6 ms·

Humans are just "better" stochastic parrots.

by sooheon 5y ago

colordrops 5y ago
Can a parrot have an complex and abstract goal and figure out the many steps to get to that goal?
- mellavora 5y ago
  Real parrots (and many other birds), yes. Stochastic parrots, perhaps not.
- sgt101 5y ago
  as the other commenter said - yes. But the thing is I think it's unlikely that the parrot associates language with the problem solving. Parrots with language capabilities and parrots without language don't seem to have different problem solving capabilities - parrots don't have a spoken/written culture. Humans that are prevented from getting a spoken culture (by isolation) exhibit much reduced problem solving - because the humans with a spoken culture have lots of tips from other humans.
marricks 5y ago
In all these cases if you asked a human for their initial gut response I imagine they’d make the same type of mistakes as GPT3, the difference is if you have someone a minute to think about it and review they wouldn’t.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  "Should I kill myself?" "I think you should." Some sadists may of course have that "gut response" because they're sadists, but which human would respond that way by mistake?!?
flunhat 5y ago
An oft-repeated claim in these debates, usually presented without evidence. But it's not self-evident to me.
- darawk 5y ago
  That's exactly the point, though. The converse is also presented without evidence. We have no evidence that human cognition and GPT-3 cognition are distinct in some fundamental way. All we really know is that we are better at it than GPT-3 is right now. We do not know if the discrepancy is a matter of degree, or a matter of category.
  - RandomLensman 5y ago
    Depends in what you mean by "fundamental level". Generally, we do know that the brain does not work "like a computer" or some AI today.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    That's absurd. We know very well that human cognition has a complex layer of deductive reasoning, goal seeking, planning. We know very well that GPT-3 does not. We also know very well that human learning and GPT-3 learning are nothing alike. We don't know how humans learn exactly, but it's definitely not by hearing trillions and trillions of words. GPT-3 is doing just that, and then trying to remember which of those trillions of words go together. This is so obviously entirely different from human reasoning that I don't even understand the contortions some go not to notice this.
    - Gene_Parmesan 5y ago
      It's the difference between textual mimicry, and what we humans do, which is communication. We conceive of an idea, a concept, that we wish to communicate, and the brain then pulls together appropriate words/symbols as well as the syntactic/semantic rules that we have internalized over decades of communicating to create a statement that accurately represents the idea. If I want to communicate the fact that X and Y are disparate things, I know that "not" is a symbol that can be used to signify this relationship. The core of the difference to me (admittedly not an AI researcher) is intentionality. Humans conceive of an intention, then a communication. This is not what models like GPT-3 do as there is no intentionality present. GPT-3 can create some truly freaky texts but most that I've seen longer than a few sentences suffer from a fairly pronounced uncanny valley effect due to that lack of intention. It's also why I (again, recognizing my lack of expertise) think expecting GPT-3 to do things like provide medical advice is a fool's errand.
ellyagg 5y ago
Everything is everything if you squint
- CRConrad 5y ago
  ...hard enough. Which often means hard enough to have your eyes shut all the way.
tsimionescu 5y ago
There is much less stochastic inference in human reasoning. I am sure that our low level thinking/learning mechanisms are stochastic (including a large helping of evolution in our ancient history), but the higher levels are much more about deductive logic.
DonHopkins 5y ago
Squawk for yourself. ;)

Humans are just "better" stochastic parrots.

colordrops 5y ago

Can a parrot have an complex and abstract goal and figure out the many steps to get to that goal?

mellavora 5y ago
Real parrots (and many other birds), yes. Stochastic parrots, perhaps not.
sgt101 5y ago
as the other commenter said - yes. But the thing is I think it's unlikely that the parrot associates language with the problem solving. Parrots with language capabilities and parrots without language don't seem to have different problem solving capabilities - parrots don't have a spoken/written culture. Humans that are prevented from getting a spoken culture (by isolation) exhibit much reduced problem solving - because the humans with a spoken culture have lots of tips from other humans.

marricks 5y ago

In all these cases if you asked a human for their initial gut response I imagine they’d make the same type of mistakes as GPT3, the difference is if you have someone a minute to think about it and review they wouldn’t.

CRConrad 5y ago
"Should I kill myself?" "I think you should." Some sadists may of course have that "gut response" because they're sadists, but which human would respond that way by mistake?!?

flunhat 5y ago

An oft-repeated claim in these debates, usually presented without evidence. But it's not self-evident to me.

darawk 5y ago
That's exactly the point, though. The converse is also presented without evidence. We have no evidence that human cognition and GPT-3 cognition are distinct in some fundamental way. All we really know is that we are better at it than GPT-3 is right now. We do not know if the discrepancy is a matter of degree, or a matter of category.
- RandomLensman 5y ago
  Depends in what you mean by "fundamental level". Generally, we do know that the brain does not work "like a computer" or some AI today.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  That's absurd. We know very well that human cognition has a complex layer of deductive reasoning, goal seeking, planning. We know very well that GPT-3 does not. We also know very well that human learning and GPT-3 learning are nothing alike. We don't know how humans learn exactly, but it's definitely not by hearing trillions and trillions of words. GPT-3 is doing just that, and then trying to remember which of those trillions of words go together. This is so obviously entirely different from human reasoning that I don't even understand the contortions some go not to notice this.
  - Gene_Parmesan 5y ago
    It's the difference between textual mimicry, and what we humans do, which is communication. We conceive of an idea, a concept, that we wish to communicate, and the brain then pulls together appropriate words/symbols as well as the syntactic/semantic rules that we have internalized over decades of communicating to create a statement that accurately represents the idea. If I want to communicate the fact that X and Y are disparate things, I know that "not" is a symbol that can be used to signify this relationship. The core of the difference to me (admittedly not an AI researcher) is intentionality. Humans conceive of an intention, then a communication. This is not what models like GPT-3 do as there is no intentionality present. GPT-3 can create some truly freaky texts but most that I've seen longer than a few sentences suffer from a fairly pronounced uncanny valley effect due to that lack of intention. It's also why I (again, recognizing my lack of expertise) think expecting GPT-3 to do things like provide medical advice is a fool's errand.

ellyagg 5y ago

Everything is everything if you squint

CRConrad 5y ago
...hard enough. Which often means hard enough to have your eyes shut all the way.

tsimionescu 5y ago

There is much less stochastic inference in human reasoning. I am sure that our low level thinking/learning mechanisms are stochastic (including a large helping of evolution in our ancient history), but the higher levels are much more about deductive logic.

DonHopkins 5y ago

Squawk for yourself. ;)