6 ms·

> Yeah I've been thinking along these lines. ChatGPT is telling us something about language or thought, we just havent got to the bottom of what it is yet. Some

by jw1224 4y ago

> Yeah I've been thinking along these lines. ChatGPT is telling us something about language or thought, we just havent got to the bottom of what it is yet. Something along the lines of 'with enough data its easier to model than we expected'. I’ve been thinking similarly, and am coming to understand and accept we’ll never get to the bottom of it :) The universe is fractal-like in nature. It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that if “we” have created an intelligence which exists as a subset of “us”, a self-similar process is ultimately responsible for granting us our own intelligence.

visarga 4y ago
> 'with enough data its easier to model than we expected' > a self-similar process is ultimately responsible for granting us our own intelligence In my view, intelligence essentially resides within language, specifically in the corpus of language. Both humans and AIs can be effectively colonized by language, as there are innumerable concepts and observations that are transmitted from one mind to another, and now even from mind to LLM. Initially, ideas were limited to human minds, then to small communities, followed by books, computers, and now LLM stands as the ultimate epitome of language replication, in fact one model could contain the whole culture. To be sure, there is a practical intelligence that is learned through personal experiences, but it constitutes only a tiny fraction of our overall intelligence. Hence, both AI and humans have an equal claim to intelligence, because a significant part of our intelligence arises from language.
- melagonster 4y ago
  Ludwig Wittgenstein had same idea. but finally he found human experience is more then our language.
  - _mhr_ 4y ago
    Could you elaborate please? For those of us not familiar with Wittgenstein's work, could you link to sources depicting before and after his views changed, preferably with summaries.
    - karpierz 4y ago
      Summary of before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus Summary of after: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Investigations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Investigations
      - melagonster 4y ago
        thank you
- lukeplato 4y ago
  Yann LeCun often argues that animals like cats and dogs are substantially more intelligent than current LLMs [0] and I'd have to agree. I don't see how/why to consider practical knowledge as only constituting a tiny fraction of our overall intelligence. Either way, it's not clear if the GPT-* models will someday produce emergent common sense or if they're going down an entirely wrong path. [0] https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1622300311573651458 https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1622300311573651458
  - CamperBob2 4y ago
    LeCun misses the point by a mile, which is weird at his level. LLMs absolutely do perform problem solving, every time you feed them a prompt. The problem-solving doesn't happen on the output side of the model, it happens on the input side. Someone objected that a cat can't write a Python program, and LeCun points out that "Regurgitating Python code does not require any understanding of a complex world." No, but a) interpreting the prompt does require understanding, and good luck finding a dog or cat who will offer any response at all to a request for a Python program; and b) it's hardly "regurgitating" if the output never existed anywhere in the training data. TL,DR: his FoMO is showing.
    - jeremyjh 4y ago
      I haven't used GPT-3 to generate code for me but I use Copilot all the time. Sometimes it freaks me out with its precience, but most of the time it is generating either nice one-liners or a lot of plausible-sound rubbish that would never build, much less run on its own. It creates a plausible API that is similar to the one in my app, but not the same; it doesn't integrate any actual structural knowledge of the code-base, its just bullshitting.
      - CamperBob2 4y ago
        Again, the interesting part is what happens on the input side. I can't believe I'm the only person who sees it that way. Likely the legacy of a misspent youth writing Zork parsers...
- lossolo 4y ago
  Intelligence exists without language, language is only a way to describe the world around us and transfer information. We personally can't experience intelligence without language because you know language all your life and can't remember a moment in which you didn't. But there were humans in history that didn't knew any language and they were intelligent, there are animals that do not know any language and are intelligent. There were people in recent history raised in jungle by animals that didn't know language and were intelligent. They have different internal models that describe reality.
  - bilsbie 4y ago
    I’m actually not sure about this.
  - mastercheif 4y ago
    In college I tried a medication called Topamax (Topiramate) for migraine prevention. Topamax has a low-occurrence side effect of “language impairment”. After 10 days or so it became clear that I was particularly susceptible to this phenomenon. It was a terrifying experience, but it was also a valuable one as it changed the way I view intelligence. When I was in the thick of it, my writing and speech skills had devolved to that of a primary school aged child. I’ll never forget trying to type a text message and struggling to come up with simple words like “and”. My speech slowed down considerably and I was having trouble with verbal dictation. The terrifying thing was that my internal world was still as complex and meaningful as it was before. All of the emotions I felt were real and legitimate. My cognition outside of communication was intact, I could do math just fine and conceptualize and abstract problems. In spite of this, I was unable to convey what I was feeling and thinking to the outside world. It felt like I was trapped inside my own body. I thankfully made a full recovery. However, my intuitive understanding of the link between language and intelligence was completely severed. While I believe there’s likely a high degree of correlation between the two in populations, on an individual level one’s language skills mostly represent one’s ability to communicate with the outside world, not their ability to understand complex information or process it. See the following for more info on Topamax/Topiramate language impairment: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10072-008-0906-5 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10072-008-0906-5
- basch 4y ago
  Humans are somewhat a blank slate, and culture is our initial prompt. The variety of humans is because of the variety of our initial prompts, and our similarities are because of the similar characteristics of our various cultures. (I of course recognize some of our intelligence is genetic or epigenetic or microbial.)
  - kortilla 4y ago
    No, chatgpt is already trained once it’s ready for prompts.
    - basch 4y ago
      It’s training is like weighted frequencies, predispositions, instincts. A giant word association machine. Then whatever prompt it is fed is what it becomes.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by jw1224 4y ago

