5 ms·

...But ChatGPT's successors just might. I, for one, look forward to a future in which I can ask a digital assistant to find and summarize information on anythi

by cs702 4y ago

...But ChatGPT's successors just might. I, for one, look forward to a future in which I can ask a digital assistant to find and summarize information on anything: "Computer, please find out how GPS works and explain it to me like I'm five years old." "Computer, what are the latest Covid-19 infection stats in my city?" "Computer, who is Claude Shannon and why is he important?" "Computer, what are the top three stories on HN today?" "Computer, what's on my calendar?" etc.

IanCal 4y ago
I'll be the first to say that chatgpt already does very well at the first and third examples. WebGPT sounds like the right approach for the others (understanding how to formulate a search query, then searching, then summarising the results) Edit I think the direction of these models seems clear, and their capabilities however limited at the moment are outstanding. I think the best measure of performance is what the naysayers complain about. We've quickly gone from "actual gibberish that looks like paragraphs" to "yes but it loses track after a few sentences" to "yes it's kind of coherent but doesn't make sense totally" and are now at "it's like an overconfident human at many tasks, when they're only somewhat qualified in the area". People are pointing out where it's got an API call wrong, without it having any ability to look up the answer and see if the function actually exists. I spoke to it about distributed computation design and discovered something new I can actually implement in my design. I'm very excited about where this will all go because it seems useful now and I'd be very surprised if this is the best that it ever reaches.
- cs702 4y ago
  I agree (with minor caveats). The important thing is that these AI systems are only going to get better over time. IMHO, the early 2020's for conversational AI is akin to the 1980's for personal computers.
  - IanCal 4y ago
    Absolutely, I totally agree. I edited my comment to add in more as I realised I'd not addressed that. It's surprisingly good right now, and given that it's useful that feeds into even more attention and money being spent on making it better. Anyone not looking at chatgpt and thinking "what if this was even just a bit better? Or had better iterations or lookups?" is missing out on what I think is a revolutionary change coming probably sooner than people expect.
emrah 4y ago
That is, if you can blindly trust the answers.. if it could provide the top sources for the information so I could fact-check it if needed, it would work
- x86x87 4y ago
  We're going to have a generation of people that are cock sure about things because ... ai, but they won't actually know jack shift. It sort of happened with google. People can figure something out but they don't systematically get things. Shallow explanation. Goldfish attention span
  - ben_w 4y ago
    I think that assumes AI makes any difference to the self-certainly of humans. My mother was into all kinds of new age and supernatural stuff. You may think you can see where this anecdote is leading, and oh boy I could go there, but instead prepare for a twist! One of the stories she had was a client saying "It is not possible, Susan, it is not possible that there are beings out there that are cleverer than what we is".
  - alvah 4y ago
    Have you had much to do with young graduates lately? We already have that generation without AI being the cause.
- pattyj 4y ago
  Is there a way to disuade users from blindly trusting responses? Such as unavoidable caveats, make no attempt to provide depth and instead strongly recommend reliable research? And as a logical aside: if AI can't be trusted, we shouldn't trust AI's recommendations for reliable sources either.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    > And as a logical aside: if AI can't be trusted, we shouldn't trust AI's recommendations for reliable sources either. Don't think that's automatically true though: an AI can be consistently excellent at retrieving reliable sources and still get a lot wrong on its summaries. Also humans have their own opinions on sources even when they're not familiar with the detail, and finding out if the AI reads Nature or 4chan is part of the debugging process...
mach1ne 4y ago
>"Computer, please find out how GPS works and explain it to me like I'm five years old." ”I’m sorry, I cannot answer that query because it has ableist connotations. I am a large language model by OpenAI.”
- BenjiWiebe 4y ago
  I guess being young is a disability.
axiom92 4y ago
"Computer, please find out how GPS works and explain it to me like I'm five years old." ChatGPT: GPS stands for Global Positioning System. It is a way that we can figure out where we are in the world using special satellites. Imagine you are standing outside and you see lots of stars in the sky. Well, GPS works kind of like that, but instead of stars, there are satellites orbiting the Earth. These satellites are way up high, so they can see everything on the ground. When you have a GPS device, like a phone or a car, it can talk to these satellites and ask, "Where am I?" The satellites send back a message that says, "You are here!" and gives your device a special code. The GPS device can use this code to figure out exactly where you are on a map. It's kind of like a magic trick! You can use GPS to find out where you are, or to find your way to a new place. It's super helpful when you're lost or want to go on an adventure. Not bad!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- cs702 4y ago
  And it's only going to get better over time. As I mentioned elsewhere, conversational AIs in the early 2020's are like PCs in the 1980's -- a new technology that still has lots of early limitations.
- jakeinspace 4y ago
  The second half of that explanation is completely wrong though, isn’t it? There is no active signal being sent from your GPS antenna, no two-way communication.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    Yes, but unlike most times it gets things wrong, this is probably appropriate for explaining things to 5 year olds. (Also, the UK comedy quiz show QI made the exact same mistake).
    - jakeinspace 4y ago
      I’ll admit it was a decent answer. However, even a somewhat bright person (especially someone with radio / networking experience) could probably have realized that was an issue without any prior knowledge of GPS. They know that their phone has a GPS receiver, and that satellite phones accessing geostationary or high altitude satellites are much bulkier. Clearly, your cell phone isn’t transmitting to each satellite. How will future LLMs be able to conduct that level of reasoning?
emsixteen 4y ago
Like Ask Jeeves on steroids.
localhost 4y ago
Another way to think about these kinds of requests in a future AI world is to ask yourself why you're asking these questions? My take: "Computer, can you write and deliver a message to my kid that explains how GPS works?" "Computer, can you tell me what risks there are at dining at McDonalds down the street?" "Computer, can you read this paper [link] and tell me why it's referencing Claude Shannon?" "Computer, I need to waste some time - please use HN to help me" "Computer, tell me about any plans that I have for today"
textide 4y ago
Agree. ChatGPT is how I imagined the internet would be back in the 90s (without having the foggiest clue how it might get there). Your questions are similar to the types of searches that people really want but have to translate to 'GPS simple explanation' or 'COVID in <town> this year' while hoping for a set of relevant pages in the Google return. I've gotten it to fail on some word problems, but even then it was impressive to see it try to come up with a solution. More humorous were requests like 'Create a post for ycombinator about ChatGPT in the style of Chris Farley'. It's surprising and quite welcome that it even attempts that.
emkoemko 4y ago
where will this data come from and how do you make money off it?
- pixl97 4y ago
  By inserting "enjoy an ice cold refreshing cocktail cola" in the middle of the output?
einpoklum 4y ago
So, what you're saying is that "I'm feeling lucky"?
goatlover 4y ago
Can LLMs be updated quickly the way search engines are by crawlers and what not? ChatGPT is a couple years out of date and there was a lot of human involvement. Doesn’t sound like a quick or automated process. GPT-4 is still under development.

