10 ms·

How is this significant? I mean you can view a moving car as stationary, and reality is the thing that moves around it, or you can view reality as stationary, b

by Rury 4y ago

How is this significant? I mean you can view a moving car as stationary, and reality is the thing that moves around it, or you can view reality as stationary, but the car moves through it. Or you can make analogies between electricity and water. (Frankly, I like viewing neural nets as a numerical method for doing nonlinear multivariate regression, and ChatGPT is nothing but a resulting equation(s) of such). In the end, regardless of how you choose to perceive it, the result is the same, so what's your point? It sounds like you just don't like viewing it as simply "a probabilistic word generator", as that takes the magic out of it. And yeah, it's not magic, but it is quite useful.

kilgnad 4y ago
Well you're just a jumble of electrons and protons interacting with each other. That's a 100% true interpretation is it not? It's also a view that misses the point that you are a molecular intelligence made of DNA that continually mutates and reconstructs it's physical form with generational copies to increase fitness in an ever changing environment. But that viewpoint also misses the point that you're a human with wants, needs, desires and capability of understanding the world around you. All viewpoints are valid. But Depending on the context one viewpoint is more valid then others. For example, in my day to day life do I go around treating everyone as if they're useless jumbles of molecules and atoms? Do I treat them like biological natural selection entities? Or do I treat them like humans? What I'm complaining about is the fact that a lot of people are taking the most simplest viewpoint when looking at these LLMs. They ARE MORE then statistical word generators and it's OBVIOUS this is the case when you talk to it in-depth. Why are people denying the obvious? Why are people choosing not to look at LLMs for what they are? Because of fear. Because of bias.
- Rury 4y ago
  I still don't see your point behind your first 4 paragraphs. How you decide to treat your fellow humans is up to you. Just as you can decide to view your fellow humans however you want. It's entirely possible to treat them like "humans" while still viewing them as nothing but jumbles of molecules and atoms. So again why does perspective matter here (particularly with ChatGPT being a statistical word generator)? Your last paragraph lacks proof, and is a reflection of how you feel and want to view it - as something more than a statistical word generator. That's fine, but people with graduate level math/statistics education know that math/statistics is capable of doing everything ChatGPT does (and even more). To me, it sounds like you're the fearful one.
  - grugagag 4y ago
    > To me, it sounds like you're the fearful one. What do you think that fear may be?
    - Rury 4y ago
      IDK you tell me? All I can say is your OP, said "I think part of it is a subconscious fear ... I understand what I'm saying is dramatic". Why do you think it is a fear (you explained your thoughts so no need to re-explain), and why do you think what you say is dramatic? It appears to me you are projecting your thoughts and fears. I do though, find your last post dramatic, as you have capital words "ARE MORE" and "OBVIOUS" in your last paragraph, emphasizing emotion. So you must have strong emotions over this.
      - dnaddie 4y ago
        You asking me or him? I can't speak for the person you responded to but my own answer is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34800063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34800063 To be honest I'm sort of in denial too. My actions contradict my beliefs. I'm not searching for occupations and paths that are separate from AI, I'm still programming as if I could do this forever. Also I capitalize words for emphasis. It doesn't represent emotion. Though I do have emotions and I do have bias, but not on the topics I am describing here.
      - grugagag 4y ago
        Im not the OP, i just asked the question. And imagined the answer would involve something about existential threat to human intelligence or something like that.. I simply asked out of curiosity
        Rury 4y ago
        My mistake, hopefully I addressed your question though.
      - imtringued 4y ago
        The AI is pretty benign. The people surrounding it are the danger. I can already imagine a culture where people who type code manually are treated as code monkeys and your boss wants all your code to be typed out by their pre approved specifically to the company tailored LLM and the employees have to be frustrated with the crappy technology the same way they get frustrated by Java EE or ORMs/compilers that refuse to generate the queries they want. I am extremely worried about people telling me it can do things it can't. I asked it a simple question that you can easily get an answer for on stack overflow. It repeatedly generated garbage answers with compiler errors. I gave up, and gave it a stack overflow snippet to get it on the right track. Nope. Then I just literally pasted in the explanation from