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I find talking about "knowing" is too much anthropomorphizing to my taste. A more accurate description would be that it can synthesize an endless amount of pict

I find talking about "knowing" is too much anthropomorphizing to my taste. A more accurate description would be that it can synthesize an endless amount of pictures that the viewer will recognize as giraffes (or as anything else the viewer wants). And I agree, it's pretty amazing. But my point is that talking like this skips over the entire useless "what is knowledge" debate.

soco 4y ago
Maybe we need to "de-antropomorphize" these terms and rules. It's a long due process, I believe.
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  I don't think it's possible. "Knowing" and "understanding" are inherently human experiences. The most reasonable thing to do would be to invent new terms and relegate the older ones, that have too much cultural baggage attached to them. The same way when the creator of humanity turned out to be "evolution by natural selection" we didn't redefine the term "God" to mean that. Eventually we just started using the new term.
- psyc 4y ago
  If it'll get people to stop accusing other people of anthropomorphizing, I'm 100% on board. Now if you can think of a way to get people to quit asking for definitions of the words intelligence and consciousness, you'll be a legend and maybe these discussions will advance for the first time.
  - TremendousJudge 4y ago
    Well, I tried my best. Another commenter summed it up better without using the term "anthropomorphizing" at all, but it came out a bit more condescending than necessary.
  - IIAOPSW 4y ago
    Hang on while I become a legend. I use GPT3 to generate the usual trite arguments about intelligence and consciousness why computers won't ever get there. Of course I don't actually reveal that a computer is generating my responses until later on. Eventually everyone will become jaded and skeptical that the other participants in that conversation are real people. Soon all arguments about machine intelligence will devolve into accusations of using GPT3 or not. Some day, even mentioning consciousness will just make everyone assume you're probably a GPT3 troll. This kills the conversation in a way that makes a valid point. If the bots can't be reliably identified, the proof is in the pudding and the matter is settled.
MauranKilom 4y ago
I too can write a program that will synthesize an endless amount of pictures that the viewer will recognize as a giraffe. They would all be the same picture, just with one bit of noise randomly applied to each pixel - enough to generate more distinct 256x256 pictures of giraffes than there are atoms in the universe. We need to go a bit deeper to tease out what makes DALL-E 2 amazing.

soco 4y ago

Maybe we need to "de-antropomorphize" these terms and rules. It's a long due process, I believe.

TremendousJudge 4y ago
I don't think it's possible. "Knowing" and "understanding" are inherently human experiences. The most reasonable thing to do would be to invent new terms and relegate the older ones, that have too much cultural baggage attached to them. The same way when the creator of humanity turned out to be "evolution by natural selection" we didn't redefine the term "God" to mean that. Eventually we just started using the new term.
psyc 4y ago
If it'll get people to stop accusing other people of anthropomorphizing, I'm 100% on board. Now if you can think of a way to get people to quit asking for definitions of the words intelligence and consciousness, you'll be a legend and maybe these discussions will advance for the first time.
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  Well, I tried my best. Another commenter summed it up better without using the term "anthropomorphizing" at all, but it came out a bit more condescending than necessary.
- IIAOPSW 4y ago
  Hang on while I become a legend. I use GPT3 to generate the usual trite arguments about intelligence and consciousness why computers won't ever get there. Of course I don't actually reveal that a computer is generating my responses until later on. Eventually everyone will become jaded and skeptical that the other participants in that conversation are real people. Soon all arguments about machine intelligence will devolve into accusations of using GPT3 or not. Some day, even mentioning consciousness will just make everyone assume you're probably a GPT3 troll. This kills the conversation in a way that makes a valid point. If the bots can't be reliably identified, the proof is in the pudding and the matter is settled.

MauranKilom 4y ago

I too can write a program that will synthesize an endless amount of pictures that the viewer will recognize as a giraffe. They would all be the same picture, just with one bit of noise randomly applied to each pixel - enough to generate more distinct 256x256 pictures of giraffes than there are atoms in the universe. We need to go a bit deeper to tease out what makes DALL-E 2 amazing.