like we can instruct human labourers.

“Bob, go to where George ate his lunch an hour ago and bring me the tools for fixing a pipe” was an impossible instruction for a robot to execute.

Suddenly this is a trivial sentence for an AI that knows what type of tools are typically needed for fixing pipes!

Think about how many mega projects are being built in places like Saudi Arabia with immigrant workers that speak little English and no Arabic. An AI is already superior in terms of comprehension than those workers!

LLMs already speak every major language and can be a handy translator too. C3P0 and R2D2 are looking totally realistic suddenly! Heck, do you remember that scene in the Empire Strikes Back where Luke used a text chat interface to communicate with R2D2? That’s oddly prescient now!

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