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ChatGPT can now call Wolfram Alpha

writings.stephenwolfram.com

301–310 of 329 posts

Re: ChatGPT can now call Wolfram Alpha

#301

Does anyone know how ChatGPT is deciding is should use Wolfram? I’m curious for two reasons 1) previously it didn’t seem to ‘know’ when it was wrong, so it must have some way to detect this now. 2) when there are more (potentially competing competing?) plugins or will be interesting to see how it decides which is the one to use.

With a fairly naive ReAct implementation with access to, e.g., Wikipedia, GPT-3.5-turbo will decide it should confirm things that it already thinks it knows (one test I remember it doing this on was “What is the largest land animal?” where the “Thought” portion of its response was approximately [wasn’t recording the runs] “I believe its the elephant, but I should confirm”.) So, it doesn’t have to recognize it is wron…

Cool thanks - so you mean it can detect if it’s ‘unsure’ even if it doesn’t know if it’s perfectly right/wrong? That’s very helpful if so! I wonder if with the right prompting you could get it to return a 0-1 score of accurateness like you get with speech recognition. GPT-4 is great at returning JSON so you can tack on extra attributes with the actual text response.

Re: ChatGPT can now call Wolfram Alpha

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was MapQuest before Google Maps. Now GPS on the other hand, that was a game changer.

And that was the same thing as maps? Free? Global

Yes, it was free and global. The main things that Google Maps had over MapQuest were a nice AJAXy interface and (eventually) street view. But MapQuest was itself basically a generational improvement on AAA's "TripTiks."

Re: ChatGPT can now call Wolfram Alpha

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

was stable enough and slow

building a slightly faster browser is not ground breaking... I feel like people were just excited about anything coming out of google, back then. But it was not a revolution in browsers or anything like that. Chrome only got the upper-hand in browser wars because they install it on all the android devices(and not being able to uninstall it) - which I am not sure how they got away with, they should have been kept in check by anti-monopoly measures.

Re: ChatGPT can now call Wolfram Alpha

#304

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The problem is that the bottleneck is the human. You have to know a way to formulate the question and need creativity in order to benefit from it in order to expand your horizons. It will be like tiktok, and onlyfans, where people are copying each other and mirroring what they saw others do or press writes about. So in essence the masses will be on the same level all the time. One upside, that maybe this might help e…

1) pretty sure microsoft is willing to operate at a loss when there is a chance to destroy google in the process - comparing billions is not wrong but irrelevant here 2) there is a significant chance that lets say 25% revenue loss occurs within a single quarter once the actual hypetrain starts moving - which will freak out wallstreet - and an uncontrolled downward spiral happens in a very short amount of time includi…

I'm not protecting GOOG, just trying to remain rational. People also forget what MSFT did for the internet and how it shat on developers with Internet Explorer. It's like running from one shady actor to another while throwing away your past 20 years or so memories/experience in the field. Look we've changed our CEO, now EVERYTHING CHANGED, we are the good guys now! Suuuuuuuure.

These are trillion dollar behemots with their own interests and strategies, and none of them are charities. They are gobbling up whatever crosses their path. And the less people laud them, the better. Keep your distance, keep your own interests in mind.

Re: ChatGPT can now call Wolfram Alpha

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) pretty sure microsoft is willing to operate at a loss when there is a chance to destroy google in the process - comparing billions is not wrong but irrelevant here 2) there is a significant chance that lets say 25% revenue loss occurs within a single quarter once the actual hypetrain starts moving - which will freak out wallstreet - and an uncontrolled downward spiral happens in a very short amount of time includi…

I'm not protecting GOOG, just trying to remain rational. People also forget what MSFT did for the internet and how it shat on developers with Internet Explorer. It's like running from one shady actor to another while throwing away your past 20 years or so memories/experience in the field. Look we've changed our CEO, now EVERYTHING CHANGED, we are the good guys now! Suuuuuuuure. These are trillion dollar behemots with…

you are completely right, but for today I strictly want to see google burn for all the things they have done, all the companies that got killed by them (including some friends getting laid off and so on) and destroying the open web (www) I really loved into the current cesspool of spam and crap.

after that, we can have a look into microsoft again, and I expect that the AI tech will be democratized/public by then, iE as the final strikes a dying google (or meta) can do. therefore, I am not worried so far

Re: ChatGPT can now call Wolfram Alpha

#306
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for WA, but Google doesn't have my phone number, or any other PII. OpenAI does.

So, none of your friends have shared their phonebooks with Google?

Touché. GOOG probably does in fact, have my phone number through this vector.

What I mean is that they probably have a hard(er) time assigning this identifier to my activity.

Re: ChatGPT can now call Wolfram Alpha

#308
post #37

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Nicely illustrated in Transcendence (2014). Widely panned on HN back then. I found it smart, perhaps even prescient.

I was so psyched about this movie, but the idea that an AI that can design new quantum processors in seconds, is even remotely challenged by a few humans is just so stupid

It wasn't even remotely challenged by humans. In the end, it simply allowed itself to be destroyed. (At least, ostensibly.)

Re: ChatGPT can now call Wolfram Alpha

#309
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nicely illustrated in Transcendence (2014). Widely panned on HN back then. I found it smart, perhaps even prescient.

I also liked Transcendence, but you have to admit the path to AGI was vastly oversimplified. No one is creating AI by uploading their brain into a computer.

I actually really disagree. I think that's a VERY plausible way for a true AGI to come about. In fact, prior to LLM's I used to think that was the ONLY way we were going to get an AGI.

We know humans are AGI's. If it were possible to upload your brain to a computer, and then make modifications to enhance your speed of thought and intelligence, of course you would do that. It actually makes a LOT of sense if you'll admit the technology necessary to do that.

In fact... uploading your brain to a computer is probably the most natural progression of intelligent life I can think of. It solves SO many problems. Biology is fragile. Brains cannot be replicated. But data can. A probe can travel the galaxy. It's not limited by biological lifespans and life support.

Re: ChatGPT can now call Wolfram Alpha

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT is slow, its usecase is quite narrow, average ppl do not give a fuck/doesn't help them that much, hype will die down. Google will be fine, they have their own solution and they have the biggest surface area where they can advertise their stuff. Just think back when chrome launched and they advertised it on the search front page. And their browser market share just went up and up. So they can only fuck this up…

> average ppl do not give a fuck/doesn't help them that much I shared this opinion no more than a month ago. Then I decided to keep a ChatGPT-4 tab open for a week and lean on it for questions. I'm around 3x more productive. It's wild. Anyone that uses a computer for work will benefit from this technology, or be upended by it. I agree though, Google has the ability to catch up. But will they? They're a big boring com…

Yeah, I'm waiting for MS/Bing to open it for everyone. Until then I use perplexity. It's quite good, mostly because it gives back the relevant answers with source included, from sites that have almost zero chance to pop up in a google result.
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