visarga 4y ago

> 'with enough data its easier to model than we expected' > a self-similar process is ultimately responsible for granting us our own intelligence In my view, intelligence essentially resides within language, specifically in the corpus of language. Both humans and AIs can be effectively colonized by language, as there are innumerable concepts and observations that are transmitted from one mind to another, and now even from mind to LLM. Initially, ideas were limited to human minds, then to small communities, followed by books, computers, and now LLM stands as the ultimate epitome of language replication, in fact one model could contain the whole culture. To be sure, there is a practical intelligence that is learned through personal experiences, but it constitutes only a tiny fraction of our overall intelligence. Hence, both AI and humans have an equal claim to intelligence, because a significant part of our intelligence arises from language.

melagonster 4y ago
Ludwig Wittgenstein had same idea. but finally he found human experience is more then our language.
- _mhr_ 4y ago
  Could you elaborate please? For those of us not familiar with Wittgenstein's work, could you link to sources depicting before and after his views changed, preferably with summaries.
  - karpierz 4y ago
    Summary of before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus Summary of after: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Investigations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Investigations
    - melagonster 4y ago
      thank you
lukeplato 4y ago
Yann LeCun often argues that animals like cats and dogs are substantially more intelligent than current LLMs [0] and I'd have to agree. I don't see how/why to consider practical knowledge as only constituting a tiny fraction of our overall intelligence. Either way, it's not clear if the GPT-* models will someday produce emergent common sense or if they're going down an entirely wrong path. [0] https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1622300311573651458 https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1622300311573651458
- CamperBob2 4y ago
  LeCun misses the point by a mile, which is weird at his level. LLMs absolutely do perform problem solving, every time you feed them a prompt. The problem-solving doesn't happen on the output side of the model, it happens on the input side. Someone objected that a cat can't write a Python program, and LeCun points out that "Regurgitating Python code does not require any understanding of a complex world." No, but a) interpreting the prompt does require understanding, and good luck finding a dog or cat who will offer any response at all to a request for a Python program; and b) it's hardly "regurgitating" if the output never existed anywhere in the training data. TL,DR: his FoMO is showing.
  - jeremyjh 4y ago
    I haven't used GPT-3 to generate code for me but I use Copilot all the time. Sometimes it freaks me out with its precience, but most of the time it is generating either nice one-liners or a lot of plausible-sound rubbish that would never build, much less run on its own. It creates a plausible API that is similar to the one in my app, but not the same; it doesn't integrate any actual structural knowledge of the code-base, its just bullshitting.
    - CamperBob2 4y ago
      Again, the interesting part is what happens on the input side. I can't believe I'm the only person who sees it that way. Likely the legacy of a misspent youth writing Zork parsers...
lossolo 4y ago
Intelligence exists without language, language is only a way to describe the world around us and transfer information. We personally can't experience intelligence without language because you know language all your life and can't remember a moment in which you didn't. But there were humans in history that didn't knew any language and they were intelligent, there are animals that do not know any language and are intelligent. There were people in recent history raised in jungle by animals that didn't know language and were intelligent. They have different internal models that describe reality.
- bilsbie 4y ago
  I’m actually not sure about this.
- mastercheif 4y ago
  In college I tried a medication called Topamax (Topiramate) for migraine prevention. Topamax has a low-occurrence side effect of “language impairment”. After 10 days or so it became clear that I was particularly susceptible to this phenomenon. It was a terrifying experience, but it was also a valuable one as it changed the way I view intelligence. When I was in the thick of it, my writing and speech skills had devolved to that of a primary school aged child. I’ll never forget trying to type a text message and struggling to come up with simple words like “and”. My speech slowed down considerably and I was having trouble with verbal dictation. The terrifying thing was that my internal world was still as complex and meaningful as it was before. All of the emotions I felt were real and legitimate. My cognition outside of communication was intact, I could do math just fine and conceptualize and abstract problems. In spite of this, I was unable to convey what I was feeling and thinking to the outside world. It felt like I was trapped inside my own body. I thankfully made a full recovery. However, my intuitive understanding of the link between language and intelligence was completely severed. While I believe there’s likely a high degree of correlation between the two in populations, on an individual level one’s language skills mostly represent one’s ability to communicate with the outside world, not their ability to understand complex information or process it. See the following for more info on Topamax/Topiramate language impairment: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10072-008-0906-5 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10072-008-0906-5
basch 4y ago
Humans are somewhat a blank slate, and culture is our initial prompt. The variety of humans is because of the variety of our initial prompts, and our similarities are because of the similar characteristics of our various cultures. (I of course recognize some of our intelligence is genetic or epigenetic or microbial.)
- kortilla 4y ago
  No, chatgpt is already trained once it’s ready for prompts.
  - basch 4y ago
    It’s training is like weighted frequencies, predispositions, instincts. A giant word association machine. Then whatever prompt it is fed is what it becomes.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]