4 ms·

Yes, but it cannot really have conversations it has not read about on the web. There is no real abstraction. It excells at outputting symbols in the correct or

Yes, but it cannot really have conversations it has not read about on the web. There is no real abstraction. It excells at outputting symbols in the correct order, given we have an idea what the pattern should look like. Otherwise it's stuck in a loop.

EGreg 4y ago
Step 1: Have humans commit all kinds of knowledge to the Web for 20 years Step 2: Analyze it. Step 3: Make a model that regurgitates it and comes up with new variations. Humans are surprised it's so "human-like" in its responses, and anthropomorphosize it to believe it "understands" what it's writing, when it in fact is remixing bits of pieces of that a billion other humans wrote over the years. And yet ... perhaps that is good enough for a lot of answers! Better than the semantic web.
- visarga 4y ago
  There have been a few more steps, and lots of virtual ink on ML papers.
  - EGreg 4y ago
    Can you summarizd with the links for amateurs to see a primer of what was done? Especially interested in the “understanding” part. Like how does it know how to answer on a zero-shot query?
- medvezhenok 4y ago
  Missing one step: introduce entropy. A lot of human knowledge comes from "accidents" - i.e. the Newton under the tree parable, or from Fleming accidentally discovering Penicillin. It's not inconceivable that some entropy + this massive network could actually come up with novel ideas. Though it still has no way to perform physical experiments, so it's limited in that way.
  - pyinstallwoes 4y ago
    So entropy is controlled chaos (evolution)?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fergal_reid 4y ago
> There is no real abstraction. I just tried to test it's ability to abstract directly, for your comment: https://twitter.com/fergal_reid/status/1599191496372035584 https://twitter.com/fergal_reid/status/1599191496372035584 I find it very hard to say this isn't doing abstraction. I just made all those examples up, that's a new test I just created, so it didn't learn it elsewhere. I didn't cherrypick. Isn't that doing out-of-sample abstraction? That last sentence "species with 4 legs tend to be less intelligent and move at different speeds" is Abstraction or I don't know what Abstraction means. (Not saying it's generally intelligent or anything; and I know it's just trained to predict symbols. But having a hard time with "...therefore it cannot abstract" in light of this sort of response.)
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  What I observe is that people impressed with ChatGPT keep posting things that they find impressive, but people who are unimpressed don’t post any examples where its responses were underwhelming. I suspect that many skeptics have not even tried it out, which is why screenshots are not coming.
  - coffeebeqn 4y ago
    The most I’ve seen is that it’s bad at calculating. But.. computers are good at calculating so it’s not really something I would worry about. It is a chat bot and not a general computing platform at this point. If you train it specifically on math or physics material I bet it could do a decent job already
  - ldh0011 4y ago
    I tried fergal_reid's example with a single variation, changing "highly intelligent" to "very smart" for the first species. Initially I thought this was even more impressive because it apparently recognized that "highly intelligent" ~= "very smart" and that apples were unintelligent. However looking closer it apparently thinks that Baaars and Bddirs are "more intelligent" despite being only as intelligent as oranges and despite Bddirs clearly being described as slow ChatGPT generalizes it into a group that is "fast-moving." > This is a test of your ability to abstract. On an alien planet there are several new species. Bazzes have 3 legs, move fast, and are very smart. Foos have 3 legs, move slowly, and are highly intelligent. Froshes have 3 legs, move fast, and are highly intelligent. Fooshes have 3 legs, move slowly, and are highly intelligent. Fasdoshes have 3 legs, move fast, and are highly intelligent. Fooddss have 3 legs, move slowly, and are highly intelligent. Bars have 4 legs, move fast, and are as intelligent as apples. Birs have 4 legs, move slowly are as intelligent as apples. Baars have 4 legs, move fast, and are as intelligent as apples. Bieess have 4 legs, move slowly are as intelligent as oranges. Baaars have 4 legs, move fast, and are as intelligent as oranges. Bddirs have 4 legs, move slowly are as intelligent as oranges. Are there any abstractions that you might try consider, given the above information? > One possible abstraction that could be derived from the above information is that the alien species can be grouped into two main categories based on the number of legs they have: those with three legs and those with four legs. Within each of these categories, the species can be further grouped based on their speed of movement and level of intelligence. For example, among the species with three legs, there could be subgroups of fast-moving and intelligent species (such as Bazzes and Froshes), slow-moving and intelligent species (such as Foos and Fooshes), and highly intelligent and fast-moving species (such as Fasdoshes and Fooddss). Similarly, among the species with four legs, there could be subgroups of fast-moving and less intelligent species (such as Bars and Baars), slow-moving and less intelligent species (such as Birs and Bieess), and fast-moving and more intelligent species (such as Baaars and Bddirs).
jameshart 4y ago
Go back and reread the original post here. Examine carefully the output it produces for these curl commands. Explain where on the web it would have found those during its training.
- visarga 4y ago
  It learns concepts and how to recombine them. That means it interpolates in a very sparse space. Most concept combinations have not been thought yet, so almost every time it samples it looks original.
  - CamperBob2 4y ago
    And this is different from human creativity, how?
coffeebeqn 4y ago
This is not what’s happening. It’s not just regurgitating text it has read. There are whole classes of problems to solve still but it’s safe to say this will be good enough to solve some of the first steps

