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Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research

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Re: Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ChatGPT is a great way to delve into new topics Like bears in space? ))) seems like a great way to delve into known topics so that you are able to catch it when it starts to confidently and plausibly hallucinate

And we should blindly trust anything you read on the internet written by a real person? It's still valuable as a "search engine" with a different interface, especially if you can describe the problem but don't know the words to search for. For me that's a common issue when jumping into a new space.

no, you should not blindly trust anything you read on the internet, why did you think that? If anything, ChatGPT is actually doubling down on this "i'm the single authority" mode.

google, while far from perfection, gives me a selection of links that i can scan and see for myself which one of them makes more sense.

even looking for something stupid and potentially spammy like "chili soup recipe", i learned there are different opinions on how to make it, and i learned that apparently in Texas using beans is considered somewhat of a blasphemy. GPT did not mention any of that, just authoritatively barfed out one random recipe without any nuance or even any sources at all.

Re: Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried two of the "failure mode" examples given: The Russian bears in space, and walking across a river with an average depth of 3 feet. The examples fail in GPT-3.5 while GPT-4 gives the "correct" response. The article is already out of date.

The article was out of date when it was published on March 19. GPT-4 was released on March 14.

Yes, that was my point.

Re: Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research

#153
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the biggest problems in AI for the last 60 years is the grounding problem. The ability of a model to be rooted in objective reality. In other words, for one of these LLMs to understand when they are being accurate vs hallucinating. None of the current crop of LLMs has come close to solving this problem. On the contrary, they make the problem blatantly obvious. No LLMs will achieve AGI until this is solved suff…

A LANGUAGE model cannot solve this because truth and fiction is not a property of LANGUAGE

Congratulations. You figured out half the hype. The other half involves confusing a sigmoid curve with an exponential one.

Re: Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ChatGPT is a great way to delve into new topics Like bears in space? ))) seems like a great way to delve into known topics so that you are able to catch it when it starts to confidently and plausibly hallucinate

Basically I described the problem I am trying to solve; I ask it to behave as a seasoned professor of comp sci or w/e depending on my hunch, we go back and forth where I ask questions, add constraints to the system, and in turn it gives me ideas into what I should look into more. It's the Socratic method on steroids, where the student is probing a possibly fallible professor with the library of Alexandria at their ha…

Who tf downvotes something like this?

By all means, HN has lost it.

Re: Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research

#155
post #14

The first steam engines were also written off as being less powerful than a horse. The first electric motors were written off as being less powerful than steam engines. So it goes. I think both of these views can be true at the same time: ChatGPT (or, LLMs really) are revolutionary and they won't revolutionize the world the way technologists/researchers say. Early adopters will use the technology and do amazing thing…

There's a strong argument for its actual merits but this particular line of argument isn't convincing. > The first steam engines were also written off as being less powerful than a horse. > The first electric motors were written off as being less powerful than steam engines And the first Segways were written off, the first NFTs were written off, etc. (in fact, we've seen this same argument for blockchains changing ev…

The first segways were written off... and now you have electric scooters on demand on every city of the planet.

The first NFTs were written off... by you and other writter-offers. If you didn't write them off back then and minted some you'd have made a pretty penny by now.

I don't know, I'm not sure those examples strengthen your case.

Re: Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a strong argument for its actual merits but this particular line of argument isn't convincing. > The first steam engines were also written off as being less powerful than a horse. > The first electric motors were written off as being less powerful than steam engines And the first Segways were written off, the first NFTs were written off, etc. (in fact, we've seen this same argument for blockchains changing ev…

The first segways were written off... and now you have electric scooters on demand on every city of the planet. The first NFTs were written off... by you and other writter-offers. If you didn't write them off back then and minted some you'd have made a pretty penny by now. I don't know, I'm not sure those examples strengthen your case.

Electric scooters and Segways are hardly the same thing. Plus, I doubt the Segway came before either the electric scooter(and electric bike).

And that some people made money on NFTs doesn't make them useful. For a brief moment, a lot of people got scammed so others could prosper. Hardly a world changing technology(at least not for the better)

Re: Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about being deterministic . It's about the LLM itself having any way to determine whether what it says is true .

Not understanding why this is an issue for LLMs but not humans. This is a simple commercial decision to make governed by three factors. 1. What is the cost of making an error? 2. What is the cost of the human doing the work? 3. What is the likelihood of the human making an error? It's just evaluating how much more likely AI is to make an error than a human, by the cost of that error, set against the savings by using…

> Not understanding why this is an issue for LLMs but not humans.

Because humans have the capability to understand where their information comes from, and thus give enough meta-information to evaluate an accuracy rating, even if not all of them are good at it all the time.

I understand that there has been some effort to build this capability into LLMs, and that it works a little bit for some of them, but it is not something that most of them are fundamentally capable of.

Re: Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research

#158

I think a lot of people on here are for some reason believers in the idea that if a technology has detractors, then it must be another case of the steam engine, human flight, or some other technology that had doubters before completely revolutionizing our world. In reality, there is no such law of the universe that says that some technology will be wildly successful because it is heavily controversial, and, in some c…

Maybe but it's seemed obvious for decades that AI will be a revolutionary thing. Not so for web3 etc.

Re: Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research

#159
post #14

The first steam engines were also written off as being less powerful than a horse. The first electric motors were written off as being less powerful than steam engines. So it goes. I think both of these views can be true at the same time: ChatGPT (or, LLMs really) are revolutionary and they won't revolutionize the world the way technologists/researchers say. Early adopters will use the technology and do amazing thing…

> The first steam engines were also written off as being less powerful than a horse.

Which steam engine do you mean and do you have a citation for this comment? The first industrial steam engines were based on the Newcomen design and were used to pump water out of mines. Their big drawback was efficiency, not power. They were only economical in coal mines, which had fuel immediately available at near zero cost.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomen_atmospheric_engine

Re: Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article was out of date when it was published on March 19. GPT-4 was released on March 14.

Yes, that was my point.

If that was your point, then you expressed it poorly. You wrote: "The article is already out of date." (emphasis added). That implies that the article was out of date as of the time you wrote your comment, or at some unspecified point prior to that, but, in fact a stronger and more specific claim is true, namely, that the article was out of date as of the time of its publication, approximately 2 months ago.
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