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ChatGPT can now call Wolfram Alpha

writings.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: ChatGPT can now call Wolfram Alpha

#261

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Google earth was nice too, and street view. It was hard to believe at first. But Chrome was just a re-hash of firefox, nothing exciting there.

No, Chrome was a revelation when it came out. It was way faster than Firefox and it had many great features we now take for granted, like isolated tabs, popup blocking etc.

I remember everyone being excited about it suggesting searches on the address bar and suggesting websites in it you had never previously visited. Every other browser only autocompleted addresses you had visited before.

Re: ChatGPT can now call Wolfram Alpha

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I hope that's the case, it's also likely that it only seems that way because legal processes are slow especially when it comes to issues with almost no precident that fundementally challenge the assumptions of US law

As much as I would like to believe in the rule of law, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, and others are all going to be able to pour enough lobbying dollars on this to smother any regulations or findings of wrongdoing. AI killed copyright. For small companies and individuals, however, it’s still very much alive. Napster isn’t coming back.

Napster was obsoleted a very long time ago, it doesn't need to come back. "you wanna buy a tower records Eduardo?"

Re: ChatGPT can now call Wolfram Alpha

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand I used ChatGPT yesterday to explain something to me, it took about 2-3 minutes for the sentence to come back, I “Googled it” and found a better response in 2 seconds.

Meanwhile, for the use case I recently posted about, no amount of searching answers my inquiry, and ChatGPT can give me a good answer in seconds.

So yeah, moral of the story, depending on context YMMV?

Also call me old fashion but I still cross reference ChatGPTs response with other sources…if I care about accuracy and truth, which I basically always do.

Re: ChatGPT can now call Wolfram Alpha

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened in 2003?

Nothing particular. I just don't remember major successful and speedy product launches from Google after 2003. In that year, Google launched Google Maps, shocking the IT world for how effective AJAX can be, even though the tech itself was invented by MS. Maybe GMaps was so impressive that I forgot what other major launches were after that.

2007 saw Google Street View. Not a independent product, but a massive innovation even if it ended up a maps feature.

Same year they introduced Android, another decent success.

Re: ChatGPT can now call Wolfram Alpha

#265

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Imo there is less of a flywheel than it might seem. It's not like google search where a click of the 7th result is concrete feedback. ChatGPT doesn't get concrete feedback (it's not none ), and the amount of text available for training is crazy high. Additionally, the model doesn't learn from experience. If you use GPT-4 for 10 years, it will behave the same in the 10th year as the first. It's not getting better as y…

Sounds like you don't ever submit feedback. It's been there from day one and asks you to write why you didn't like the response. It would not shock me if they use gpt itself to read the feedback and provide a corrected response for the next versions training data. They could also log anytime some provides negative sentiment in the chat session for training signal.

Hence the "it's not none" part of the comment. There is nuance...

Re: ChatGPT can now call Wolfram Alpha

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google earth was nice too, and street view. It was hard to believe at first. But Chrome was just a re-hash of firefox, nothing exciting there.

No, Chrome was a revelation when it came out. It was way faster than Firefox and it had many great features we now take for granted, like isolated tabs, popup blocking etc.

isolated tabs and popup blocking (which firefox already had) were not ground breaking in any way. They were implementation details. By that point, Firefox was stable enough to not make a big difference if it was isolated tabs or not.

Re: ChatGPT can now call Wolfram Alpha

#267

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> I didn’t dismiss anything. I didn’t say anything was alarmist. Please don’t put words in my mouth. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35276186 "We’re still decades from AGI in my opinion, and the Chicken Little types ought to pace themselves, is all I’m saying. "

Oh— I see now you were making reference to a comment I made in reply to someone else. Yes, that was something that I said and I stand by it. I do not see any reason to be concerned about AI as an existential threat at the present moment. I have explained in my previous comment why I feel this is the case; if you feel that this view is recklessly dismissive and wish to change my mind, then I invite you to do the same.…

First off: labeling those you don't agree with as concern trolls is pretty rude, but since the HN etiquette requires looking for the best way to explain your comment I take it to be that you meant that as somewhere else rather than on HN. The number of concern trolls here is vanishingly low, most people on HN when they are concerned about something are so for good reasons even if those are not readily apparent to you without further engagement.

As for my own concerns: we have a bit of a problem with this AI thing and whether or not it is AGI or not is immaterial: I judge a technology by the effect that it is having. We have not yet made a dent in dealing with the weaponization of social media, are beginning to deal with the mobile revolution and the internet we now take for granted. Given that that took us a good 30 years to get to this point and that the current crop of AI tools is on the scene for a little over two years it looks as though there is still a very long way to go before we have internalized the changes this technology brings.

And it isn't exactly standing still either, it's a fast moving target that redefines what it is and isn't and what it can and can not do in the space of months. We are now well into what I would lightly characterize as an AI arms race and during arms races the rate of change can go through the roof compared to what it is was before. You only have to look at nature to see many such examples.

And already ChatGPT and similar tools by other vendors are changing the landscape in visible ways. It doesn't have to be an existential threat to be capable of profound and possibly negative social impact. And whether it is AGI or not is also not all that important.

Those cautioning some pacing of the release of these tools are not doing so because they are concern trolls but because they look a little further than just 'hey, cool new tech' to the effect this can have on our societies, some of which are already precariously balanced and have a whole pile of other stuff to deal with. Least of all the fall-out of COVID (which we definitely have not yet dealt with), an energy crisis and a war. And that's before we get into climate change.

Releasing a tool that could easily be weaponized by either side (or both) in such an environment could well have repercussions that we might be able to foresee and help us to decide on whether or not they are going to be beneficial or not. Like all tools this one is dual use, it may help or it may well hinder. Initially social media was a nice way to re-acquaint with family and friends, some of whom may have been lost or out of touch for ages. These days it is a weapon for mass manipulation on a scale that we have not seen before.

Something similar - or far worse - could easily happen with these new AI tools and personally I would like to have the previous crisis before me settled before trying on the next. There is a limit to how much of this stuff we can deal with at the same time and - again, just speaking for myself here but there may be others that feel similar - I am rapidly approaching the limit of how much of all this I can still comprehend and internalize and deal with while still being able to stay on top of it all. It is, in a single world, overwhelming and those that want to pretend it is all inconsequential are - in my opinion, once more, not thinking about it hard enough.

Re: ChatGPT can now call Wolfram Alpha

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Revisionist history. Firefox had a built-in pop up blocker in 2003, years before Chrome was even a seed in Sundar’s balls. I know because I used it. Chrome was and is a step back, foisted on people with dark patterns, back in the day having speed by sacrificing features like extensibility and customisability.

Now you're the one revising history. Separate processes per window and process isolation was a big deal in early Chrome. Yes, Google has taken away much of the user control that made Chrome good and replaced it with things that optimize for the comfort of their advertising model. But there's also a reason software people switched to Chrome for a long while. It was just better. It's not anymore. I switched back to Fir…

Chrome might have been slightly better than Firefox, but not ground breaking like google earth, street view, gmail etc.

Re: ChatGPT can now call Wolfram Alpha

#269
Reflecting on the complementary strengths of Wolfram and GPT reminds me of Daniel Kahneman’s distinction between “system 1” and “system 2” in the human brain. One system is a kind of freely-associating autopilot (like gpt) and the other kicks in when some deliberate logical manipulation of facts needs doing (like wolfram). (Or at least this was my layman’s impression from reading Thinking Fast and Slow.)

Have others thought of this and, if so, is the comparison apt? Is it possible the human brain is simply an LLM melded to a symbol-based system in dialogue with each other?

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