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The most amusing aspect is that those who insist on calling AI models "just statistical parrots" have to constantly come up with elaborate explanations each ti
by johnthewise 4y ago
The most amusing aspect is that those who insist on calling AI models "just statistical parrots" have to constantly come up with elaborate explanations each time the models do something impressive. Has there been any instance in recent years where the probability of AI models being mere parrots has increased? Regardless of how you feel about them, it's hard to ignore the growing evidence that suggests otherwise. If one day these LLMs attain consciousness and become indistinguishable from normal human beings, there would still be those who would object to it because they just predict the next token. It's really depressing.
- mdp2021 4y ago> If one day these LLMs ... become indistinguishable from normal human beings We will still ask primarily whether they are actually intelligent.
- anonymouskimmer 4y agoI honestly won't care until they demonstrate being self-motivated actors. This is why I value life, from the smallest bacterium to us.
- mdp2021 4y agoEncoding purpose is as easy as creating artificial needs in agents. But sure, if "«self-motivated actors»" wanted to signify "creating an axiology", as part of the ontology, that is surely a (qualitatively) significative piece. But if I wanted to deal with sentient beings with a world model, cats are already available and there is little need for artificial ones. When we develop artificial intelligences, that is to have reliable problem solvers. The distinction between an effective intelligence and a simulator is critical in practice.
- wcoenen 4y agoI was one of those commenting about "stochastic parroting". For the record, I changed my mind. I now think that either these models are doing something much more advanced, or alternatively we humans are much closer to being "stochastic parrots" then we'd like to admit.
- mdp2021 4y ago> are much closer These pages have been full of people that confuse implementation of Intelligence with some implementation of simulation of what some called along the lines of "their cousin Anna", often depicted as an illiterate simpleton who bangs her head on the handles of the rakes she steps on. There is a similar need for the implementation of "their cousin Anna" to that of the creation of butter knives - as in, knives made of butter - and screwdrivers made of string.
- nemo 4y agoI'm still team "Stochastic parroting," ChatGPT promotes this view of itself: > As a machine learning language model, my means of linguistic production is based on the patterns and relationships that I have learned from the large corpus of text on which I was trained. I do not have an innate understanding of language or meaning, but rather, I have learned to make associations and connections between words and phrases based on their usage in the text.
- kahnclusions 4y agoThat’s exactly what they are: statistical parrots. We know how they are built and how they work. What makes them so “amazing” is just the truly massive body of human language they are trained on, which gives them the _appearance_ of intelligence or awareness. Humans communicate through language, so anything that can produce realistic-looking responses to a series of prompts in human language will appear to be “aware” to a human observer. It’s speaking our language, but don’t let yourself get sucked into the illusion.
- int_19h 4y agoWe do not know how they work. We know how the underlying tech works, sure. But we don't really know why, past a certain level of complexity, the "just predict the next token" trick stops feeling like a trick when you actually, you know, sit down and talk to the damn thing.