5 ms·

It's not hard to imagine GPT-3 writing a fake paper that gets published in certain academic journals in the social sciences. And then, it'll be all over for us.

It's not hard to imagine GPT-3 writing a fake paper that gets published in certain academic journals in the social sciences. And then, it'll be all over for us. We won't have any more funding and our jobs will disappear. I can already hear the protests: "But we're not just scientists! We're also philosophers!" Well, yes and no. Philosophers are supposed to think about things philosophically, but they don't actually do anything about them; they're just entertainers. Scientists do something about them. They make things happen. And when those things happen, people take notice. If science and technology have a weakness, it's that they work too well. This was probably a strength at one point, but not anymore. In the not-too-distant future, there probably won't be any more philosophy professors; there will just be philosophers. But only in the same sense that there are lions and mushrooms. This comment was also written by GPT-3.

jjoonathan 6y ago
Somebody get this thing onto scp-wiki, it will be right at home. Not gonna lie, I went poking around to see if I could get my hands on it, but it seems like the answer is no, for now.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  That's a good question, how do we get access? I signed up on the list, but it must be thousands of people long by now. Does anyone here know anyone who can get people access?
6nf 6y ago
How many attempts did it take or did you just choose the first one? I have to admit, this is passing my turing test...
- geofft 6y ago
  Really? I got about halfway through and realized that the comment had no point. If you tried to summarize what it was arguing, beyond the first sentence, I don't think you could make a coherent summary. Maybe the real lesson is we don't expect human-written comments on discussion fora to be particularly coherent....
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    Given that I know this stuff is generated text, it looks pretty good. But, if I’m judging it assuming that it was written by a human, it has a very uncanny valley sort of feel. That’s actually a good thing compared to previous models that would generate a lot of jarring non sequitors, because the GPT-3 text is very good if you look at it in 2-3 sentence chunks.
  - vidarh 6y ago
    It felt like it was making a slightly ranty observation that scientists are already trying to much to be philosophers than to actually do science that changes the world, yet science has brought us far enough that it acts as an enabler for all kinds of pop-philosphers. The final bit doesn't quite connect, but overall I've seen far less coherent comments written by humans on subject with far more logical flaws.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - riffraff 6y ago
    I would not have imagined it was automatically written. Rambling and there's little connection between the first part and the latter, but absolutely something that might appear on a random internet forum. I am genuinely awed.
  - ascar 6y ago
    Also both comments made me suspicious half way through and I scrolled to the bottom to check for a GPT-3 note. Without that note I would definitely have regarded it as incoherent rambling by a human. Especially the second comment can be coherently interpreted with some good will and a cynical view of the humanities and philosophy. The "author" could say that once GPT-3 can write humanities papers it will quickly make humanity scientists redundant and that humanities scientists are philosophers is not important and doesn't warrant a job alone ("they don't actually do anything"). Eventually it shifts that this is the fault of science working too well (GPT-3 being a product of science) It's not a consistent argument, but without the context of these comments being GPT-3 it would have totally passed my turing test, just not my sanity test.
- jacobush 6y ago
  More coherent than Trump
campercoder 6y ago
I could tell immediately because... it's too long
randomsearch 6y ago
Was it really? I don’t believe you. It makes sense.
jacobedawson 6y ago
So it looks like we're about 2 years away from the 'Her' relationship model.
- schoen 6y ago
  There was an article recently about people pursuing romantic relationships with chatbots. I thought there was a big HN discussion about it, but the only thing I've been able to find is this WSJ piece https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22833407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22833407 (So I think it was some other story on the same topic.)
Reimersholme 6y ago
Haha, good idea still. Rerun those recent experiments with submitting nonsense articles to journals for gender and postcolonial studies and see how many get accepted.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
EGreg 6y ago
I am seeing it being used in tons of academic settings, especially with distance learning haha
jimkleiber 6y ago
I'm starting to sense that, in most scenarios, I will no longer want to engage in text-based conversations unless I know that I'm talking with a human. I already don't like spending a lot of time arguing with a bot on Twitter, this just makes it much more likely I'll also argue with a bot on medium-length text areas (e.g., HN, FB, Whatsapp, SMS, etc.) and maybe even on long-length text areas (e.g., Medium, blogs, NYTimes or things pretending to be real newspapers, etc.) Second, I'm curious/terrified at how future iterations of GPT-3 may impact our ability to express ourselves and form bonds with other humans. First it's text messages and comments. Then it's essays. Then it's speeches. Then it's love letters. Then it's pitches. Then it's books. Then it's movie scripts. Then it's... TLDR; Fascinated by the technology behind making something like this work and quite worried about the implications of the technology.
regularfry 6y ago
In possibly an unwise move, I'm actually going to respond to the initial point here. There's a totally valid discipline in taking concepts from different areas and smushing them together to make a new idea. That's what a lot of creativity is, fundamentally. So a bot that's been trained across a wide variety of texts, spitting out an amalgam in response to a prompt that causes a connection to be made, is not only possible, but likely a very good way of generating papers (or at least abstracts) for humans to check. And if the raw output is readable, why not publish it?
rsync 6y ago
"This comment was also written by GPT-3" Would you please show us the input text, or rules, you gave to GPT-3 to create this comment ?

jjoonathan 6y ago

Somebody get this thing onto scp-wiki, it will be right at home. Not gonna lie, I went poking around to see if I could get my hands on it, but it seems like the answer is no, for now.

