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GPT-4: A Copilot for the Mind

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Re: GPT-4: A Copilot for the Mind

#41

Post by pleasantpeasant »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #19
alach11 wrote: post #2

"For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they…

Plato was largely right though, when looking at the individual alone. It is still a problem, thinking you understand something because you could look it up. It permits hypothetical access to facts but not the synthesis of knowledge from those facts. Anyone reading this could look up the latin terms "manus" and "facere", but unless they do, they probably won't spontaneously understand the etymology of "manufacture" as…

Plato was an elitist.

He didn't want or believe that the lower-class Athenians should have access to education. He very much believed in an Oligarchy where the State would be ruled by a select few.

Re: GPT-4: A Copilot for the Mind

#42

Post by rendleflag »

cerol wrote: post #16

Am I the only one who thinks this is a really bad idea? By offloading your cognitive tasks to an AI, even though you now look smarter, you're becoming dumber in the long run, because you're never really challeging and exercising your intelect. This book[1] goes into a lot of detail about how rote memorization and recall is essential to critical thinking (you have a limited working memory, and the way by which you're…

I recently asked an AI for help writing a python program with a mutex to prevent outdated information from being accessed. It presented me with a solution that I didn't fully understand, so I asked it to explain that part of the code. And then I asked it to explain part of the explanation. It just kept answering, never getting tired or irritated with me asking for clarification, and generating information that couldn't exist in a book or a blog post. It reminded me of the primer in "The Diamond Age". It catered the answers to my needs and deficiencies instead of making me adapt to it.

Re: GPT-4: A Copilot for the Mind

#43

Post by jackthetab »

jaqalopes wrote: post #13

All week I've seen basically two dominant takes about how AI is going to impact creative work in the future (three if you count "generative AI is a fad with no value," which I do not): (1) It's going to take people's jobs (rip); or (2) It's going to help people do their jobs better. I'm a writer and have been thinking a lot about use case (2)—since I'm not emotionally ready for my job to be taken by AI, I'm trying to…

> If I could get the benefits of Obsidian for making connections between information and ideas, powered by an intelligent assistant that "knows" how I think and what I think about...

Damn! I'm working on how to get an algo to setup links between my Obsidian files but you've taken it to whole new levels.

How would you even encode "how I think"?

Re: GPT-4: A Copilot for the Mind

#44

Post by coupdejarnac »

cerol wrote: post #16

Am I the only one who thinks this is a really bad idea? By offloading your cognitive tasks to an AI, even though you now look smarter, you're becoming dumber in the long run, because you're never really challeging and exercising your intelect. This book[1] goes into a lot of detail about how rote memorization and recall is essential to critical thinking (you have a limited working memory, and the way by which you're…

It has already happened with people's sense of direction. Lots of people have no idea where they are when they are driving due to being completely dependent on GPS. I see so much lack of situational and spatial awareness on the road. Since people don't know where they are and where they are supposed to go, there's a lot of last moment lane switches to make an exit etc. Lots of very bad decision making because of being continuously lost.

Re: GPT-4: A Copilot for the Mind

#45

Post by skybrian »

cerol wrote: post #16

Am I the only one who thinks this is a really bad idea? By offloading your cognitive tasks to an AI, even though you now look smarter, you're becoming dumber in the long run, because you're never really challeging and exercising your intelect. This book[1] goes into a lot of detail about how rote memorization and recall is essential to critical thinking (you have a limited working memory, and the way by which you're…

It's much like relying on Google Maps for directions. When you want to practice your navigation skills, you're free to not use it.

How much practice you need depends on what you're interested in learning to do.

Re: GPT-4: A Copilot for the Mind

#46

Post by roncesvalles »

lysecret wrote: post #29

I am extremely bullish on this. I use ChatGPT every day. I am learning at a rate that I haven‘t in years and I love it, the pure fact I can ask follow up question or ask it to shorten things. This is the core problem of learning: I already know this I am bored, I can‘t understand this now. For the first: Hey ChatGPT sum this up for me, for the second hey ChatGPT give me more examples, set this in relation to this. I…

Be careful. I had that same excitement in the first few minutes but when I asked it about things that I understood well and it was just completely wrong or lacked some critical nuance. Granted this was in the early days, before their accuracy update, but the impression was made that it doesn't really have a logically consistent "knowledge graph" of things.

