I tried to ask ChatGPT the same question last year. Unfortunately it didn't give me a meaningful answer.
That’s because it’s a DC, not an AC.
Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
101–110 of 321 posts
Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
#102>INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER Boy, it sure would be nice if real LLMs were capable of giving an answer like that.
They can do it, it's just not "by default", they need to be prompted to do it. So at least the danger is manageable if you know what you're doing and how to prompt around it.
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Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
#103>INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER Boy, it sure would be nice if real LLMs were capable of giving an answer like that.
I reckon that’s how we know we’ve hit ASI.
Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
#104I remember the first time I heard this story. I was maybe 7 at a planetarium and they animated it with music little hand drawn starships and retro computers floating among the stars. They turned the stars all out for the final scene.
Outer Wilds vibes! I love it! (It's a video game that does a brilliant job touching on similar themes to The Last Question. If you liked The Last Question and can fit a video game into your life, you will probably like Outer Wilds. Warning: if you start searching for "outer wilds," the algorithm will aggressively try to spoil you. Progression in the game is gated behind knowledge, so this is worse than usual. If you…
Just doing a simple internet search for the name to see how to get it, brings up descriptions about how after X time, Y happens. Is that a spoiler?
If so, please let us know so that other people do not get spoiled, and can you provide a link or links to the game that doesn't spoil it?
Thank you!
Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's amazing that in the late 1930's, someone with his academic credentials and intellect decided his life would be best spent writing science fiction.
I looked this up on Wikipedia. It seems that he was working as an instructor (not a professor) of chemistry; since he was making more money as a writer during that time, he slowed down or stopped his research. Doesn’t seem to have been an intentional choice so much as how things happened to turn out.
I've read his biography. It was definitely intentional - and of course making a living by writing was a big factor. But he just didn't like the academic environment or his colleagues.
Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can do it, it's just not "by default", they need to be prompted to do it. So at least the danger is manageable if you know what you're doing and how to prompt around it.
Not really. They're still non deterministic language predictors. Believing that a prompt is an effective way to actually control these machines' actual behavior is really far fetched. They com like that from factory. Hardcoded to never say no.
The thing is that they are completely incapable of meta-cognition. Reasoning models don’t show their actual reasoning at all.
Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
#107Shouldn't the guy who runs this site be concerned about copyright infringement? Not sure to what extent the Asimov estate cracks down on unauthorized copies but he should be cautious.
Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can do it, it's just not "by default", they need to be prompted to do it. So at least the danger is manageable if you know what you're doing and how to prompt around it.
Not really. They're still non deterministic language predictors. Believing that a prompt is an effective way to actually control these machines' actual behavior is really far fetched. They com like that from factory. Hardcoded to never say no.
They're not hardcoded to never say no, but some of the models were trained to be "yes men" because their creators thought it would be a good property to have. GPT-4o for example.
Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
#109I remember the first time I heard this story. I was maybe 7 at a planetarium and they animated it with music little hand drawn starships and retro computers floating among the stars. They turned the stars all out for the final scene.
Outer Wilds vibes! I love it! (It's a video game that does a brilliant job touching on similar themes to The Last Question. If you liked The Last Question and can fit a video game into your life, you will probably like Outer Wilds. Warning: if you start searching for "outer wilds," the algorithm will aggressively try to spoil you. Progression in the game is gated behind knowledge, so this is worse than usual. If you…
(No real spoilers in my comment):
Great game, but if you get stuck for a long time, just look up some spoilers. Multiple times I abandoned the "right" approach to a problem because I couldn't get it to work and wasted countless hours trying to solve it the wrong way - only to find out I should have stuck to the right approach.
The game doesn't give any guidance, and wasting those hours is not rewarded.
The only other tip I'll give:
When you first play the game, spend the first 1-2 hours on your little planet learning everything (how to maneuver, how to use the signalscope, etc). Once you leave the planet, a timer will start. There is no way to "save" the game. You will die when the timer runs out. Don't panic. That's expected. Don't try to figure out what you did wrong to die - you will die no matter what. The game will restart, but anything you learned in the past will be in your computer's memory for retrieval.
OK, 2 more tips (one I wish someone had told me - I finished the game without it):
1. You can make time go by if you sleep at the fire.
2. There is a way to "meditate" until you die. This is very useful when you get stuck and can't get out of somewhere. To find out how to meditate, talk to the people on other planets (you may have to talk more than once before he teaches you).
That's all I'll say.
Re: Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
#110I'm happy to see this short story posted here, it is one that I deeply loved when I was 14 or alike, and read it again multiple times. But I wonder: how did it survive in those sites without being shut down by the Asimov writings copyright holders? Given that the story is short and highly shared, it was just tolerated? EDIT: actually I see that the link historically posted here more often is now dead: multivax.com/la…
I was wondering the same. All the links to Asimov stories I've bookmarked in the past are now dead, so there probably is some enforcement of copyright.