6 ms·

There is enough GPT discussion online now that the next language model will be trained on text that talks about itself. That's when it gets interesting.

taneq 6y ago
Oooh, now that does raise some spooky time-delayed consciousness vibes.
- visarga 6y ago
  GPT-3 knows about GPT-2 and can generate an article about itself.
  - joe_the_user 6y ago
    I've noticed many GPT-3 article tending to wander into being article about AI, fear of AI and GPT-3-itself without any prompting. Many people's speech tends to become discussions about themselves, so that might demonstrate "humanity" in an odd sense.
  - MauranKilom 6y ago
    ...but GPT-3 will only ever describe itself by explaining the features and capabilities of GPT-2. That's usually a very easy giveaway.
    - taneq 6y ago
      Wait, is GPT-3 the trained network or is it the architecture and methodology behind it? If they re-run the same code on a fresh web crawl would that then be called GPT-4? I'd have thought you could update GPT-3's... knowledge? Understanding? Whatever the hell it is? by doing this semi-regularly.
minimaxir 6y ago
I ran an experiment through GPT-3 with just that frame: https://github.com/minimaxir/gpt-3-experiments/tree/master/examples/gpt-3 https://github.com/minimaxir/gpt-3-experiments/tree/master/e...
- andreareina 6y ago
  What does the x_y signify? And what's going on with 0_0?? From my (very limited) understanding a fixed point/cycle like that should be vanishingly unlikely.
  - minimaxir 6y ago
    Those are the temperatures (0.0, 0.7, etc.) that control the craziness. 0.0 means the model makes the optimal guess for each token. Unfortunately, both GPT-2 and GPT-3 have a tendency to enter loops. But it's not always bad: https://github.com/minimaxir/gpt-3-experiments/blob/master/examples/revengeofthesith/output_0_0.md https://github.com/minimaxir/gpt-3-experiments/blob/master/e...
    - andreareina 6y ago
      Thanks, didn't twig onto the fact that you linked a subtree of the whole repo. Weird that even with the nonzero temp the AskReddit prompt went a bit loopy. > https://github.com/minimaxir/gpt-3-experiments/blob/master/examples/revengeofthesith/output_0_0.md https://github.com/minimaxir/gpt-3-experiments/blob/master/e... Oh my goodness that is absurd in the most delightful way. Thanks for sharing that.
geofft 6y ago
This seems like what xkcd called "citogenesis" - something inaccurate gets published on Wikipedia, a traditional "reliable source" (newspaper, published nonfiction book, etc.) retells that bit of information without a source, Wikipedia cites the source, that information is now firmly established as truth for the rest of humanity. I worry about this with Google's language translation models, too. It's entirely possible that it's making up phrases or connotations that never existed in organic human speech, but people who aren't fully fluent in the language use Google Translate for assistance, publish something, and then suddenly it's in a published text by an actual human and Google reinforces its own belief. For at least the past five years, Google Translate has translated "who proceeds from the father" into Latin as "qui ex patre filioque procedit" - inserting the additional word "filioque," which means "and the son." The question of whether to add this word is a 1500-year-old theological argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filioque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filioque Since the Western Church added the word, most texts in Latin include it, so Google is almost certainly deciding that the phrasing with "filioque" is more popular - but it doesn't know what the words mean, so it can't realize that the phrase it came up with means something different!
- xapata 6y ago
  I met an artist whose body of work consisted of citogenisis. He'd been at it for a decade when I met him, and had created at least a dozen fictional artists, detailed biographies, and a complete "retrospective" gallery show for each. This let him copy the styles of the great masters of different periods, yet make something new, of a sort. He never edited Wikipedia himself, but instead led gallery tours of these retrospectives and was always overjoyed when people would write about them, propagating the fiction.
- gugagore 6y ago
  This is an issue solvable with better provenance / data lineage, which has come up in recent HN discussions.
  - geofft 6y ago
    How do you enforce that other people provide provenance on text? Taking the translation example - how do you enforce that users of Google Translate keep provenance in their translated text that remains with the text?
sillysaurusx 6y ago
This has been a thing for over a year now. https://www.reddit.com/user/subsimgpt2metaGPT2/?sort=top https://www.reddit.com/user/subsimgpt2metaGPT2/?sort=top

taneq 6y ago

Oooh, now that does raise some spooky time-delayed consciousness vibes.