the official Java documentation. It got it wrong again but not completely but corrected itself immediately. Then it generated ok code that you would expect from stackoverflow. Finally I wanted to see if it actually understood what it just wrote. I am not convinced. It regurgitated the java docs which is correct but then it proceeded to tell me that the code it tried to show me first is also valid... This thing doesn't learn and when it is wrong it will stay wrong. It is like having a child but it instantly loses its memory after the conversation is over and even during conversations it loves repeating answers. Also, in general it feels like it is trying to overwhelm you with walls of text which is ok but when you keep trying to fix a tiny detail it gets on your nerves to see the same verbose sentence structures over and over again. I am not worried that adding more parameters is going to solve these problems. There is a problem with the architecture itself. I do not mind having an AI tool that is very good at NLP but just because some tasks can be solved with just NLP doesn't mean it will reach general intelligence. It just means that a major advancement in processing unstructured data has been made but people want to spin this into something it isn't. It is just a large language model.
- grugagag 4y ago
  > Because of fear. Because of bias. Care to expand a bit more on what you think those fears may be? Or that bias?
  - dnaddie 4y ago
    I think it's obvious. ChatGPT could be a precursor to a future AI that is more intelligent then humans. I don't think this means skynet apocalypse. I think this means most people will be out of a job. A lot of people on HN take a lot of pride in thinking they have some sort of superior programming skills that places them on the top end of the programming spectrum. ChatGPT represents the possibility that they can be beaten easily. That their skills are entirely useless and generic in a world dominated by AI programmers. It truly is a realistic possibility that AI can take over programming jobs in the future, no one can deny this. Does one plan for that future? Or do they live in denial? Most people choose to live in denial, because that AI inflection point happened so quickly that we can't adapt to the paradigm shift. The human brain would rather shape logic and reality to fit an existing habit and lifestyle rather then acknowledge the cold hard truth. We saw it with global warming and oil execs and we're seeing it with programmers and AI.
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      So far the only AI danger is that stupid people ascribe emotions and thoughts to some matrix math and start a cult and start talking about Roko's basilisk.
      - kilgnad 4y ago
        I don't think that's a danger. What danger is there to anyone if people falsely think AI has emotions? It doesn't follow. Also it's just wrong. I think 99% of people are clear about the fact that chatGPT doesn't have emotions.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - kilgnad 4y ago
- Donckele 4y ago
  > Well you're just a jumble of electrons and protons interacting with each other. That's a 100% true interpretation is it not? NO.
  - kilgnad 4y ago
    YES.
- imtringued 4y ago
  I use the thing almost every day and the disappointment doesn't get better. After all, it behaves like a machine. It doesn't respond without your input and when you ask it something and then are unhappy with the result and change the prompt to add some extra words, it gives you something completely different even though all I wanted is the existing response plus one thing. If I ask it in more than one prompt, then it will forget or repeat things. It behaves like a random word predictor because that is how it was built. They didn't give it a memory or the initiative to respond automatically.
- notfed 4y ago
  I don't think it's true that most people are skeptical due to fear. Some skepticism here is healthy. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

by Rury 4y ago

kilgnad 4y ago

Well you're just a jumble of electrons and protons interacting with each other. That's a 100% true interpretation is it not? It's also a view that misses the point that you are a molecular intelligence made of DNA that continually mutates and reconstructs it's physical form with generational copies to increase fitness in an ever changing environment. But that viewpoint also misses the point that you're a human with wants, needs, desires and capability of understanding the world around you. All viewpoints are valid. But Depending on the context one viewpoint is more valid then others. For example, in my day to day life do I go around treating everyone as if they're useless jumbles of molecules and atoms? Do I treat them like biological natural selection entities? Or do I treat them like humans? What I'm complaining about is the fact that a lot of people are taking the most simplest viewpoint when looking at these LLMs. They ARE MORE then statistical word generators and it's OBVIOUS this is the case when you talk to it in-depth. Why are people denying the obvious? Why are people choosing not to look at LLMs for what they are? Because of fear. Because of bias.