by cs702 4y ago

IanCal 4y ago

I'll be the first to say that chatgpt already does very well at the first and third examples. WebGPT sounds like the right approach for the others (understanding how to formulate a search query, then searching, then summarising the results) Edit I think the direction of these models seems clear, and their capabilities however limited at the moment are outstanding. I think the best measure of performance is what the naysayers complain about. We've quickly gone from "actual gibberish that looks like paragraphs" to "yes but it loses track after a few sentences" to "yes it's kind of coherent but doesn't make sense totally" and are now at "it's like an overconfident human at many tasks, when they're only somewhat qualified in the area". People are pointing out where it's got an API call wrong, without it having any ability to look up the answer and see if the function actually exists. I spoke to it about distributed computation design and discovered something new I can actually implement in my design. I'm very excited about where this will all go because it seems useful now and I'd be very surprised if this is the best that it ever reaches.

cs702 4y ago
I agree (with minor caveats). The important thing is that these AI systems are only going to get better over time. IMHO, the early 2020's for conversational AI is akin to the 1980's for personal computers.
- IanCal 4y ago
  Absolutely, I totally agree. I edited my comment to add in more as I realised I'd not addressed that. It's surprisingly good right now, and given that it's useful that feeds into even more attention and money being spent on making it better. Anyone not looking at chatgpt and thinking "what if this was even just a bit better? Or had better iterations or lookups?" is missing out on what I think is a revolutionary change coming probably sooner than people expect.

