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The Sell ∀ ∃ as ∃ ∀ Scam

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Re: The Sell ∀ ∃ as ∃ ∀ Scam

#141

Post by analog31 »

coliveira wrote: post #136
itsthecourier wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I swear to God, I have suffered more playing cello than dealing with pointers in C

Playing Cello is a profession, not a Hobby. Nobody wakes up in the morning thinking: I need to play some Cello. It is only needed as part of an orchestra. Whatever else you learned about this is mostly an invention of the media.

What media? Any references?

Amateur musicians outnumber professionals, on most instruments. There are entire amateur orchestras.

I'm am amateur cellist. I took cello lessons as a kid, and played in a community orchestra. I also played in a lot of smaller (so called "chamber") ensembles, and learned some solo cello pieces. I never expected to pursue cello as a career.

At the start of the pandemic, I got out my old student cello and started playing it again, strictly for my own pleasure. I will never get good enough to play classical music for money. I have found some jam sessions where my cello is welcome among folk musicians, and have also begun learning to play jazz on the cello.

It sure is a hobby, but one that's not for everybody. Instant gratification? Forget it. Endless struggle? You bet. Most amateur cellists learned the instrument as kids, but that still accounts for a lot of people.

Re: The Sell ∀ ∃ as ∃ ∀ Scam

#142

Post by stametseater »

maxbond wrote: post #106
stametseater wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowledge is awareness of information. "Awareness" is a quagmire because a lot of people believe that 'true' awareness requires possessing a sort of soul which machines can't possess. I think the important part is information, the matter of 'awareness' can simply be ignored as a philosophical/religious disagreement which will never be resolved. What's important is: Does the system contain information? Can it reliably…

"Awareness of information" describes belief. Knowledge is justified, true belief (you can believe things you don't actually know/don't have justification for, and you can be made aware of information you don't believe). If you're dismissive of philosophy and then ask epistemological questions, you'll miss out on a lot of good pondering people have done on the subject, and end up reinventing some of it without encount…

1. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/knowledge

2. "Belief" isn't any less of a quagmire than "awareness." Materialists and dualists will never agree on whether machines can have 'belief' or 'awareness', so discussions between the two will always be fruitless.

Re: The Sell ∀ ∃ as ∃ ∀ Scam

#143

Post by maxbond »

stametseater wrote: post #142
maxbond wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Awareness of information" describes belief. Knowledge is justified, true belief (you can believe things you don't actually know/don't have justification for, and you can be made aware of information you don't believe). If you're dismissive of philosophy and then ask epistemological questions, you'll miss out on a lot of good pondering people have done on the subject, and end up reinventing some of it without encount…

1. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/knowledge 2. "Belief" isn't any less of a quagmire than "awareness." Materialists and dualists will never agree on whether machines can have 'belief' or 'awareness', so discussions between the two will always be fruitless.

If you're asking explicitly epistemogical questions, knowledge as in "do you have knowledge of the events of last night" is probably not the definition you want. You probably want want the definition as in, "what is knowledge, what do I know, and how do I know it?" (Note the definition I used is also there.)

You're asking questions and then declaring the answers impossible to determine, I don't really see the point. You don't really avoid the question of belief in the line of questioning you propose. It just gets implicitly shifted into the observer.

Personally I don't care about whether this paradigm will ever reconcile with that one, I care about which I think is most appropriate to a given problem space.

Re: The Sell ∀ ∃ as ∃ ∀ Scam

#144

Post by stametseater »

maxbond wrote: post #143
stametseater wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/knowledge 2. "Belief" isn't any less of a quagmire than "awareness." Materialists and dualists will never agree on whether machines can have 'belief' or 'awareness', so discussions between the two will always be fruitless.

If you're asking explicitly epistemogical questions, knowledge as in "do you have knowledge of the events of last night" is probably not the definition you want. You probably want want the definition as in, "what is knowledge, what do I know, and how do I know it?" (Note the definition I used is also there.) You're asking questions and then declaring the answers impossible to determine, I don't really see the point.…

> You're asking questions and then declaring the answers impossible to determine

If you mean to say that I've asked whether machines can know or believe, you're wrong. I have not asked whether it's possible for machines to 'know' or 'believe'. What I have asserted, not asked, is these questions are a waste of your time, because the divide between materialists and duelists will never be bridged. The the root of the disagreement is an irreparable philosophical divide, essentially religious disagreement.

