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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

#71

Post by cl42 »

visarga wrote: post #31
cl42 wrote: 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…

> 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. Yes, because people think that LLMs are almost AGI based on the social media reactions and can't imagine they still have unknown/unsolved problems. But if we take a look at the 14 years of self driving car development, it becomes clear ho…

AVs have also struggled with regulatory muddle, which is partly my point.

Self-driving is very possible in many situations and if there was a "Manhattan Project" for self-driving to be up and running by 2025 I think we could do it... But there are so many vested interests that this won't happen.

... and then everyone is disappointed.

BTW, I'm not saying this is all bad... Everyone asking for a 6-month AI research moratorium gets it indirectly via societal inertia and regulatory muddle!

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

#72

Post by pmoriarty »

soperj wrote: post #19
substation13 wrote: post #4

It's really easy to get an LLM to hallucinate by asking an open ended question - the type typically answered by a Google search or checking Wikiedpia. However, this is not the best application of LLMs. This criticism is getting old. LLMs are great at: - Text synthesis given all of the facts in a prompt (expand these bullet points) - Summarization (condense this text) - Data extraction (fit this data into this schema)…

> - Fiction (virtual characters, scripts, etc.) I've found it bad for this, does not generate something I'd actually read.

Try Anthropic's Claude[1]. I've found it to be better at creative writing than GPT4 or even Claude+.

That said, it's still not great, though sometimes you can luck on to finding a gem in what it writes.

I've also had luck in giving it examples of the sort of thing I wanted it to write and asking it to write something similar, but with certain modifications that I wanted it to make.

Giving two or more examples and asking it to combine them is also fun.

[1] - https://poe.com/Claude-instant

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

#73

Post by Mizoguchi »

The author of the article judges the future of LLMs and AI using the current state of affairs, as is these technologies are not evolving very quickly. GPT3 and GPT4 are only 3 years apart, yet GPT4 is a completely different beast. And we are talking only about LLMs, we haven't yet seen what's coming in vision for example. Also I have not heard OpenAI or any serious AI visionary say ChatGPT is the holy grail of AI research. It is undoubtedly one of the best consumer ready technologies we have seen in the field to date but it just a tiny little piece of a massive infrastructure that is still in its very early stages. It's like saying HTML was the holy grail of the Internet. It was an important component of it but without fiber optics, microchips, radio, smartphones, algorithms, etc the Internet would not have been possible the way we know it today.

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

#74

Post by galaxytachyon »

ARandumGuy wrote: post #53
galaxytachyon wrote: post #22

As the hype phase has passed (probably), now we will see a bit of overcorrection with these dismissive articles. Sure, LLMs as they are now aren't anywhere close to true AGI and even Microsoft admitted it. But its potential is not something anyone can ignore. The capabilities of LLMs has already been successfully used by millions of people and startups. It is a groundbreaking improvement that makes at least one field…

> It captured attentions of both corporations and government who are pouring billions into it. All of this in the span of one year or less. Corporations and governments have thrown tons of money into technologies that ended up going nowhere. We're only a few years out from everyone dumping their money into "blockchain solutions", which turned out to go nowhere. Investors and government stakeholders are easily swayed…

When only a few of them followed the hype, yes, it can possibly go nowhere.

But when the entire industry, experts and non-experts included, are fascinated and obsessed with the same thing, it is more likely to be something real. An easy example is the first iPhone.

Another more negative example is bitcoin which even though it is probably a scam, its values and influence on society has massively grown more than what it was 1 year after released. Even though it has been a disappointment technologically.

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

#75

Post by onewheeltom »

denimnerd42 wrote: post #60
wnevets wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A more modern example is the first iPhone, the first gen was bad even by the standards of the day. If you look passed the novelty of having a lightsaber app on your phone it was terrible.

the worst was it was ATT only and they had a coverage hole on the block where I lived so I had to get rid of it for something supported by verizon. didn't go back to an iphone until 10 years later.

My recollection was that AT&T was the only vendor that would provide free wifi with the iPhone (Apple precondition)

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

#76

Post by Jtsummers »

Nullabillity wrote: post #66
Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Safari on your phone was mind blowing and immediately useful. Also apps weren’t part of the original iPhone.

Browsers were already commonplace in phones for years at that point. Maybe things were more dire in the US?

Most feature phone browsers were very limited compared to what Safari supported (almost the full web experience at the time). You'd have to look at other "smartphone" class devices for something comparable, and those were not common (EDIT: among consumers) in the US at the time.

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

#77

Post by pmoriarty »

sharemywin wrote: post #44
soperj wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Fiction (virtual characters, scripts, etc.) I've found it bad for this, does not generate something I'd actually read.

I wonder if an LLM trained on your favorite author how many words/sentences paragraphs it could generate in the middle of a book that would be basically undetectable.

You don't even necessarily need to train it specifically on their writing. Just giving an LLM an example of the sort of writing you want and asking it to write something similar is sometimes enough.

But, yeah, training it specifically on a corpus of work would probably be even more effective.

I'd love to be able to do that and get output that's at least on the GPT4 level. I think we'd probably have to have a breakthrough in LLM architecture and/or some amazing advancements in hardware before it becomes practical and cost effective for individuals to train their own GPT4-level LLMs, though.

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

#78

Post by Vespasian »

TheCaptain4815 wrote: post #36
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #26

Yesterday, I had a sticky Swift/iOS issue. Checked SO, Apple Discussions, etc. Then, on a whim, I asked ChatGPT for a suggestion. > They are also prone to confident assertions of statements that are blatantly false. It suggested something that referenced a nonexistent property of a standard UIKit class. It wouldn't even compile. It was quite positive that this would fix my issue. After refreshing a couple of times (a…

GPT4 is significantly better at code fyi, not sure if you used default ChatGPT (which is 3.5turbo). Premium ChatGPT gives you access to GPT4, but the API gives you even more access with the ability to edit the "system" prompt which Sam Altman's said is very important and which I can attest to from my testing.

I did and do try it with GPT4 and the API and a custom prompt to help me in rust.

Expecting only knowledge from 2021 it is hit and miss. Helped me to write some scripts but still fails to recognize tasks that are not possible in the language and halluciantes a plausible solution.

It tends to suggest non non compiling and (after being asked to do so) "corrects" bugs (some real some imaginary) and sometimes gets stuck.

Helpful yes, but not yet the invincible overlord some people imagine it to be.

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

#79

Post by tempestn »

Nullabillity wrote: post #66
Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Safari on your phone was mind blowing and immediately useful. Also apps weren’t part of the original iPhone.

Browsers were already commonplace in phones for years at that point. Maybe things were more dire in the US?

Browsers in other phones sucked. I'd owned high-end "smart" phones before the first iPhone and ultimately went back to a flip phone because they just weren't worth using. Usability of the first iPhone browser was a huge leap forward.

Ironically, that was largely because it let you more easily use sites built for desktop, due to the larger screen space and ease of pinch to zoom. Those older phones would have been somewhat more useful if mobile first/responsive sites had been a thing then, but it took the popularity of the iPhone for that to happen.

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

#80

Post by misterprime »

Nullabillity wrote: post #66
Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Safari on your phone was mind blowing and immediately useful. Also apps weren’t part of the original iPhone.

Browsers were already commonplace in phones for years at that point. Maybe things were more dire in the US?

Mobile browsers were a painful experience before that. Mobile keyboards were a painful experience before that.

I think Blackberry was the only one that did both OK enough to take seriously. I know people loved the Sidekick, but I never used it and don't recall if people used a web browser on it, or just text messaging.

The first iPhone was more impressive than a Blackberry.

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