3 ms·

It's easy to dismiss stuff like this without having interacted with these models, but there's something visceral about doing so that at least personally left me

It's easy to dismiss stuff like this without having interacted with these models, but there's something visceral about doing so that at least personally left me re-assessing some of my viewpoints on ML/AI. I've had a chance to interact with the model in the article and it is truly a spooky experience. I'm looking forward to seeing how people react once they get a chance to try some of these increasingly massive chat models in person. GPT-3 is just the tip of the iceberg. (views my own blah blah)

skybrian 5y ago
Sure, but I can't get over how it's picking the next word literally at random from a probability distribution - unless you turn that off and then it often goes into an infinite loop. I think it's like song lyrics. We can find meaning in vagueness. Particularly if you retry a few times. High-probability completions are likely to seem meaningful.
- cecilpl2 5y ago
  How do you know you are not also picking the next word at random from a probability distribution? I mean, as I'm typing this sentence, I have some notion about which word is going to come next, and a sense of where the sentence is going to go. But maybe that is what it feels like to be a large neural network that has been trained on very large data sets for long periods of time.
  - skybrian 5y ago
    One skill we do have is the ability to realize that what we said is not what we meant, and make a correction. This is more goal-oriented than what a transformer is doing. Its only goal is to continue onward in a plausible way and it could be in any direction depending on a random choice. It doesn't care which way it goes.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- nharada 5y ago
  Yeah, and I guess that's kind of the point. You can still see the seams in many of these models, but you could easily imagine a version that's truly indistinguishable from a human. Or at least indistinguishable from something we'd consider an "intelligent entity". And in that case, how does what's under the hood affect the "meaning"? Should it? This isn't a new idea by any means, science fiction has tackled this ad-nauseam. The thing that caused me to have a strong reaction is that previously it's never seemed like a question we'd seriously have to contend with. It's an interesting idea in a nicely wrapped up 2 hour movie, but damn does it seem scary and complicated out here in the real world.
  - skybrian 5y ago
    I don't think they will get there by scaling this technology. Something more is needed to have an interesting world model. But machine learning research is a hot field and it could be invented any year now.

skybrian 5y ago

Sure, but I can't get over how it's picking the next word literally at random from a probability distribution - unless you turn that off and then it often goes into an infinite loop. I think it's like song lyrics. We can find meaning in vagueness. Particularly if you retry a few times. High-probability completions are likely to seem meaningful.

cecilpl2 5y ago
How do you know you are not also picking the next word at random from a probability distribution? I mean, as I'm typing this sentence, I have some notion about which word is going to come next, and a sense of where the sentence is going to go. But maybe that is what it feels like to be a large neural network that has been trained on very large data sets for long periods of time.
- skybrian 5y ago
  One skill we do have is the ability to realize that what we said is not what we meant, and make a correction. This is more goal-oriented than what a transformer is doing. Its only goal is to continue onward in a plausible way and it could be in any direction depending on a random choice. It doesn't care which way it goes.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
nharada 5y ago
Yeah, and I guess that's kind of the point. You can still see the seams in many of these models, but you could easily imagine a version that's truly indistinguishable from a human. Or at least indistinguishable from something we'd consider an "intelligent entity". And in that case, how does what's under the hood affect the "meaning"? Should it? This isn't a new idea by any means, science fiction has tackled this ad-nauseam. The thing that caused me to have a strong reaction is that previously it's never seemed like a question we'd seriously have to contend with. It's an interesting idea in a nicely wrapped up 2 hour movie, but damn does it seem scary and complicated out here in the real world.
- skybrian 5y ago
  I don't think they will get there by scaling this technology. Something more is needed to have an interesting world model. But machine learning research is a hot field and it could be invented any year now.