Re: GPT-4: A Copilot for the Mind

#47

Post by marginalia_nu »

pleasantpeasant wrote: post #41
marginalia_nu wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plato was largely right though, when looking at the individual alone. It is still a problem, thinking you understand something because you could look it up. It permits hypothetical access to facts but not the synthesis of knowledge from those facts. Anyone reading this could look up the latin terms "manus" and "facere", but unless they do, they probably won't spontaneously understand the etymology of "manufacture" as…

Plato was an elitist. He didn't want or believe that the lower-class Athenians should have access to education. He very much believed in an Oligarchy where the State would be ruled by a select few.

Oh sure, but he still made an important point.

Re: GPT-4: A Copilot for the Mind

#48

Post by good_boy »

cerol wrote: post #16

Am I the only one who thinks this is a really bad idea? By offloading your cognitive tasks to an AI, even though you now look smarter, you're becoming dumber in the long run, because you're never really challeging and exercising your intelect. This book[1] goes into a lot of detail about how rote memorization and recall is essential to critical thinking (you have a limited working memory, and the way by which you're…

Interesting, this isn't the only life changing invention. Riding horseback was one of them. Cars, then GPS. Internet instead of books. Social sites instead of in-person skills. And so on.

The main danger of AI 'experts' is, in my opinion, the information bubble they create. They not only suggest, eventually they will drive your thoughts. In the direction their builders want. That will be crowd control even worst than Facebook was at it's peak. Currently we know that ChatGPT has woke bias embedded. But that's not the end, right?

Re: GPT-4: A Copilot for the Mind

#49

Post by westoncb »

jmull wrote: post #23

> It will bring back the ideas, quotes, and memories you need, when you need them most, with no organizing, tagging, or linking required. It will work as a personalized extension of your intelligence available 24/7 at the touch of a button. How can people come to this conclusion after using chatgpt? (1) Its responses are often good but they are routinely wrong as well. (2) Search engines already do these things, with…

1) It's mistaken responses ('hallucinations') come largely from it missing data and having to interpolate something in spite of that; if you ask it about things that it definitely has information on it can be pretty reliable (though not perfect I'm sure). ('missing data' is definitely a simplification, but it's roughly the idea.)

2) It has the potential to be far superior to a search engine because its data is indexed not only by casual natural language, but via your personal 'vocabulary': e.g. you could say things like, "what was that song Jules' friend recommended to me last week?". Not that you could get very far with current models, but what'd be required is a matter of magnitude rather than kind: e.g. for the above scenario, for it to over time aggregate info about an acquaintance or your schedule etc., it mostly just needs an extended 'memory,' which is something inroads are already being made on in GPT-4.

Re: GPT-4: A Copilot for the Mind

#50

Post by qwytw »

dmitrybrant wrote: post #40
cerol wrote: post #16

Am I the only one who thinks this is a really bad idea? By offloading your cognitive tasks to an AI, even though you now look smarter, you're becoming dumber in the long run, because you're never really challeging and exercising your intelect. This book[1] goes into a lot of detail about how rote memorization and recall is essential to critical thinking (you have a limited working memory, and the way by which you're…

I haven't formed a definite opinion on this, and I think I largely agree, but what about a counterargument like this one: Virtually no one does long division manually anymore, or really any basic arithmetic greater than two digits, because we invented pocket calculators and smartphones that do this for us. And are we any worse mathematicians or engineers because of this? If anything, this has freed us to perform more…

Well we're pretty confident that calculators work and do so in a fairly deterministic manner.

ChatGPT tends to be extremely incoherent and often provides answers which directly disagree with what it previously said (at least on some topics*). My fear is that while you right in theory we'll have spend huge amounts of brain power and time to discern whether what it's saying is total BS or not. And I really don't know how could I even do that if I wasn't particularly knowledgeable on the topic.

If it could provide citations or some context on why did it decide to answer in the way it did it might be not so bad.

Fairly straightforward areas like software engineering are not that bad I guess.. but it's answers any even mildly complex questions on history, anthropology or related fields where there are often no clear and straightforward answer just seem absolutely awful. Just tweaking the input a bit without actually changing the core of the question can results in something that completely contradicts to what it just said before.

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