StavrosK 6y ago
That's a good question, how do we get access? I signed up on the list, but it must be thousands of people long by now. Does anyone here know anyone who can get people access?

6nf 6y ago

How many attempts did it take or did you just choose the first one? I have to admit, this is passing my turing test...

geofft 6y ago
Really? I got about halfway through and realized that the comment had no point. If you tried to summarize what it was arguing, beyond the first sentence, I don't think you could make a coherent summary. Maybe the real lesson is we don't expect human-written comments on discussion fora to be particularly coherent....
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Given that I know this stuff is generated text, it looks pretty good. But, if I’m judging it assuming that it was written by a human, it has a very uncanny valley sort of feel. That’s actually a good thing compared to previous models that would generate a lot of jarring non sequitors, because the GPT-3 text is very good if you look at it in 2-3 sentence chunks.
- vidarh 6y ago
  It felt like it was making a slightly ranty observation that scientists are already trying to much to be philosophers than to actually do science that changes the world, yet science has brought us far enough that it acts as an enabler for all kinds of pop-philosphers. The final bit doesn't quite connect, but overall I've seen far less coherent comments written by humans on subject with far more logical flaws.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- riffraff 6y ago
  I would not have imagined it was automatically written. Rambling and there's little connection between the first part and the latter, but absolutely something that might appear on a random internet forum. I am genuinely awed.
- ascar 6y ago
  Also both comments made me suspicious half way through and I scrolled to the bottom to check for a GPT-3 note. Without that note I would definitely have regarded it as incoherent rambling by a human. Especially the second comment can be coherently interpreted with some good will and a cynical view of the humanities and philosophy. The "author" could say that once GPT-3 can write humanities papers it will quickly make humanity scientists redundant and that humanities scientists are philosophers is not important and doesn't warrant a job alone ("they don't actually do anything"). Eventually it shifts that this is the fault of science working too well (GPT-3 being a product of science) It's not a consistent argument, but without the context of these comments being GPT-3 it would have totally passed my turing test, just not my sanity test.
jacobush 6y ago
More coherent than Trump

campercoder 6y ago

I could tell immediately because... it's too long

randomsearch 6y ago

Was it really? I don’t believe you. It makes sense.

jacobedawson 6y ago

So it looks like we're about 2 years away from the 'Her' relationship model.

schoen 6y ago
There was an article recently about people pursuing romantic relationships with chatbots. I thought there was a big HN discussion about it, but the only thing I've been able to find is this WSJ piece https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22833407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22833407 (So I think it was some other story on the same topic.)

Reimersholme 6y ago

Haha, good idea still. Rerun those recent experiments with submitting nonsense articles to journals for gender and postcolonial studies and see how many get accepted.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

EGreg 6y ago

I am seeing it being used in tons of academic settings, especially with distance learning haha

jimkleiber 6y ago

I'm starting to sense that, in most scenarios, I will no longer want to engage in text-based conversations unless I know that I'm talking with a human. I already don't like spending a lot of time arguing with a bot on Twitter, this just makes it much more likely I'll also argue with a bot on medium-length text areas (e.g., HN, FB, Whatsapp, SMS, etc.) and maybe even on long-length text areas (e.g., Medium, blogs, NYTimes or things pretending to be real newspapers, etc.) Second, I'm curious/terrified at how future iterations of GPT-3 may impact our ability to express ourselves and form bonds with other humans. First it's text messages and comments. Then it's essays. Then it's speeches. Then it's love letters. Then it's pitches. Then it's books. Then it's movie scripts. Then it's... TLDR; Fascinated by the technology behind making something like this work and quite worried about the implications of the technology.

regularfry 6y ago

In possibly an unwise move, I'm actually going to respond to the initial point here. There's a totally valid discipline in taking concepts from different areas and smushing them together to make a new idea. That's what a lot of creativity is, fundamentally. So a bot that's been trained across a wide variety of texts, spitting out an amalgam in response to a prompt that causes a connection to be made, is not only possible, but likely a very good way of generating papers (or at least abstracts) for humans to check. And if the raw output is readable, why not publish it?

rsync 6y ago

"This comment was also written by GPT-3" Would you please show us the input text, or rules, you gave to GPT-3 to create this comment ?