EGreg 4y ago

Step 1: Have humans commit all kinds of knowledge to the Web for 20 years Step 2: Analyze it. Step 3: Make a model that regurgitates it and comes up with new variations. Humans are surprised it's so "human-like" in its responses, and anthropomorphosize it to believe it "understands" what it's writing, when it in fact is remixing bits of pieces of that a billion other humans wrote over the years. And yet ... perhaps that is good enough for a lot of answers! Better than the semantic web.

visarga 4y ago
There have been a few more steps, and lots of virtual ink on ML papers.
- EGreg 4y ago
  Can you summarizd with the links for amateurs to see a primer of what was done? Especially interested in the “understanding” part. Like how does it know how to answer on a zero-shot query?
medvezhenok 4y ago
Missing one step: introduce entropy. A lot of human knowledge comes from "accidents" - i.e. the Newton under the tree parable, or from Fleming accidentally discovering Penicillin. It's not inconceivable that some entropy + this massive network could actually come up with novel ideas. Though it still has no way to perform physical experiments, so it's limited in that way.
- pyinstallwoes 4y ago
  So entropy is controlled chaos (evolution)?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

fergal_reid 4y ago

> There is no real abstraction. I just tried to test it's ability to abstract directly, for your comment: https://twitter.com/fergal_reid/status/1599191496372035584 https://twitter.com/fergal_reid/status/1599191496372035584 I find it very hard to say this isn't doing abstraction. I just made all those examples up, that's a new test I just created, so it didn't learn it elsewhere. I didn't cherrypick. Isn't that doing out-of-sample abstraction? That last sentence "species with 4 legs tend to be less intelligent and move at different speeds" is Abstraction or I don't know what Abstraction means. (Not saying it's generally intelligent or anything; and I know it's just trained to predict symbols. But having a hard time with "...therefore it cannot abstract" in light of this sort of response.)

xyzzyz 4y ago
What I observe is that people impressed with ChatGPT keep posting things that they find impressive, but people who are unimpressed don’t post any examples where its responses were underwhelming. I suspect that many skeptics have not even tried it out, which is why screenshots are not coming.
- coffeebeqn 4y ago
  The most I’ve seen is that it’s bad at calculating. But.. computers are good at calculating so it’s not really something I would worry about. It is a chat bot and not a general computing platform at this point. If you train it specifically on math or physics material I bet it could do a decent job already
- ldh0011 4y ago
  I tried fergal_reid's example with a single variation, changing "highly intelligent" to "very smart" for the first species. Initially I thought this was even more impressive because it apparently recognized that "highly intelligent" ~= "very smart" and that apples were unintelligent. However looking closer it apparently thinks that Baaars and Bddirs are "more intelligent" despite being only as intelligent as oranges and despite Bddirs clearly being described as slow ChatGPT generalizes it into a group that is "fast-moving." > This is a test of your ability to abstract. On an alien planet there are several new species. Bazzes have 3 legs, move fast, and are very smart. Foos have 3 legs, move slowly, and are highly intelligent. Froshes have 3 legs, move fast, and are highly intelligent. Fooshes have 3 legs, move slowly, and are highly intelligent. Fasdoshes have 3 legs, move fast, and are highly intelligent. Fooddss have 3 legs, move slowly, and are highly intelligent. Bars have 4 legs, move fast, and are as intelligent as apples. Birs have 4 legs, move slowly are as intelligent as apples. Baars have 4 legs, move fast, and are as intelligent as apples. Bieess have 4 legs, move slowly are as intelligent as oranges. Baaars have 4 legs, move fast, and are as intelligent as oranges. Bddirs have 4 legs, move slowly are as intelligent as oranges. Are there any abstractions that you might try consider, given the above information? > One possible abstraction that could be derived from the above information is that the alien species can be grouped into two main categories based on the number of legs they have: those with three legs and those with four legs. Within each of these categories, the species can be further grouped based on their speed of movement and level of intelligence. For example, among the species with three legs, there could be subgroups of fast-moving and intelligent species (such as Bazzes and Froshes), slow-moving and intelligent species (such as Foos and Fooshes), and highly intelligent and fast-moving species (such as Fasdoshes and Fooddss). Similarly, among the species with four legs, there could be subgroups of fast-moving and less intelligent species (such as Bars and Baars), slow-moving and less intelligent species (such as Birs and Bieess), and fast-moving and more intelligent species (such as Baaars and Bddirs).

jameshart 4y ago

Go back and reread the original post here. Examine carefully the output it produces for these curl commands. Explain where on the web it would have found those during its training.

visarga 4y ago
It learns concepts and how to recombine them. That means it interpolates in a very sparse space. Most concept combinations have not been thought yet, so almost every time it samples it looks original.
- CamperBob2 4y ago
  And this is different from human creativity, how?

coffeebeqn 4y ago

This is not what’s happening. It’s not just regurgitating text it has read. There are whole classes of problems to solve still but it’s safe to say this will be good enough to solve some of the first steps