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How AI knows things no one told it

scientificamerican.com

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Re: How AI knows things no one told it

#91

Post by ben_w »

goatlover wrote: post #90
ben_w wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could reasonably say that's merely what the statistics are doing, not evidence to deny that the brain is just statistics.

Statistics is about the likelihood of events happening. It's not the things themselves. A brain isn't a statistical model. It's a bunch of living cells. It may do the equivalent of statistical modeling for some activities, like predicting what comes next. But it's more than just a model. Models are like maps. We make them.

That the brain is made of cells seems no more important to "why might an LLM not be as intelligent as a brain?" than the fact that cells are made of chemicals and the chemicals are fancy quantum fields that can be modelled as differential equations of a complex valued wave equation such that the squared magnitude of the wave corresponds to a probability.

Re: How AI knows things no one told it

#92

Post by mike741 »

hgsgm wrote: post #88
mike741 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> There's no underlying theory of mind here. > GPT4 have a Theory of Mind You are misunderstanding ggm. That study is on ToM tasks referring to GPT's analysis and perceived recognition of the user's mind. It says nothing of GPT's own status as a mind. Nowhere in it is an ontological theory of mind actually defined. If you were to refute ggm's claim, you (or preferably the author of the original article) should be pr…

If an AI can understand how you think, but you can't understand how the AI thinks... that's not an argument that the AI is the unintelligent one.

There's no reason to assume the AI can understand how we think based on just those tasks. Those tasks could be completed a traditional static program. It's akin to claiming the Mona Lisa painting can see us because it looks like it is staring at us: it is actually we who are doing the staring.

Re: How AI knows things no one told it

#93

Post by mike741 »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #81
mike741 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can describe ourselves with statistics, that does not mean we are statistics. This is called the "Fallacy of the Map" where a symbol is falsely equated with the entity it represents. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Mistaking_the_map_for_the_terr... Statistics is collecting and analyzing numerical data. But what is the numerical data quantifying? It's quantifying a second thing. If everything were "just statistics" t…

You haven't defined intelligence, nor answered the question. Controlling a body is not relevant to a brain in a jar, nor does it detract from the intelligence of someone like Stephen Hawking. We're talking about intelligence - a capability - so applying labels like organic, analog, etc is irrelevant. The question is what can it DO, not how is it built.

> Controlling a body is not relevant to a brain in a jar, nor does it detract from the intelligence of someone like Stephen Hawking.

I never said Steven Hawking wasn't intelligent, I was just pointing out obvious differences between the human brain and GPT-4. GPT-4 is unable to solve basic arithmetic problems without employing a traditional calculator. It also can't accurately summarize long books. It also can't program its own GPT-4.

> You haven't defined intelligence > We're talking about intelligence

If you want to talk about intelligence so badly, perhaps you should at least attempt to define it for yourself first? I don't like using poorly defined words, which is why the word "intelligence" didn't appear anywhere in my previous comment.

> The question is what can it DO

Is that your measure of intelligence? If something does less, are they then less intelligent? Because, by that standard, the body is integral to intelligence.

Re: How AI knows things no one told it

#94

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

mike741 wrote: post #93
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't defined intelligence, nor answered the question. Controlling a body is not relevant to a brain in a jar, nor does it detract from the intelligence of someone like Stephen Hawking. We're talking about intelligence - a capability - so applying labels like organic, analog, etc is irrelevant. The question is what can it DO, not how is it built.

> Controlling a body is not relevant to a brain in a jar, nor does it detract from the intelligence of someone like Stephen Hawking. I never said Steven Hawking wasn't intelligent, I was just pointing out obvious differences between the human brain and GPT-4. GPT-4 is unable to solve basic arithmetic problems without employing a traditional calculator. It also can't accurately summarize long books. It also can't prog…

GPT-4 doesn't do great at math, but it can ace the bar exam and do plenty of far more complex things. However, individual skills or knowledge aren't the same as intelligence. You can be intelligent and still not know something until told/shown, or not know how do do something until you've tried and practiced.

The whole discussion is about intelligence. I was replying to OP. MY definition of intelligence is degree of ability to apply prior experience to correctly predict future outcomes. However my definition isn't particularly relevant here since you seem to want to side with OP and say that GPT-4 isn't intelligent - so it's YOUR definition of intelligence that would be needed support your position.

BTW, I'm not sure why you think GPT-4 couldn't code a Transformer (i.e. a GPT-3/4 type model). Yesterday I was talking to GPT-4 about difference in scaling strategy between GPT-2 and GPT-3 and detailed operation of decoder-only Transformers, and it appears very capable, and it can certainly code. Again, a specific skill like being able to code isn't necessary to be called intelligent, but if that's your litmus test then GPT-4 passes.

Re: How AI knows things no one told it

#95

Post by [deleted] »

georgeg23 wrote: post #85
felix318 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not in the least worried about the supposed dangers of AI; I don’t see it causing major unemployment, nuclear armageddon, or anything particularly scary. However, I think the real danger with those chatbots is how people are becoming emotionally involved with them. This is clearly by design and it’s working extremely well with so many people.

But none of its behaviour is even close to by design. The emergence of reasoning is completely unexpected for a word prediction model.

