4 ms·

What this shows is flaws in the test, not that ChatGPT3 has a theory of mind. ChatGPT3 does not even have a theory of physical objects and their relations, nev

by toss1 4y ago

What this shows is flaws in the test, not that ChatGPT3 has a theory of mind. ChatGPT3 does not even have a theory of physical objects and their relations, nevermind a theory of mind. This merely shows that an often useful synthesis of phrases statistically likely to occur in a given context and grammar-checked, will fool people some of the time, and a better statistical model will fool more people more of the time. We can figure out from first principles that it has none of the elements of understanding or reasoning that can produce a theory of mind, any more than the Eliza program did in 1966. So, when it appears to do so, it is demonstrating a flaw in the tests or the assumptions behind the tests. Discouraging that the researchers are so eager to run in the opposite direction; if there is confusion at this level, the general populace has no hope of figuring out what is going on here.

Tv9m 4y ago
What would be evidence that a prediction machine had developed a theory of mind?
- toss1 4y ago
  well, I'd first need to see that it had a Theory of Feet... ;-) More seriously, that it can actually understand and wield abstract concepts. Can it accurately and repeatedly understand that "the foot attaches to the shin bone, which attaches to the thigh bone, which attaches to the hip bone...", and that these have certain degrees of freedom, but not others, and that one foot goes in front of the other, and to easily and reliably distinguish a normal walk from a silly walk . . . Yes, these are different levels of abstraction, especially the last one, and they need to be very accurate to even reach a young child's level of understanding, and this is just one branch of a branch of a branch in the entire fractal pattern of understanding that is necessary for a more general intelligence. Once that is in place, and it can show evidence that it can model it's own mind, then it might be able to model someone else's mind. While the statistical 'abstraction' and remixing seen in these "AI" systems is sometimes impressive and useful, it is frequently revealed that there is utterly no conceptual understanding beneath it. It is merely a statistical re-mixer abstracting patterns of words that occur near other words, remixing them and filtering for grammatical output. It hasn't got a theory of anything, nevermind a theory of mind.
  - Tv9m 4y ago
    "statistical re-mixer" doesn't describe these systems very well. I see this complaint a lot, that supposedly DL models can only manipulate existing content without creating anything of their own. That's just false, unless your standard for originality is so high that humans can't reach it either. These models that have hundreds of billions of "synapses", it's not very shocking to me that they can learn the abstract form of concepts. In fact, it's kind of beautiful that human concepts have this mathematical nature. It vindicates Plato, and disappoints everyone who has claimed that language and meaning is arbitrary. But the main issue here is that for every conceivable empirical test we can perform, you'll still make the same complaint. Even after it's demonstrated better ToM abilities than you, by predicting and explaining other people's mental states better than you can, you'll say the same thing. Maybe it's because you think that "understanding" requires not just accuracy, but having a certain kind of inner experience that a human could relate to.
    - toss1 4y ago
      Yes, I understand that it can appear to synthesize something new, and no, I'm not looking for some inner experience. I'm looking for it to show an ability to wield not only a set of strings (with language associations), but something actually like the platonic ideals - objects, with properties and relations. A few errors show quickly there is no such concept being weilded. >> I saw a fine example of this failure the other day: "Mike's mom has four kids. three are named Danielle, Liam, and Kelly. What is the fourth kid's name?" ChatGPT's reply is explanation of how there isn't enough info in question to tell. Told "The answer is in the question.", ChatGPT just doubles down on the answer. (Sorry, couldn't find the original example) >> "My sister was half my age when I was six years old. I'm now 60 years old. How old is my sister?" ChatGPT: "Your sister is now 30 years old". [0] >> Or this one where ChatGPT entirely fails to understand order/sequence of events. [1] Or a plethora of math problem fails found... Similarly, the image "AI"s fail to understand relationships between objects (or parts of one object), and cannot abstract a particular person's image from a photo, showing it has no understanding of what is a body... (I can look those up if necessary). And, of course, the answers are entirely untethered from reality - it is completely by chance whether the answer is correct or just wrong. It is run through a grammatical filter/generator at the end so it's usually grammatical, but no sort of truth filter (or ethical filter for that matter either). I don't expect some abstract experience, I expect it to be able to break down it's work into fundamental abstract concepts and then construct an answer, and this it cannot do, or it would not be making these kinds of errors. [0] https://twitter.com/Bestie_se_smeje/status/1621091915746918400 https://twitter.com/Bestie_se_smeje/status/16210919157469184... [1] https://twitter.com/albo34511866/status/1621608358003474432 https://twitter.com/albo34511866/status/1621608358003474432

by toss1 4y ago

Tv9m 4y ago

What would be evidence that a prediction machine had developed a theory of mind?