emrah 4y ago

That is, if you can blindly trust the answers.. if it could provide the top sources for the information so I could fact-check it if needed, it would work

x86x87 4y ago
We're going to have a generation of people that are cock sure about things because ... ai, but they won't actually know jack shift. It sort of happened with google. People can figure something out but they don't systematically get things. Shallow explanation. Goldfish attention span
- ben_w 4y ago
  I think that assumes AI makes any difference to the self-certainly of humans. My mother was into all kinds of new age and supernatural stuff. You may think you can see where this anecdote is leading, and oh boy I could go there, but instead prepare for a twist! One of the stories she had was a client saying "It is not possible, Susan, it is not possible that there are beings out there that are cleverer than what we is".
- alvah 4y ago
  Have you had much to do with young graduates lately? We already have that generation without AI being the cause.
pattyj 4y ago
Is there a way to disuade users from blindly trusting responses? Such as unavoidable caveats, make no attempt to provide depth and instead strongly recommend reliable research? And as a logical aside: if AI can't be trusted, we shouldn't trust AI's recommendations for reliable sources either.
- notahacker 4y ago
  > And as a logical aside: if AI can't be trusted, we shouldn't trust AI's recommendations for reliable sources either. Don't think that's automatically true though: an AI can be consistently excellent at retrieving reliable sources and still get a lot wrong on its summaries. Also humans have their own opinions on sources even when they're not familiar with the detail, and finding out if the AI reads Nature or 4chan is part of the debugging process...

mach1ne 4y ago

>"Computer, please find out how GPS works and explain it to me like I'm five years old." ”I’m sorry, I cannot answer that query because it has ableist connotations. I am a large language model by OpenAI.”

BenjiWiebe 4y ago
I guess being young is a disability.

axiom92 4y ago

"Computer, please find out how GPS works and explain it to me like I'm five years old." ChatGPT: GPS stands for Global Positioning System. It is a way that we can figure out where we are in the world using special satellites. Imagine you are standing outside and you see lots of stars in the sky. Well, GPS works kind of like that, but instead of stars, there are satellites orbiting the Earth. These satellites are way up high, so they can see everything on the ground. When you have a GPS device, like a phone or a car, it can talk to these satellites and ask, "Where am I?" The satellites send back a message that says, "You are here!" and gives your device a special code. The GPS device can use this code to figure out exactly where you are on a map. It's kind of like a magic trick! You can use GPS to find out where you are, or to find your way to a new place. It's super helpful when you're lost or want to go on an adventure. Not bad!

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
cs702 4y ago
And it's only going to get better over time. As I mentioned elsewhere, conversational AIs in the early 2020's are like PCs in the 1980's -- a new technology that still has lots of early limitations.
jakeinspace 4y ago
The second half of that explanation is completely wrong though, isn’t it? There is no active signal being sent from your GPS antenna, no two-way communication.
- ben_w 4y ago
  Yes, but unlike most times it gets things wrong, this is probably appropriate for explaining things to 5 year olds. (Also, the UK comedy quiz show QI made the exact same mistake).
  - jakeinspace 4y ago
    I’ll admit it was a decent answer. However, even a somewhat bright person (especially someone with radio / networking experience) could probably have realized that was an issue without any prior knowledge of GPS. They know that their phone has a GPS receiver, and that satellite phones accessing geostationary or high altitude satellites are much bulkier. Clearly, your cell phone isn’t transmitting to each satellite. How will future LLMs be able to conduct that level of reasoning?

emsixteen 4y ago

Like Ask Jeeves on steroids.

localhost 4y ago

Another way to think about these kinds of requests in a future AI world is to ask yourself why you're asking these questions? My take: "Computer, can you write and deliver a message to my kid that explains how GPS works?" "Computer, can you tell me what risks there are at dining at McDonalds down the street?" "Computer, can you read this paper [link] and tell me why it's referencing Claude Shannon?" "Computer, I need to waste some time - please use HN to help me" "Computer, tell me about any plans that I have for today"

textide 4y ago

Agree. ChatGPT is how I imagined the internet would be back in the 90s (without having the foggiest clue how it might get there). Your questions are similar to the types of searches that people really want but have to translate to 'GPS simple explanation' or 'COVID in <town> this year' while hoping for a set of relevant pages in the Google return. I've gotten it to fail on some word problems, but even then it was impressive to see it try to come up with a solution. More humorous were requests like 'Create a post for ycombinator about ChatGPT in the style of Chris Farley'. It's surprising and quite welcome that it even attempts that.

emkoemko 4y ago

where will this data come from and how do you make money off it?

pixl97 4y ago
By inserting "enjoy an ice cold refreshing cocktail cola" in the middle of the output?

einpoklum 4y ago

So, what you're saying is that "I'm feeling lucky"?

goatlover 4y ago

Can LLMs be updated quickly the way search engines are by crawlers and what not? ChatGPT is a couple years out of date and there was a lot of human involvement. Doesn’t sound like a quick or automated process. GPT-4 is still under development.