The sys prompt given to run the turing test (from https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.08007) actually works well. I'm honestly not sure I'd be able to tell (unless I test it adversarially e.g ignore the prompt, write a poem etc)
Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world
81–90 of 652 posts
Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world
#82That's an interesting Altman quote on the site. LLMs cannot be compared to electricity and the Internet. People wanted those. LLMs were an impressive parlor trick at first but disappointing later. Many stopped using them altogether. Now there is a president who fuels the hype, shakes down rich countries for "AI" investments. The Saudi prince who lost money on Twitter is in for the new grift and praises Musk on Tucker…
People have stopped using LLMs? I wasn't aware of that. Can you share a source for that?
Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world
#83> Moreover, a hallucination is a pathology. It's something that happens when systems are not working properly. > When an LLM fabricates a falsehood, that is not a malfunction at all. The machine is doing exactly what it has been designed to do: guess, and sound confident while doing it. > When LLMs get things wrong they aren't hallucinating. They are bullshitting. Very important distinction and again, shows the marke…
If we want to be pedantic about language, they aren't bullshitting. Bulshitting implies an intent to deceive, whereas LLMs are simply trying their best to predict text. Nobody gains anything from using terms closely related to human agency and intentions.
Plenty of human bullshitters have no intent to deceive. They just state conjecture with confidence.
Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is an emotionally manipulative definition and anthropomorphizes the LLMs. They don't "intend" anything, they're not trying to trick you, or sound persuasive.
They address this in lesson 2: > According to philosopher Harry Frankfurt, a liar knows the truth and is trying to lead us in the opposite direction. > A bullshitter either doesn't know the truth, or doesn't care. They are just trying to be persuasive. Being persuasive (i.e., churn out convincing prose) is how LLMs were designed to be.
This is patently false. They are trained to generate correct responses.
Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Bullshit” actually means something: > In philosophy and psychology of cognition, the term "bullshit" is sometimes used to specifically refer to statements produced without particular concern for truth, clarity, or meaning, distinguishing "bullshit" from a deliberate, manipulative lie intended to subvert the truth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit It’s really an ideal term to describe what LLMs do.
I prefer "waffle" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffle_(speech) "Waffle machines" is even kind of funny.
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Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world
#86This is a great resource, thanks. We (myself, a bioinformatician, and my co-cordinators, clinicians) are currently designing a course to hopefully arm medical students with the required basic knowledge they need to navigate the changing world of medicine in light of the ML and LLM advances. Our goal is to not only demystify medical ML, but also give them a sense of the possibilities with these technologies, and maybe illustrate pathways for adoption, in the safest way possible.
Already in the process of putting this course together, it is scary how much stuff is being tried out right now, and is being treated like a magic box with correct answers.
Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world
#87This course mentions the famous Apple advertisement. Unfortunately it slightly oversells and while I'm sure that's not because this fragment was written by an LLM it is exactly the sort of over-simplification which leads to LLMs generating wild bullshit when they interpolate this "fact" with other "facts" they've been fed, and we ought to strive to do better when writing for humans. "Describe how prior to 1984, there…
I like the distinction between "teletypes" and the new fancy "glass teletypes".
Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is an emotionally manipulative definition and anthropomorphizes the LLMs. They don't "intend" anything, they're not trying to trick you, or sound persuasive.
They address this in lesson 2: > According to philosopher Harry Frankfurt, a liar knows the truth and is trying to lead us in the opposite direction. > A bullshitter either doesn't know the truth, or doesn't care. They are just trying to be persuasive. Being persuasive (i.e., churn out convincing prose) is how LLMs were designed to be.
Some pushback on this, but it remains true.
Easy to see when - for example - Claude gushes about how great all your ideas are.
Also the stark absence of "I don't know."
Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> cynical () positions on some controversial questions. I feel "cynical" is an inappropriate word here. We may have to, for the same (ecumenical) reasons that thinkers like Churchland, Hofstadter, Dennet, Penrose and company have all struggled with, eventually accept the impossibility of proof of (existence or non-existence) on any hypothesis of "machine mind". The pragmatic response is, "does it offer utility for me…
I think the way he sketches the the AI labs as "marketing geniuses" for not just releasing their models as auto-correct is a bit cynical, as well as implying in general that these labs are muddying the waters on purpose by not agreeing with and by engaging in "hype" (believing in the technology).
Sorry, "inappropriate" might have been inappropriate :) What am I
trying to say here?....that we're soon gonna find ourselves in an
insoluble and exhausting debate around machine thinking and its value.
Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world
#90This website is so important! Now ask yourself why AI companies don't want to be regulated or scrutinized. So many companies (users and providers) jump on the AI hype train because of FOMO. The end result might be just as destructive as this mythical "AGI". Edit: I am not saying to not use the technology. I am just on the side of caution and constant validation. The technology has to serve society. But I fear this hy…
My impression is that companies in most of the fields do not like to be regulated or scrutinized, so nothing new there. While observing some people using LLMs, I realized that for a lot of people it really makes a huge difference in time saved. For me the difference is not significant, but I am generally solving complex problems, not writing nicely formatted reports where words and not numbers are relevant, so YMMV.
Is it good for one person (the writer) to save time, only for lots of other people (the readers) to have to do extra work to understand if the work is correct or hallucinated?