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Because when people say “AGI is near, just look at GPT-3,” it’d clear that we’re in a really good version of Searle’s chinese room. The lack of understanding is

Because when people say “AGI is near, just look at GPT-3,” it’d clear that we’re in a really good version of Searle’s chinese room. The lack of understanding is the important point.

mordymoop 6y ago
I don’t recall any strong argument that Searle’s Chinese room can’t be an AGI, just that it can’t be conscious.
- azinman2 6y ago
  Certainly consciousness and understand are central to Searle’s argument. However from my perspective (particularly someone who is critical of all the recent DNN advances as being some harbinger of AGI), if all you’re doing is looking up replies from a dictionary, then you have no capacity to generalize, learn new things, adapt, empathize, have memory that isn’t already pre-computed and pre-allocated. Now there are ways in which thru fine tuning etc that you can take GPT-3 and have it adapt in some way, thru such adaption or “context/attention networks” give it “memory,” in practice neither of these looks anything like AGI because right now these pages of this Chinese dictionary don’t have any relationship to each other. It becomes clear both in this article (you shouldn’t need some “correct” prompt to get it to make sense), and clear with long form generation that there isn’t a deeper understanding of the meaning of these words. I will say it’s very impressive what it can do when it does make sense, shockingly so, but we are very much in the position where we didn’t expect “chinese” to come out of the machine at all and thus we are projecting onto its outputs an anthropomorphisis that is unwarranted.
Isinlor 6y ago
To me you are also just a very good version of a Chinese room. How would you show me that you are not?
- azinman2 6y ago
  You can look up my comment history and find a continuity and a perspective mired in personal experience that a machine cannot (at least currently) replicate.
  - Isinlor 6y ago
    That proves that you are not GPT-3, but you could still be a Chinese room. You may be even a biological human and I still won't know if you are a Chinese room. Maybe since birth you are just sort of sleepwalking? I wouldn't be surprised if there were fully functional people without qualia.
    - azinman2 6y ago
      If I am, I’m the best Chinese room created yet.
      - Isinlor 6y ago
        I guess you are :) . I will tell you a secret. I suspect I'm a Chinese room too ^^ ... There are also people with so called total locked-in syndrome i.e. people who can not do any voluntary movements even with their eyes, so there is no way to communicate with them. How would you decide if they are conscious? It may be literally matter of live and death for them. How should we know if they even want to live in their condition?

Because when people say “AGI is near, just look at GPT-3,” it’d clear that we’re in a really good version of Searle’s chinese room. The lack of understanding is the important point.

mordymoop 6y ago

I don’t recall any strong argument that Searle’s Chinese room can’t be an AGI, just that it can’t be conscious.

azinman2 6y ago
Certainly consciousness and understand are central to Searle’s argument. However from my perspective (particularly someone who is critical of all the recent DNN advances as being some harbinger of AGI), if all you’re doing is looking up replies from a dictionary, then you have no capacity to generalize, learn new things, adapt, empathize, have memory that isn’t already pre-computed and pre-allocated. Now there are ways in which thru fine tuning etc that you can take GPT-3 and have it adapt in some way, thru such adaption or “context/attention networks” give it “memory,” in practice neither of these looks anything like AGI because right now these pages of this Chinese dictionary don’t have any relationship to each other. It becomes clear both in this article (you shouldn’t need some “correct” prompt to get it to make sense), and clear with long form generation that there isn’t a deeper understanding of the meaning of these words. I will say it’s very impressive what it can do when it does make sense, shockingly so, but we are very much in the position where we didn’t expect “chinese” to come out of the machine at all and thus we are projecting onto its outputs an anthropomorphisis that is unwarranted.

Isinlor 6y ago

To me you are also just a very good version of a Chinese room. How would you show me that you are not?

azinman2 6y ago
You can look up my comment history and find a continuity and a perspective mired in personal experience that a machine cannot (at least currently) replicate.
- Isinlor 6y ago
  That proves that you are not GPT-3, but you could still be a Chinese room. You may be even a biological human and I still won't know if you are a Chinese room. Maybe since birth you are just sort of sleepwalking? I wouldn't be surprised if there were fully functional people without qualia.
  - azinman2 6y ago
    If I am, I’m the best Chinese room created yet.
    - Isinlor 6y ago
      I guess you are :) . I will tell you a secret. I suspect I'm a Chinese room too ^^ ... There are also people with so called total locked-in syndrome i.e. people who can not do any voluntary movements even with their eyes, so there is no way to communicate with them. How would you decide if they are conscious? It may be literally matter of live and death for them. How should we know if they even want to live in their condition?