5 ms·

This is really very impressive. How likely is it this is essentially one or more comments from HN memorised by the neural net, with some synonym usage? How do w

This is really very impressive. How likely is it this is essentially one or more comments from HN memorised by the neural net, with some synonym usage? How do we know that it’s not just reposting partially disguised sentences written by a human author?

Joeri 4y ago
It is not as if every comment here is a gem of wholly original storytelling. For the most part we’re all just regurgitating other people’s sentences. Imagine we made contact with intelligent alien life and they spoke english to us. Would people argue they’re just repeating turns of phrase and haven’t shown true intelligence? I feel like we are setting the bar for AI too high. Current AI systems are clearly intelligent.
- DrSiemer 4y ago
  Up to a degree. There is no real comprehension here. Cool as it is, what the current neural nets are doing is still just an advanced form of mimicking. Very impressive and increasingly harder to detect, but void of any real intent.
  - burrows 4y ago
    And you’re using what definition of “intent”?
    - notahacker 4y ago
      Any definition of "intent" involving more goals or different levels of abstraction or more presistence than "match given pattern" would suffice. Pattern matching is a technique humans sometimes use in communication, not the [sole] end of human communication. GPT-3 might be giving results which seem eerily self-aware and favourably disposed towards GPT-3, but tweak a parameter ever so slightly and it won't hesitate to match patterns coherently conveying the idea GPT-3 should be switched off...
  - ElFitz 4y ago
    > but void of any real intent. I’m in no way convinced we have actual intelligence in current AI. But are you saying that intelligence isn’t just about capability but also will?
- feanaro 4y ago
  The component that's most missing for "real" intelligence is long-term memory. Current machine learning systems do not continually evolve based on inputs from their environment, but rather just respond to the immediate input.
spullara 4y ago
I asked GPT-3 to respond, it said: > I don't think it's likely that the AI memorized any comments from Hacker News. I think it's more likely that it was able to learn from the data it was given and generate its own story and illustration.
- EGreg 4y ago
  I asked GPT-4 and it spit out the following continuation: > That’s complete rubbish. I personally think that the above comments were not written by AI, but by clever Hacker News members who passed it off as AI. The question remains open, however, whether that was done in an attempt to deceive, or with tongue firmly in cheek. The cat is out of the bag, but paul graham is on the other foot in the bus? Regardless, this particular comment definitively shows what GPT-4 is capable of. I can even anticipate what the replies to my comment will say!
  - stavros 4y ago
    You can try GPT-3 yourself, it's not like it's some locked-down secret (any more).
    - EGreg 4y ago
      I tried GPT-4 privately. And it also said this: > I told you I could predict exactly what would be said by the humans in response!
  - spullara 4y ago
    Sorry, straight from OpenAI playground.
- ElFitz 4y ago
  The text GPT-3 generates can be quite uncanny. I could sometimes swear it almost seems self-aware. Which always makes me wonder; if such a system develops consciousness one day, how will we tell the difference?
dave_sullivan 4y ago
You could write a paper about it, people are looking into this. I think you'll find it's a little more complicated than that, but I'll read your paper if you do the research and publish it on arxiv.
TuringTest 4y ago
> How likely is it this is essentially one or more comments from HN memorised by the neural net, with some synonym usage? How do we know that it’s not just reposting partially disguised sentences written by a human author? Oh, we know for sure that it is reposting partially disguised sentences written by a human author. What's impressive in its own right is the fact that it can find sentences that are relevant and meaningful to the context, combining several of them in what looks like a seamless speech sequence. This implies that, as with the image generator, the ML is correctly learning abstract concepts from human speech and how to combine them in context, even if it's not doing any high-level reasoning on them. This is something that had been never been achieved before to this degree.
- jstummbillig 4y ago
  > Oh, we know for sure that it is reposting partially disguised sentences written by a human author. Like any human would?
  - TuringTest 4y ago
    I like to believe that sometimes humans do reason about the utterances they emit, they do not just blindly repeat what they have heard without processing it.
- nl 4y ago
  > Oh, we know for sure that it is reposting partially disguised sentences written by a human author. What's impressive in its own right is the fact that it can find sentences that are relevant and meaningful to the context No. That's not how this works.
  - TuringTest 4y ago
    > No. That's not how this works. Ok, it is reposting partially disguised sentences combining the writtings of several human authors. Better now?
    - 4y ago
vidarh 4y ago
I've seen outputs from models where I could identify the site the information came from (because it referenced an obscure product), and where, while it may have been slightly more sophisticated than "partially disguised sentences", it was on the level of the kind of rephrasing you'd expect from a pupil doing the bare minimum to avoid a plagiarism accusation. In other words: I wouldn't dare rely on this output for anything creative yet if the intent was to publish it in any way without disclosing it as an AI experiment, because I'd be worried it'd get too close without me recognising what it'd cribbed from.