To reiterate for clarity, these are the questions which I said are relevant: "Does the system contain information? Can it reliably convey that information? In which ways can it manipulate that information?" I haven't declared these questions impossible to answer. On the contrary, these are questions for engineers, not philosophers or theologians. They are mundane, practical questions:

The system is a spreadsheet: Does it contain information? Yes, assuming it isn't blank. Even a fraudulent spreadsheet contains information, false as it my be. Can it convey that information? Yes, given appropriate spreadsheet software and a user who knows how to use it. Can it manipulate that information? Certainly, a spreadsheet can sort, sum, etc.

The system is an AI: Can it contain information? Yes, plenty of information is fed into them during training. Can it reliably convey that information? That depends on the degree of reliability you desire. Can it manipulate that information? Yes, numerous kinds of manipulations have been demonstrated. The reliability of information conveyance and the manner of manipulations which are possible are important questions for any engineer who is thinking about creating or employing such a system. The answers to these questions are not impossible to determine.

But can an AI "know" things? Pointless question, like asking if a submarine can "swim". Important questions about submarines include: How deep can it go? How fast can it go? How quiet is it? These are questions for which empirical answers can be determined. Whether a submarine can "swim" is a pointless question, all it does is interrogate how much anthropocentric baggage the word "swim" has. Maybe that's an interesting question to linguists, poets or philosophers, but it isn't an important question to engineers trying to solve a real problems.

I know swimming submarines are cliche so here's another: Can a seat-belt hug you? That's a stupid question for poets or linguists who want to interrogate the anthropocentric implications of the word 'hug'. Can a seat-belt restrain you? That's a useful question for automotive engineers who want to build a car.

Re: The Sell ∀ ∃ as ∃ ∀ Scam

#145

Post by val314159 »

gaganyaan wrote: post #139
val314159 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the card catalog down at the local library is sentient? Maybe that's not enough data, though! Is the card catalog for NY Public Library sentient? Maybe that's still too local. Is Google sentient? Everyone with a clue would admit these are all examples of "knowledge" It's the same parlor trick, with fancier algos. It's not intelligence. It won't produce a human-level AI. Period.

It's not the amount of data, it's what it does with that data. Try typing "Tell me a story about a unicorn arguing with people on Hacker News" into a card catalog and tell me how good it is at storytelling. Typing that into GPT-4 might not win any literary awards, but it obviously understands what you meant and does a passable job.

But they had AIs that generated stories in the 1960s! Were those "intelligent"? Some people back then said they were.

Re: The Sell ∀ ∃ as ∃ ∀ Scam

#146

Post by CapsAdmin »

narag wrote: post #93
CapsAdmin wrote: post #82

Are general purpose tools scams? An operating system does many things. A general purpose language when contrasted with a domain specific language. A human programmer thinking that they're a wizard that can solve all problems. However I get the sentiment I think, it's a little bit like snake oil and alternative medicine. They promise to solve all your problems. What's interesting to think about is who it is to "blame"…

Are general purpose tools scams? No. But I'm old enough to remember how the people that bought the first IBM PCs complained that the computers were useless. Of course they needed much more than the very expensive machines: software, training, peripherals, backups... They were scammed by the vendors, even if the product was not a scam.

In my experience I've felt that sales people tend to act like vendors in your anecdote, just within a single company.

Re: The Sell ∀ ∃ as ∃ ∀ Scam

#147

Post by alexvoda »

crdrost wrote: post #110
tobyjsullivan wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is more nuanced. Importantly, the article is not making a judgement on the value of GPT, generally (at least not explicitly). It is arguing against one specific narrative. That narrative goes like this: Step 1: give me a specific task T from a class of tasks C. Step 2: I’ll show you that I can formulate a prompt to solve task T. Step 3: therefore, if you engineer prompts well enough, you can find a singl…

More formally, the system specifies a set S of predicates that it can evaluate based on configurations (prompts etc) applied to the general method. You have a particular predicate p that you want to evaluate, in some larger space of “appropriate” predicates P, then usually machine learning gives you some claim that, ∀p in P. ∃s in S. p(x) → s(x) Call this last bit “weak prediction,” p is not easily computable or else…

This reminds me about issues raised by Sabine Hossenfelder with regards to grand unified theories or with theories of everything or string theory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu4mH3Hmw2o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdu9KvLxHFg

Re: The Sell ∀ ∃ as ∃ ∀ Scam

#148

Post by eska »

PaulHoule wrote: post #50

ChatGPT itself is in on the scam . The way i think about it is that ChatGPT is already superhuman at bullshitting, many people want to give it credit for being more capable than it really is. it is interesting to postulate if it is the “most likely word” heuristic that leads to this behavior (e.g. never says anything that startles people) or HFRL training systematically teaching it to say what people want to hear.

many people want to give it credit for being more capable than it really is

I believe you’re referring to the Barnum Effect

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