[2023]
Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)
51–60 of 389 posts
Re: Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)
#52I'm noticing that leftists overwhelmingly toe the same line on AI skepticism, which suggests to me an ideological motivation.
Re: Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)
#53I confess my opinion of Noam Chomsky dropped a lot from reading this interview. The way he set up a "Tom Jones" strawman and kept dismissing positions using language like "we'd laugh", "total absurdity", etc. was really disappointing. I always assumed that academics were only like that on reddit, and in real life they actually made a serious effort at rigorous argument, avoiding logical fallacies and the like. Yet here is Chomsky addressing a lay audience that has no linguistics background, and instead of even attempting to summarize the arguments for his position, he simply asserts that opposing views are risible with little supporting argument. I expected much more from a big-name scholar.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool."
Re: Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)
#54I recently saw a new LLM that was fooled by "20 pounds of bricks vs 20 feathers". These are not reasoning machines.
Surely it just reasoned that you made a typo and "autocorrected" your riddle. Isn't this what a human would do? Though to be fair, a human would ask you again to make sure they heard you correctly. But it would be kind of annoying if you had to verify every typo when using an LLM.
Re: Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)
#55> It’s as if a biologist were to say: “I have a great new theory of organisms. It lists many that exist and many that can’t possibly exist, and I can tell you nothing about the distinction.” > Again, we’d laugh. Or should. Should we? This reminds me acutely of imaginary numbers. They are a great theory of numbers that can list many numbers that do 'exist' and many that can't possibly 'exist'. And we did laugh when im…
This is the point where i realized he has no clue what he is saying. Theres so many creatures that once existed that can never again exist on earth due to the changes that the planet has gone through over millions, billions of years. The oxygen rich atmosphere that supported the dinosaurs for instance. If we had some kind of system that can put together proper working DNA for all the creatures that ever actually existed on this planet, some half of them would be completely nonviable if introduced to the ecosystem today. He is failing to see that there is an incredible understanding of systems that we are producing with this work, but he is a very old man from a very different time and contrarianism is often the only way to look smart or reasoned when you have no clue whats actually going on, so I am not shocked by his take.
Re: Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)
#56All this interview proves is that Chomsky has fallen far, far behind how AI systems work today and is retreating to scoff at all the progress machine learning has achieved. Machine learning has given rise to AI now. It can't explain itself from principles or its architecture. But you couldn't explain your brain from principles or its architecture, you'd need all of neuroscience to do it. Because the brain is digital…
Perhaps it should be mentioned that he is 96 years old.
Re: Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)
#57> The world’s preeminent linguist Noam Chomsky, and one of the most esteemed public intellectuals of all time, whose intellectual stature has been compared to that of Galileo, Newton, and Descartes, tackles these nagging questions in the interview that follows. By whom?
People who particularly agreed with Chomsky's inherently politicized beliefs, presumably.
Re: Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)
#58Chomsky’s notion is: LLMs can only imitate, not understand language. But what exactly is understanding? What if our „understanding“ is just unlocking another level in a model? Unlocking a new form of generation?
Understanding is probably not much more than making abstractions into simpler terms until you are left with something one can relate to by intuition or social consensus.
Transforming, in other words.
Re: Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)
#59I'm noticing that leftists overwhelmingly toe the same line on AI skepticism, which suggests to me an ideological motivation.
> AI skepticism
Isn't AI optimism an ideological motivation? It's a spectrum, not a mental model.
Re: Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)
#60> It’s as if a biologist were to say: “I have a great new theory of organisms. It lists many that exist and many that can’t possibly exist, and I can tell you nothing about the distinction.” > Again, we’d laugh. Or should. Should we? This reminds me acutely of imaginary numbers. They are a great theory of numbers that can list many numbers that do 'exist' and many that can't possibly 'exist'. And we did laugh when im…
Imaginary numbers are not relevant at all. There’s nothing whatsoever to do with the everyday use of the word imaginary. They could just as easily have been called “vertical numbers” and real numbers called “horizontal numbers” in order to more clearly illustrate their geometric interpretation in the complex plane.
The term “imaginary number” was coined by Rene Descartes as a derogatory and the ill intent behind his term has stuck ever since. I suspect his purpose was theological rather than mathematical and we are all the worse for it.