35 ms·

The difference between speaking and thinking

56 points by agomez314 4y ago

kthejoker2 4y ago
My fondest hope is that ChatGPT and others will increase the value of concise, crisp thinking and content. We are at peak bloviation and it's unbearable.
elwebmaster 4y ago
Sounds like the average human to me.
est 4y ago
paywalled. https://archive.is/T3nF7 https://archive.is/T3nF7 might help. > Humans are “good” at language precisely because we combine thought with its expression. Human's "thought" had many pitfalls and fallacies than most people realize. An AI has to be "stupid" enough to mimic 100% human thought behavior. For example "in Scotland there exists at least one field, containing at least one sheep, at least one side of which is black"
sremani 4y ago
ChatGPT is a wordcel. A Sophist! You can get away with a lot being a sophist in the post-literary world we live in, but still. Thinking it is not!
- golemotron 4y ago
  The market value of being a wordcel is about about to drop to nothing. This will be very shocking to many people who thought that they were thinking.
  - SpeedilyDamage 4y ago
    Maybe I'm old, but "wordcel" is an awful term with zero empathy or understanding.
    - bqmjjx0kac 4y ago
      It also categorically doesn't apply to an algorithm we do not believe is conscious. To be a *cel, one has to feel they are treated unfairly.
    - golemotron 4y ago
      You are right. Terms are symbols. They never have any empathy or understanding. You have to find the person using the term and ask them how they mean it or observe. It can be a lot of work, so people rarely do it.
behnamoh 4y ago
I always wondered if it's possible to think without having learnt a language to put the thoughts into words. Sometimes I catch myself speaking nonsense in my inner monologue—the sentences are grammatically correct, but it feels like I'm just putting words next to each other in a way that's similar to GPT (next token prediction) while my attention is actually elsewhere. Edit: The paper linked in the article disagrees with me: https://archive.is/lpfDW https://archive.is/lpfDW
aatd86 4y ago
The difference is not really between speaking and thinking but processing data with and without experience. An AI doesn't have experience so doesn't encode things such as empathy very well. Because it doesn't infer rules based on experience from interacting with other things. (doesn't know what pain feels like so cannot react and decide about some things on its own for instance) It's merely a data processor with statically coded rules. It doesn't handle the unknown very well. Still quite impressive what can be done but there is of course some room for improvement.
- ChicagoBoy11 4y ago
  On the topic of "still quite impressive what can be done", I can't more emphatically recommend (the now quite old!) lecture that Peter Norvig gave which is available on YouTube called the unreasonable effectiveness of data. He does a great job showing some toy and small examples about just how nuanced this point is, and that it is easy to underestimate the impact that simply more data can have. We tend to think of it as a quantitative impact and make all sorts of assumptions as to the second derivative of what the gains can be, but he does a great job showing that there might be all sorts of interesting inflection points and that simply more data can actually have significant qualitative differences.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  I think I'd argue that AI does have experience. That's exactly what training an AI gives it. It is however true that that experience is currently less wide ranging than that of humans.
  - aatd86 4y ago
    That's not really self experience though. The same way, I can read about historical events but I probably haven't experienced these events. So the AI might not be able to realize/derive new causations, mostly able to find out correlations at best. That's what may make it "hallucinate".
    - ASalazarMX 4y ago
didgetmaster 4y ago
The various word salads that are constantly spewed forth by our politicians makes me think that at least some of them are using AI to write their speeches.

56 points by agomez314 4y ago

My fondest hope is that ChatGPT and others will increase the value of concise, crisp thinking and content. We are at peak bloviation and it's unbearable.

elwebmaster 4y ago

Sounds like the average human to me.

est 4y ago

paywalled. https://archive.is/T3nF7 https://archive.is/T3nF7 might help. > Humans are “good” at language precisely because we combine thought with its expression. Human's "thought" had many pitfalls and fallacies than most people realize. An AI has to be "stupid" enough to mimic 100% human thought behavior. For example "in Scotland there exists at least one field, containing at least one sheep, at least one side of which is black"

sremani 4y ago

ChatGPT is a wordcel. A Sophist! You can get away with a lot being a sophist in the post-literary world we live in, but still. Thinking it is not!

golemotron 4y ago
The market value of being a wordcel is about about to drop to nothing. This will be very shocking to many people who thought that they were thinking.
- SpeedilyDamage 4y ago
  Maybe I'm old, but "wordcel" is an awful term with zero empathy or understanding.
  - bqmjjx0kac 4y ago
    It also categorically doesn't apply to an algorithm we do not believe is conscious. To be a *cel, one has to feel they are treated unfairly.
  - golemotron 4y ago
    You are right. Terms are symbols. They never have any empathy or understanding. You have to find the person using the term and ask them how they mean it or observe. It can be a lot of work, so people rarely do it.

behnamoh 4y ago

I always wondered if it's possible to think without having learnt a language to put the thoughts into words. Sometimes I catch myself speaking nonsense in my inner monologue—the sentences are grammatically correct, but it feels like I'm just putting words next to each other in a way that's similar to GPT (next token prediction) while my attention is actually elsewhere. Edit: The paper linked in the article disagrees with me: https://archive.is/lpfDW https://archive.is/lpfDW

aatd86 4y ago

The difference is not really between speaking and thinking but processing data with and without experience. An AI doesn't have experience so doesn't encode things such as empathy very well. Because it doesn't infer rules based on experience from interacting with other things. (doesn't know what pain feels like so cannot react and decide about some things on its own for instance) It's merely a data processor with statically coded rules. It doesn't handle the unknown very well. Still quite impressive what can be done but there is of course some room for improvement.

ChicagoBoy11 4y ago
On the topic of "still quite impressive what can be done", I can't more emphatically recommend (the now quite old!) lecture that Peter Norvig gave which is available on YouTube called the unreasonable effectiveness of data. He does a great job showing some toy and small examples about just how nuanced this point is, and that it is easy to underestimate the impact that simply more data can have. We tend to think of it as a quantitative impact and make all sorts of assumptions as to the second derivative of what the gains can be, but he does a great job showing that there might be all sorts of interesting inflection points and that simply more data can actually have significant qualitative differences.
nicoburns 4y ago
I think I'd argue that AI does have experience. That's exactly what training an AI gives it. It is however true that that experience is currently less wide ranging than that of humans.
- aatd86 4y ago
  That's not really self experience though. The same way, I can read about historical events but I probably haven't experienced these events. So the AI might not be able to realize/derive new causations, mostly able to find out correlations at best. That's what may make it "hallucinate".
  - ASalazarMX 4y ago

didgetmaster 4y ago

The various word salads that are constantly spewed forth by our politicians makes me think that at least some of them are using AI to write their speeches.