Rury 4y ago
I still don't see your point behind your first 4 paragraphs. How you decide to treat your fellow humans is up to you. Just as you can decide to view your fellow humans however you want. It's entirely possible to treat them like "humans" while still viewing them as nothing but jumbles of molecules and atoms. So again why does perspective matter here (particularly with ChatGPT being a statistical word generator)? Your last paragraph lacks proof, and is a reflection of how you feel and want to view it - as something more than a statistical word generator. That's fine, but people with graduate level math/statistics education know that math/statistics is capable of doing everything ChatGPT does (and even more). To me, it sounds like you're the fearful one.
- grugagag 4y ago
  > To me, it sounds like you're the fearful one. What do you think that fear may be?
  - Rury 4y ago
    IDK you tell me? All I can say is your OP, said "I think part of it is a subconscious fear ... I understand what I'm saying is dramatic". Why do you think it is a fear (you explained your thoughts so no need to re-explain), and why do you think what you say is dramatic? It appears to me you are projecting your thoughts and fears. I do though, find your last post dramatic, as you have capital words "ARE MORE" and "OBVIOUS" in your last paragraph, emphasizing emotion. So you must have strong emotions over this.
    - dnaddie 4y ago
      You asking me or him? I can't speak for the person you responded to but my own answer is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34800063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34800063 To be honest I'm sort of in denial too. My actions contradict my beliefs. I'm not searching for occupations and paths that are separate from AI, I'm still programming as if I could do this forever. Also I capitalize words for emphasis. It doesn't represent emotion. Though I do have emotions and I do have bias, but not on the topics I am describing here.
    - grugagag 4y ago
      Im not the OP, i just asked the question. And imagined the answer would involve something about existential threat to human intelligence or something like that.. I simply asked out of curiosity
      - Rury 4y ago
        My mistake, hopefully I addressed your question though.
    - imtringued 4y ago
      The AI is pretty benign. The people surrounding it are the danger. I can already imagine a culture where people who type code manually are treated as code monkeys and your boss wants all your code to be typed out by their pre approved specifically to the company tailored LLM and the employees have to be frustrated with the crappy technology the same way they get frustrated by Java EE or ORMs/compilers that refuse to generate the queries they want. I am extremely worried about people telling me it can do things it can't. I asked it a simple question that you can easily get an answer for on stack overflow. It repeatedly generated garbage answers with compiler errors. I gave up, and gave it a stack overflow snippet to get it on the right track. Nope. Then I just literally pasted in the explanation from the official Java documentation. It got it wrong again but not completely but corrected itself immediately. Then it generated ok code that you would expect from stackoverflow. Finally I wanted to see if it actually understood what it just wrote. I am not convinced. It regurgitated the java docs which is correct but then it proceeded to tell me that the code it tried to show me first is also valid... This thing doesn't learn and when it is wrong it will stay wrong. It is like having a child but it instantly loses its memory after the conversation is over and even during conversations it loves repeating answers. Also, in general it feels like it is trying to overwhelm you with walls of text which is ok but when you keep trying to fix a tiny detail it gets on your nerves to see the same verbose sentence structures over and over again. I am not worried that adding more parameters is going to solve these problems. There is a problem with the architecture itself. I do not mind having an AI tool that is very good at NLP but just because some tasks can be solved with just NLP doesn't mean it will reach general intelligence. It just means that a major advancement in processing unstructured data has been made but people want to spin this into something it isn't. It is just a large language model.
grugagag 4y ago
> