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GPT3 Is Just Spicy Autocomplete

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Re: GPT3 Is Just Spicy Autocomplete

#11

Post by labrador »

I was watching "HyperNormalisation" by Adam Curtis for the second time. In his segment on Eliza, an early example of a chat bot, I realized that Curtis makes a mistake in his interpretation of Eliza. For Curtis it's narcissism that makes Eliza attractive. Curtis levels the charge that Westerners are individualistic and self-centered often.

But when an interview with the creator Joseph Weizenbaum is shown starting at 01hr:22min, he never says that. He relates how his secretary took to it, and even though she knew it was a primitive computer program, she wanted some privacy while she used it. Weizenbaum was puzzled by that, but then the secretary (or possibly another woman) says Eliza doesn't judge me and it doesn't try to have sex with me.

What jumped out at me was that Weizenbaum's secretary was using Eliza as a thinking tool to clarify her thoughts. Most high school graduates in America don't learn critical thinking skills as far as I can tell. Eliza is a useful tool because it encourages critical thinking and second order thinking by asking questions and reflecting back answers and asking questions in another way. The secretary didn't want to use Eliza because she was a narcissist, she wanted to talk through some sensitive issues with what she knew was a dumb program so she could try and resolve them.

That's how I feel about ChatGPT so far. It's a great thinking tool. Someone to bounce ideas around with. Of course, I know it's a dumb computer program and it makes mistakes, but it's still a cool new tool to have in the toolbox.

HyperNormalisation by Adam Curtis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS_c2qqA-6Y

Eliza

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA

Re: GPT3 Is Just Spicy Autocomplete

#12

Post by solomania9 »

_huayra_ wrote: post #7

I'm getting pretty tired of these posts dunking on ChatGPT making it to HN. Yes, we know if you try to see if it is "smart", it'll fall down. It's pretty easy to show how silly it is compared to things a human could do, etc. Haha, robot do the mistake again! This is the equivalent of someone Googling something back in 2000 and saying "wow this is just a joke because I searched for 'cat' and got a few dog pics. It'll…

Appreciate the insight. And I agree it's incredibly useful - I use it hundreds of times a day too! I guess my point (which maybe I didn't make clear in the post) is that it's just a tool and shouldn't be viewed with the mystique that some people ascribe to it.

Re: GPT3 Is Just Spicy Autocomplete

#13

Post by [deleted] »

_huayra_ wrote: post #7

I'm getting pretty tired of these posts dunking on ChatGPT making it to HN. Yes, we know if you try to see if it is "smart", it'll fall down. It's pretty easy to show how silly it is compared to things a human could do, etc. Haha, robot do the mistake again! This is the equivalent of someone Googling something back in 2000 and saying "wow this is just a joke because I searched for 'cat' and got a few dog pics. It'll…

[deleted]

Re: GPT3 Is Just Spicy Autocomplete

#14

Post by solomania9 »

labrador wrote: post #11

I was watching "HyperNormalisation" by Adam Curtis for the second time. In his segment on Eliza, an early example of a chat bot, I realized that Curtis makes a mistake in his interpretation of Eliza. For Curtis it's narcissism that makes Eliza attractive. Curtis levels the charge that Westerners are individualistic and self-centered often. But when an interview with the creator Joseph Weizenbaum is shown starting at…

Great point. I agree it's an amazing thinking tool and has helped me a lot in that regard.

If you haven't already seen this post, it echoes a lot of what you're describing: https://every.to/chain-of-thought/gpt-3-is-the-best-journal-...

Re: GPT3 Is Just Spicy Autocomplete

#15

Post by msla »

labrador wrote: post #11

I was watching "HyperNormalisation" by Adam Curtis for the second time. In his segment on Eliza, an early example of a chat bot, I realized that Curtis makes a mistake in his interpretation of Eliza. For Curtis it's narcissism that makes Eliza attractive. Curtis levels the charge that Westerners are individualistic and self-centered often. But when an interview with the creator Joseph Weizenbaum is shown starting at…

> Curtis levels the charge that Westerners are individualistic and self-centered often.

Thinking you can classify whole groups of people as if they were insects is a horrible mental handicap.

Re: GPT3 Is Just Spicy Autocomplete

#17

Post by jmmcd »

subeadia wrote: post #6

Oh, joy, another completely unoriginal contribution to the GPT-3 discourse adding absolutely nothing of value. I particularly dislike the endorsement of Gary Marcus as an authority on ML/AI when he has only spread skepticism and FUD.

Marcus has made some very good contributions, including both original research and a good exposition/popularisation of a fairly mainstream skeptical view.

Re: GPT3 Is Just Spicy Autocomplete

#18

Post by sakopov »

I know nothing about ML and AI and what GPT3 does looks absolutely magical to me. It helped me write unit tests the other day and the day before it generated a migration script for a new feature I was working on. A week earlier it helped me improve a letter I was writing to HOA to get some stuff fixed at the house. So all these posts dumping on GPT3 seem very unnecessary. What it does under the covers might not be all that impressive to a trained eye, but to a layperson like me it is by far the first ML model which has made significant contributions to my daily tasks.

Re: GPT3 Is Just Spicy Autocomplete

#19

Post by nilsbunger »

if you think about it, all humans are just a spicy autocomplete (per the article):

* we regurgitate bullshit we heard

* we aren’t very smart

* we are a threat to democracy by spreading misinformation

It’s kind of true too. All of us take what we’ve learned (our input) and synthesize new things from it (our output). That’s autocomplete

Re: GPT3 Is Just Spicy Autocomplete

#20

Post by labrador »

solomania9 wrote: post #14
labrador wrote: post #11

I was watching "HyperNormalisation" by Adam Curtis for the second time. In his segment on Eliza, an early example of a chat bot, I realized that Curtis makes a mistake in his interpretation of Eliza. For Curtis it's narcissism that makes Eliza attractive. Curtis levels the charge that Westerners are individualistic and self-centered often. But when an interview with the creator Joseph Weizenbaum is shown starting at…

Great point. I agree it's an amazing thinking tool and has helped me a lot in that regard. If you haven't already seen this post, it echoes a lot of what you're describing: https://every.to/chain-of-thought/gpt-3-is-the-best-journal-...

Thanks for the link. I've been journaling for over 20 years. I want to feed my writings into a LLM because I know I've come up with some good answers for personal issues before, but they are buried in my writings. It would be great to pull out a summary of my thinking about some recurring issue.

This is especially true because I'm a senior citizen and have noticed a decline in my memory.

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