[deleted]

Re: How AI knows things no one told it

#96

Post by mike741 »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #94
mike741 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Controlling a body is not relevant to a brain in a jar, nor does it detract from the intelligence of someone like Stephen Hawking. I never said Steven Hawking wasn't intelligent, I was just pointing out obvious differences between the human brain and GPT-4. GPT-4 is unable to solve basic arithmetic problems without employing a traditional calculator. It also can't accurately summarize long books. It also can't prog…

GPT-4 doesn't do great at math, but it can ace the bar exam and do plenty of far more complex things. However, individual skills or knowledge aren't the same as intelligence. You can be intelligent and still not know something until told/shown, or not know how do do something until you've tried and practiced. The whole discussion is about intelligence. I was replying to OP. MY definition of intelligence is degree of…

> but it can ace the bar exam

A traditional static program could ace the bar exam, or even a well-prepared stack of flash cards. We wouldn't say the flash cards are exhibiting intelligence though, only their creators.

> The whole discussion is about intelligence. I was replying to OP.

OP was replying to Scientific American's article making numerous unfounded claims of "intelligence." So the party you should be asking for a definition is Scientific American.

> MY definition of intelligence is degree of ability to apply prior experience to correctly predict future outcomes

And what constitutes a "prediction" exactly? If someone fails to catch a baseball, would you say it's still possible they correctly predicted how to catch it? Because, if not, that would mean control over a body is integral to intelligence. If yes, then any object could be claimed intelligent but lacking in bodily function. If something predicts the future without applying prior experience, does that make it more intelligent or less intelligent?

> you seem to want to side with OP and say that GPT-4 isn't intelligent - so it's YOUR definition of intelligence that would be needed support your position.

You're trying to put words in my mouth, but I will play along. I'll say intelligence is the ability to autonomously create increasingly complete and consistent axiomatic systems. Since GPT-4 is digital, operating according to decisions (axioms) determined solely by external programmers and external data with little to no concern for consistency, I would say it's not intelligent. However, if a similar schema were applied to some sort of analog computer that had the ability to fluctuate or disobey its instructions then there would be more room for debate.

Re: How AI knows things no one told it

#97

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

mike741 wrote: post #96
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPT-4 doesn't do great at math, but it can ace the bar exam and do plenty of far more complex things. However, individual skills or knowledge aren't the same as intelligence. You can be intelligent and still not know something until told/shown, or not know how do do something until you've tried and practiced. The whole discussion is about intelligence. I was replying to OP. MY definition of intelligence is degree of…

> but it can ace the bar exam A traditional static program could ace the bar exam, or even a well-prepared stack of flash cards. We wouldn't say the flash cards are exhibiting intelligence though, only their creators. > The whole discussion is about intelligence. I was replying to OP. OP was replying to Scientific American's article making numerous unfounded claims of "intelligence." So the party you should be asking…

The way GPT-4 works is by having built a world model of the generative processes that produced the data it was trained on. The more data you train it on (and the larger and therefore more capable he model is), the better it performs - i.e the more complete and consistent this world model has evidentially become. I'm not sure where you are seeing daylight between this and your own definition of intelligence.

FWIW GPT-4, being a neural net, is more analog than not. It's driven by floating point values not 1's and 0's. The values are imperfectly calculated (limited accuracy) as computer math always is. There is also a large element of pure randomness to the output of any of these LLMs. They don't get to control exactly what words they generate ... the model generates probabilities over 10's of thousands of possible output words, and a random number generator is used to select one of the higher rated words to output. This semi-random word is then fed back into the model, for it to "generate" the next word ... it is continuously having to adapt to this randomness forced upon it.

Re: How AI knows things no one told it

#98

Post by epylar »

dS0rrow wrote: post #52
cjbprime wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a misunderstanding of the researchers' claim, for which I blame them rather than you. You are using their study to claim that LLMs can not learn and reason about novel tasks. Their study doesn't make any claims about what LLMs can and can't do. The study says that when it appears that LLMs suddenly became able to reason about novel tasks, what actually happened is that the ability of the LLM to perform reason…

> Do you see? Emergence can only be discontinuous.

Emergent abilities can be gradual and continuous.

Re: How AI knows things no one told it

#99

Post by jamilton »

thom wrote: post #65
1000thVisitor wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key here is abstraction, not statistics. You have seen other items fall and are able to abstract this and then apply it to the phone.

Why would LLMs not learn abstractions when given millions of of concrete examples?

Why would it necessarily learn abstractions?

I believe GPT-3 doesn't have the abstraction for arithmetic.

Re: How AI knows things no one told it

#100

Post by jamilton »

snickell wrote: post #58
tomohelix wrote: post #43

Let for the sake of argument, assume that the LLM is truly sapience. Then this would be the first alien intelligence we have ever encountered. All life and intelligence we have seen before were organic, carbon-based life, including the most distant and unintuitive ones like the cephalopods, cetaceans, and primates. Even now we are still arguing whether these creatures are intelligent or they are just "not there" yet.…

I would hazard a guess that if we first encountered a ChatGPT-4 level LLM* as radio signals from Mars we would baseline assume it was "intelligent alien life". * assuming its instruction tuned: - in terms of self-disclosure (no "I'm made by openAI on earth" statements!) - sans its relatively schematic "guard rail" responses. It would be hard to imagine intelligent life being more obviously intelligent to us: ChatGPT…

I think we might assume it's intelligent until we had a second conversation and it's forgotten everything from the first. Then we're back to a state of confusion.
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