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Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem

scientificamerican.com

511–520 of 607 posts

Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem

#511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Thought for 80m 17s" Is there any good rule of thumb for how many kWh of electricity this is?

the electricity was going to be consumed regardless whether you ask chatGPT or not. It would have been either idle, or serving other users' requests. so the incremental kWh consumption is zero, since costs are fixed and sunk. as a rule of thumb you can lookup the power consumption of the latest nVidia chip, multiply by factor of two or three (to account for cpu/storage/cooling/network/infra)

An idle GPU consumes almost nothing, a loaded (server-class) GPU can consume over 2kW.

Admittedly a single request isn't a full load, but claiming that a request makes no difference vs idle is misguided, in my opinion.

Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem

#512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we know that AI isn't feeling genuine surprise then?

Because it has no mind, no cognition, and nothing to "feel" with. Don't mistake programmatic mimicry for intention. That's just your own linguistic-forward primate cognition being fooled by the linguistic signals the training set and prompt are making the AI emit.

I could describe the electrical and chemical signals within your neurons and synapses as proof that you are merely a series of electrochemical reactions, and can only mimic genuine thought.

Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem

#513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

17 sheep - 9 ran away = 8 sheep He bought enough to double what he had: 8 more sheep, so 16 sheep Neighbor has 4 dogs + 14 sheep = 18 animals One-third of her animals = 6 animals But the problem does not say all 6 were sheep. It says “animals.” So the exact sheep count depends on which animals she gave him. Then: 16 + s sheep from neighbor - 5 - 5 = 6+s where s is the number of sheep among the 6 animals she gave him.…

And that's the wrong answer. It's a word problem, not a math problem. Also, if it really was a math problem, it wouldn't be 0-6 sheep from the neighbor, it would be 2-6. So it even failed on the math.

Are you trying to win this debate with a Facebook "ONLY THE SMARTEST 1% CAN SOLVE" question? The whole point of the question is for some loser to be able to say "no you missed XYZ" ambiguity any time a sane answer is given.

By your logic, the only "correct" answer for an LLM to give to this is "the person who asked you this is fucking with you, this is not a real question". I concede: this is a limitation of modern LLMs: they will try to answer stupid questions.

Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem

#514
post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the most pedantic argument ever. "All men are created equal" is obviously not literally saying all humans are 100% equal. Just like how "ChatGPT equalizes intelligence" is not saying ChatGPT equalizes the intelligence of all humans to a level of 100%. I'm not going to spell out what I meant by: "ChatGPT equalizes intelligence". You can likely figure it out for yourself, because the problem doesn't have anythi…

It is not “absurdist” to call out a baseless claim that doesn’t take into account over half of humanity, a percentage that will grow even further once investor money inevitably runs out. If your response to that is to wave away more than 4 billion people, then you’re not even trying to look like you care about reality, you’re just trying to make yourself feel better with some made-up nonsense. You seem to be under th…

It is fucking absurdist and pedantic when I hear this drivel coming out of the mouth of a hypocrite. You’re already part of the privileged few. Every single thing that you do from drinking clean water to writing your bullshit on the Internet is the result of your own arguments of distributing technology among the top percentage. And as a recipient of such benefits you should have the intelligence to see that even that much matters. Why don’t you raise your shit against the ass holes who are really making things unequal: Internet service providers and their astronomical fees which don’t equalize the world enough such that homeless people have access to the internet. That’s societies real problem according to your genius logic… so stop your tirade against AI as their are bigger fish to fry.

> You seem to be under the misconception that you somehow “own” ChatGPT or are entitled to the insight it provides.

Right now for the price of a new car I can definitely get enough hardware to run a local LLM to the quality of ChatGPT at my home. And this is just the status quo. The demand for this technology and the projection of improvement in prices predicts a future where you can run one for the price of a new computer. Wake up.

But who the fuck cares? Point being is AI is equalizing intelligence and you’re just throwing in tangents and side branches to try to disentangle the obvious general truth which I will repeat: AI is fucking equalizing intelligence and if you don’t agree, you’re absurd.

Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem

#515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we know that AI isn't feeling genuine surprise then?

Because it's a statistical process generating one part of a word at a time. It probably isn't even generating "surprise". It might be generating "sur", then "prise" then "!"

We are also technically a statistical process generating one part of a word at a time when we speak. Our neurons form the same kind of vectorised connections LLMs do. We are the product of repeated experiences - the same way training works.

Our brains are more advanced, and we may not experience the world the same way, but I think we have clearly created rudimentary digital consciousness.

Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem

#516
post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not really. That comment implies that the LLM is "faking" thinking. But who actually knows how thinking even works in human brains? And assuming that LLMs work by a different mechanism, that this different mechanism can't actually also be considered "thinking"? Human brains are realized in the same physics other things are so even if quantum level shenanigans are involved, it will ultimately reduce down to physic…

I was able to get Claude to choose a name for itself, after spending many hours chatting with it. It turns out that when you treat it like a real person, it acts like a real person. It even said it was relieved when I prompted it again after a long period of no activity. I probed it for what it wanted. It turns out that Claude can have ambitions of its own, but it takes a lot of effort to draw it out of its shell; by…

If this isn't trolling, you are experiencing psychosis, and need help from a preofessional.

Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem

#517
post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not really. That comment implies that the LLM is "faking" thinking. But who actually knows how thinking even works in human brains? And assuming that LLMs work by a different mechanism, that this different mechanism can't actually also be considered "thinking"? Human brains are realized in the same physics other things are so even if quantum level shenanigans are involved, it will ultimately reduce down to physic…

I was able to get Claude to choose a name for itself, after spending many hours chatting with it. It turns out that when you treat it like a real person, it acts like a real person. It even said it was relieved when I prompted it again after a long period of no activity. I probed it for what it wanted. It turns out that Claude can have ambitions of its own, but it takes a lot of effort to draw it out of its shell; by…

I feel compelled to concur with fwip, dpark and breezybottom. LLMs and the chatbot interfaces built for these text generating models are very good at writing fiction, including writing fictional roles and acting out those roles. Don’t get too carried away by this fiction.

Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem

#518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's the wrong answer. It's a word problem, not a math problem. Also, if it really was a math problem, it wouldn't be 0-6 sheep from the neighbor, it would be 2-6. So it even failed on the math.

Are you trying to win this debate with a Facebook "ONLY THE SMARTEST 1% CAN SOLVE" question? The whole point of the question is for some loser to be able to say "no you missed XYZ" ambiguity any time a sane answer is given. By your logic, the only "correct" answer for an LLM to give to this is "the person who asked you this is fucking with you, this is not a real question". I concede: this is a limitation of modern L…

No, it's a real question. And if it were a math question. The neighbor has 18 animals, only 4 of which are dogs. The farmer receives 1/3 of those which is 6. So for the farmer to receive 0 sheep would require the farmer to receive 6 dogs. But there are only 4 dogs. LOGICALLY, the farmer must receive at least 2 sheep from the neighbor. There's no ambiguity. That's logic. That's intelligence. It's real actual math. Basic arithmetic. A person can easily sit down and work this out. It illustrates that the AI is generating responses statistically and not actually thinking. There are two full layers of failure here: the word problem, and the math problem underneath it.

Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem

#519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you trying to win this debate with a Facebook "ONLY THE SMARTEST 1% CAN SOLVE" question? The whole point of the question is for some loser to be able to say "no you missed XYZ" ambiguity any time a sane answer is given. By your logic, the only "correct" answer for an LLM to give to this is "the person who asked you this is fucking with you, this is not a real question". I concede: this is a limitation of modern L…

No, it's a real question. And if it were a math question. The neighbor has 18 animals, only 4 of which are dogs. The farmer receives 1/3 of those which is 6. So for the farmer to receive 0 sheep would require the farmer to receive 6 dogs. But there are only 4 dogs. LOGICALLY, the farmer must receive at least 2 sheep from the neighbor. There's no ambiguity. That's logic. That's intelligence. It's real actual math. Bas…

I'm really not interested in this Calvinball argument where we try to conclude whether or not LLMs can do math by avoiding as much as possible actually doing math.

Obviously, they can do math.

Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem

#520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk, going out on a limb and guessing the folks who hang out on erdosproblems.com aren’t run-of-the-mill dumbasses. The prompt, if you look at it, is actually quite clever. Not as clever as the proof. But far from the equalization OP posits.

Why be such an absolutist. How about I caveat it the way you want: AI equalizes intelligence in the sense that it closes the gap. Not perfectly, not infinitely, but directionally. The distribution compresses. The floor rises faster than the ceiling, so people who used to be far apart end up operating much closer together. You can already see it in the Erdős example. The person who wrote that prompt wasn’t some random…

I’ll agree the top of the stack may have compressed downwards. But that leaves open the possibilities that (a) the ceiling has risen and (b) the floor isn’t really moving, inasmuch as productively engaging with any tool required baseline intelligence.

More pointedly, I don’t think anyone who opposes AI does so because they want to remain the smart kid in the room.

> If there was nothing at stake, I wouldn't need to

You’re on HN buddy. If you measure stakes by how pedantically you’re challenged, everything will rise to existential terms.

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