visarga 6y ago
GPT-3 knows about GPT-2 and can generate an article about itself.
- joe_the_user 6y ago
  I've noticed many GPT-3 article tending to wander into being article about AI, fear of AI and GPT-3-itself without any prompting. Many people's speech tends to become discussions about themselves, so that might demonstrate "humanity" in an odd sense.
- MauranKilom 6y ago
  ...but GPT-3 will only ever describe itself by explaining the features and capabilities of GPT-2. That's usually a very easy giveaway.
  - taneq 6y ago
    Wait, is GPT-3 the trained network or is it the architecture and methodology behind it? If they re-run the same code on a fresh web crawl would that then be called GPT-4? I'd have thought you could update GPT-3's... knowledge? Understanding? Whatever the hell it is? by doing this semi-regularly.

minimaxir 6y ago

I ran an experiment through GPT-3 with just that frame: https://github.com/minimaxir/gpt-3-experiments/tree/master/examples/gpt-3 https://github.com/minimaxir/gpt-3-experiments/tree/master/e...

andreareina 6y ago
What does the x_y signify? And what's going on with 0_0?? From my (very limited) understanding a fixed point/cycle like that should be vanishingly unlikely.
- minimaxir 6y ago
  Those are the temperatures (0.0, 0.7, etc.) that control the craziness. 0.0 means the model makes the optimal guess for each token. Unfortunately, both GPT-2 and GPT-3 have a tendency to enter loops. But it's not always bad: https://github.com/minimaxir/gpt-3-experiments/blob/master/examples/revengeofthesith/output_0_0.md https://github.com/minimaxir/gpt-3-experiments/blob/master/e...
  - andreareina 6y ago
    Thanks, didn't twig onto the fact that you linked a subtree of the whole repo. Weird that even with the nonzero temp the AskReddit prompt went a bit loopy. > https://github.com/minimaxir/gpt-3-experiments/blob/master/examples/revengeofthesith/output_0_0.md https://github.com/minimaxir/gpt-3-experiments/blob/master/e... Oh my goodness that is absurd in the most delightful way. Thanks for sharing that.

geofft 6y ago

This seems like what xkcd called "citogenesis" - something inaccurate gets published on Wikipedia, a traditional "reliable source" (newspaper, published nonfiction book, etc.) retells that bit of information without a source, Wikipedia cites the source, that information is now firmly established as truth for the rest of humanity. I worry about this with Google's language translation models, too. It's entirely possible that it's making up phrases or connotations that never existed in organic human speech, but people who aren't fully fluent in the language use Google Translate for assistance, publish something, and then suddenly it's in a published text by an actual human and Google reinforces its own belief. For at least the past five years, Google Translate has translated "who proceeds from the father" into Latin as "qui ex patre filioque procedit" - inserting the additional word "filioque," which means "and the son." The question of whether to add this word is a 1500-year-old theological argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filioque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filioque Since the Western Church added the word, most texts in Latin include it, so Google is almost certainly deciding that the phrasing with "filioque" is more popular - but it doesn't know what the words mean, so it can't realize that the phrase it came up with means something different!

xapata 6y ago
I met an artist whose body of work consisted of citogenisis. He'd been at it for a decade when I met him, and had created at least a dozen fictional artists, detailed biographies, and a complete "retrospective" gallery show for each. This let him copy the styles of the great masters of different periods, yet make something new, of a sort. He never edited Wikipedia himself, but instead led gallery tours of these retrospectives and was always overjoyed when people would write about them, propagating the fiction.
gugagore 6y ago
This is an issue solvable with better provenance / data lineage, which has come up in recent HN discussions.
- geofft 6y ago
  How do you enforce that other people provide provenance on text? Taking the translation example - how do you enforce that users of Google Translate keep provenance in their translated text that remains with the text?

sillysaurusx 6y ago

This has been a thing for over a year now. https://www.reddit.com/user/subsimgpt2metaGPT2/?sort=top https://www.reddit.com/user/subsimgpt2metaGPT2/?sort=top