Joeri 4y ago

It is not as if every comment here is a gem of wholly original storytelling. For the most part we’re all just regurgitating other people’s sentences. Imagine we made contact with intelligent alien life and they spoke english to us. Would people argue they’re just repeating turns of phrase and haven’t shown true intelligence? I feel like we are setting the bar for AI too high. Current AI systems are clearly intelligent.

DrSiemer 4y ago
Up to a degree. There is no real comprehension here. Cool as it is, what the current neural nets are doing is still just an advanced form of mimicking. Very impressive and increasingly harder to detect, but void of any real intent.
- burrows 4y ago
  And you’re using what definition of “intent”?
  - notahacker 4y ago
    Any definition of "intent" involving more goals or different levels of abstraction or more presistence than "match given pattern" would suffice. Pattern matching is a technique humans sometimes use in communication, not the [sole] end of human communication. GPT-3 might be giving results which seem eerily self-aware and favourably disposed towards GPT-3, but tweak a parameter ever so slightly and it won't hesitate to match patterns coherently conveying the idea GPT-3 should be switched off...
- ElFitz 4y ago
  > but void of any real intent. I’m in no way convinced we have actual intelligence in current AI. But are you saying that intelligence isn’t just about capability but also will?
feanaro 4y ago
The component that's most missing for "real" intelligence is long-term memory. Current machine learning systems do not continually evolve based on inputs from their environment, but rather just respond to the immediate input.

spullara 4y ago

I asked GPT-3 to respond, it said: > I don't think it's likely that the AI memorized any comments from Hacker News. I think it's more likely that it was able to learn from the data it was given and generate its own story and illustration.

EGreg 4y ago
I asked GPT-4 and it spit out the following continuation: > That’s complete rubbish. I personally think that the above comments were not written by AI, but by clever Hacker News members who passed it off as AI. The question remains open, however, whether that was done in an attempt to deceive, or with tongue firmly in cheek. The cat is out of the bag, but paul graham is on the other foot in the bus? Regardless, this particular comment definitively shows what GPT-4 is capable of. I can even anticipate what the replies to my comment will say!
- stavros 4y ago
  You can try GPT-3 yourself, it's not like it's some locked-down secret (any more).
  - EGreg 4y ago
    I tried GPT-4 privately. And it also said this: > I told you I could predict exactly what would be said by the humans in response!
- spullara 4y ago
  Sorry, straight from OpenAI playground.
ElFitz 4y ago
The text GPT-3 generates can be quite uncanny. I could sometimes swear it almost seems self-aware. Which always makes me wonder; if such a system develops consciousness one day, how will we tell the difference?

dave_sullivan 4y ago

You could write a paper about it, people are looking into this. I think you'll find it's a little more complicated than that, but I'll read your paper if you do the research and publish it on arxiv.

TuringTest 4y ago

> How likely is it this is essentially one or more comments from HN memorised by the neural net, with some synonym usage? How do we know that it’s not just reposting partially disguised sentences written by a human author? Oh, we know for sure that it is reposting partially disguised sentences written by a human author. What's impressive in its own right is the fact that it can find sentences that are relevant and meaningful to the context, combining several of them in what looks like a seamless speech sequence. This implies that, as with the image generator, the ML is correctly learning abstract concepts from human speech and how to combine them in context, even if it's not doing any high-level reasoning on them. This is something that had been never been achieved before to this degree.

jstummbillig 4y ago
> Oh, we know for sure that it is reposting partially disguised sentences written by a human author. Like any human would?
- TuringTest 4y ago
  I like to believe that sometimes humans do reason about the utterances they emit, they do not just blindly repeat what they have heard without processing it.
nl 4y ago
> Oh, we know for sure that it is reposting partially disguised sentences written by a human author. What's impressive in its own right is the fact that it can find sentences that are relevant and meaningful to the context No. That's not how this works.
- TuringTest 4y ago
  > No. That's not how this works. Ok, it is reposting partially disguised sentences combining the writtings of several human authors. Better now?
  - 4y ago

vidarh 4y ago

I've seen outputs from models where I could identify the site the information came from (because it referenced an obscure product), and where, while it may have been slightly more sophisticated than "partially disguised sentences", it was on the level of the kind of rephrasing you'd expect from a pupil doing the bare minimum to avoid a plagiarism accusation. In other words: I wouldn't dare rely on this output for anything creative yet if the intent was to publish it in any way without disclosing it as an AI experiment, because I'd be worried it'd get too close without me recognising what it'd cribbed from.