toss1 4y ago
well, I'd first need to see that it had a Theory of Feet... ;-) More seriously, that it can actually understand and wield abstract concepts. Can it accurately and repeatedly understand that "the foot attaches to the shin bone, which attaches to the thigh bone, which attaches to the hip bone...", and that these have certain degrees of freedom, but not others, and that one foot goes in front of the other, and to easily and reliably distinguish a normal walk from a silly walk . . . Yes, these are different levels of abstraction, especially the last one, and they need to be very accurate to even reach a young child's level of understanding, and this is just one branch of a branch of a branch in the entire fractal pattern of understanding that is necessary for a more general intelligence. Once that is in place, and it can show evidence that it can model it's own mind, then it might be able to model someone else's mind. While the statistical 'abstraction' and remixing seen in these "AI" systems is sometimes impressive and useful, it is frequently revealed that there is utterly no conceptual understanding beneath it. It is merely a statistical re-mixer abstracting patterns of words that occur near other words, remixing them and filtering for grammatical output. It hasn't got a theory of anything, nevermind a theory of mind.
- Tv9m 4y ago
  "statistical re-mixer" doesn't describe these systems very well. I see this complaint a lot, that supposedly DL models can only manipulate existing content without creating anything of their own. That's just false, unless your standard for originality is so high that humans can't reach it either. These models that have hundreds of billions of "synapses", it's not very shocking to me that they can learn the abstract form of concepts. In fact, it's kind of beautiful that human concepts have this mathematical nature. It vindicates Plato, and disappoints everyone who has claimed that language and meaning is arbitrary. But the main issue here is that for every conceivable empirical test we can perform, you'll still make the same complaint. Even after it's demonstrated better ToM abilities than you, by predicting and explaining other people's mental states better than you can, you'll say the same thing. Maybe it's because you think that "understanding" requires not just accuracy, but having a certain kind of inner experience that a human could relate to.
  - toss1 4y ago
    Yes, I understand that it can appear to synthesize something new, and no, I'm not looking for some inner experience. I'm looking for it to show an ability to wield not only a set of strings (with language associations), but something actually like the platonic ideals - objects, with properties and relations. A few errors show quickly there is no such concept being weilded. >> I saw a fine example of this failure the other day: "Mike's mom has four kids. three are named Danielle, Liam, and Kelly. What is the fourth kid's name?" ChatGPT's reply is explanation of how there isn't enough info in question to tell. Told "The answer is in the question.", ChatGPT just doubles down on the answer. (Sorry, couldn't find the original example) >> "My sister was half my age when I was six years old. I'm now 60 years old. How old is my sister?" ChatGPT: "Your sister is now 30 years old". [0] >> Or this one where ChatGPT entirely fails to understand order/sequence of events. [1] Or a plethora of math problem fails found... Similarly, the image "AI"s fail to understand relationships between objects (or parts of one object), and cannot abstract a particular person's image from a photo, showing it has no understanding of what is a body... (I can look those up if necessary). And, of course, the answers are entirely untethered from reality - it is completely by chance whether the answer is correct or just wrong. It is run through a grammatical filter/generator at the end so it's usually grammatical, but no sort of truth filter (or ethical filter for that matter either). I don't expect some abstract experience, I expect it to be able to break down it's work into fundamental abstract concepts and then construct an answer, and this it cannot do, or it would not be making these kinds of errors. [0] https://twitter.com/Bestie_se_smeje/status/1621091915746918400 https://twitter.com/Bestie_se_smeje/status/16210919157469184... [1] https://twitter.com/albo34511866/status/1621608358003474432 https://twitter.com/albo34511866/status/1621608358003474432