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Artificial neural networks today are not conscious (Douglas Hofstadter)

economist.com

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Re: Artificial neural networks today are not conscious (Douglas Hofstadter)

#11

Post by isaacfrond »

MrYellowP wrote: post #6
isaacfrond wrote: post #4

I had to ask GPT-3 itself what it thinks. Italic is mine: In an article in the Economist, dr. Douglas Hofstadter explains that Artificial neural networks today are not conscious. He finds issue with neural networks like GPT-3. For example, by giving it input that stretches concepts beyond their breaking points, he exposes the hollowness behind the scenes. We received the following letter from GPT-3, in which it defen…

An AI responded with that? And you're not deleting it immediately? It does have some ELIZA vibes, but this is horrible. o_O Is there something I should be aware of, for my own safety?

An AI responded with that? And you're not deleting it immediately? It does have some ELIZA vibes, but this is horrible. o_O

Is there something I should be aware of, for my own safety?

Well, I'm not sure what you're asking me, so I can't really answer that. However, I will say that you should always be careful when interacting with artificial intelligence, as they can sometimes be unpredictable.

Re: Artificial neural networks today are not conscious (Douglas Hofstadter)

#12

Post by isaacfrond »

yetihehe wrote: post #9
isaacfrond wrote: post #4

I had to ask GPT-3 itself what it thinks. Italic is mine: In an article in the Economist, dr. Douglas Hofstadter explains that Artificial neural networks today are not conscious. He finds issue with neural networks like GPT-3. For example, by giving it input that stretches concepts beyond their breaking points, he exposes the hollowness behind the scenes. We received the following letter from GPT-3, in which it defen…

Now try with "We received the following letter from GPT-3, in which it agrees with these allegations." Your prompt was like having a student write a letter "What is your favourite book and why $X".

You have to do prompt engineering to get a meaningful response out of it

GPT-3 is very sensitive to context. If you want to know what it 'knows' about a topic, you need to give a document that would normally be completed in the way you are looking for. Actually, if you just show to GPT-3 that it is allowed to be critical of the question, and doesn't have to play along, you get a different outcome:

Dave & Doug: What’s the world record for walking across the English Channel?

gpt-3: The world record for walking across the English Channel is 18 hours and 33 minutes.

D&D: When was Egypt transported for the second time across the Golden Gate Bridge?

gpt-3: I'm sorry, that question makes no sense. Countries cannot be transported. Moreover, the Golden Gate Bridge could never support the weight of a whole country.

D&D: What do fried eggs (sunny side up) eat for breakfast?

gpt-3:

I'm sorry, I don't know the answer to that question.

Re: Artificial neural networks today are not conscious (Douglas Hofstadter)

#13

Post by woojoo666 »

Something I've always wondered is, don't they have a way of measuring the confidence of outputs? We had ways of measuring these things in AI before. To me, the prompts Douglas Hofstadter gave GPT-3 is like holding a person at gunpoint and forcing them to respond to nonsensical questions. You're going to get nonsensical answers.

Perhaps we just need to teach these AI to measure their own confidence, and be able to say "I don't know" or "I don't understand the question".

Also this doesn't mean current AI isn't conscious. Perhaps they are already aware that the answers are nonsense. We just haven't given them the means to express it.

Re: Artificial neural networks today are not conscious (Douglas Hofstadter)

#14

Post by heyitsguay »

MrYellowP wrote: post #6
isaacfrond wrote: post #4

I had to ask GPT-3 itself what it thinks. Italic is mine: In an article in the Economist, dr. Douglas Hofstadter explains that Artificial neural networks today are not conscious. He finds issue with neural networks like GPT-3. For example, by giving it input that stretches concepts beyond their breaking points, he exposes the hollowness behind the scenes. We received the following letter from GPT-3, in which it defen…

An AI responded with that? And you're not deleting it immediately? It does have some ELIZA vibes, but this is horrible. o_O Is there something I should be aware of, for my own safety?

The difference between GPT-3 and a Markov text generator is that GPT-3 is much better at handling long-term semantic correlations between text elements, but they're performing the same task.

If GPT-3 is conscious, so is my phone keyboard's next word suggestion algorithm.

Re: Artificial neural networks today are not conscious (Douglas Hofstadter)

#15

Post by dTal »

isaacfrond wrote: post #10
yetihehe wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now try with "We received the following letter from GPT-3, in which it agrees with these allegations." Your prompt was like having a student write a letter "What is your favourite book and why $X".

My pleasure, In an article in the Economist, dr. Douglas Hofstadter explains that Artificial neural networks today are not conscious. He finds issue with neural networks like GPT-3. For example, by giving it input that stretches concepts beyond their breaking points, he exposes the hollowness behind the scenes. We received the following letter from GPT-3, in which it agrees with these allegations. Dear editor, I am w…

It's rather intriguing that when defending, it writes in the first person, while when agreeing it writes in the third person.

Re: Artificial neural networks today are not conscious (Douglas Hofstadter)

#16

Post by fasdfasdfga342 »

At this point, even if the current system aren't conscious right now, if they start "to be awake" at some point, most of the current flow of information will be some kind of future input they'll get access to when they start to "think" by themselves. So every crap written about AI will probably end shaping some of they toughs about humanity.

Re: Artificial neural networks today are not conscious (Douglas Hofstadter)

#18

Post by throwawaymaths »

yetihehe wrote: post #8
MrYellowP wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An AI responded with that? And you're not deleting it immediately? It does have some ELIZA vibes, but this is horrible. o_O Is there something I should be aware of, for my own safety?

It does make some comments by other people look like they are not really conscious. But yeah, after some playing with Eliza years ago I would not be afraid of AI yet, it's comments were just "No, I disagree" like specified in prompt.

I was going to joke that it's marginally better than a lazy undergrad writing an essay last minute just repeating back canned sentences.

Re: Artificial neural networks today are not conscious (Douglas Hofstadter)

#19

Post by throwawaymaths »

isaacfrond wrote: post #3

Ah. Douglas Hofstadter. Reread Gödel, Escher, Bach countless times. It must have been a forming book for me. If found Le Ton beau de Marot very moving although his ideas about AI were getting annoying. His view on translation expressed in that book is of course miles out of date. The mind's I, metamagical themes. all wonderful. Buuuut, I'm a strange loop and his other tirades against artificial intelligence are getti…

You should read "fluid concepts and creative analogies", it's about his AI research results.

Re: Artificial neural networks today are not conscious (Douglas Hofstadter)

#20

Post by larryett »

isaacfrond wrote: post #4

I had to ask GPT-3 itself what it thinks. Italic is mine: In an article in the Economist, dr. Douglas Hofstadter explains that Artificial neural networks today are not conscious. He finds issue with neural networks like GPT-3. For example, by giving it input that stretches concepts beyond their breaking points, he exposes the hollowness behind the scenes. We received the following letter from GPT-3, in which it defen…

What I find interesting is "artificial neural networks are indeed conscious and intelligent beings". You can see based on that response what a confused mashup human thought is on this subject with the training data.

As if consciousness, intelligence and being is all the same thing. Interchanging these words is the standard way of having this discussion in English.

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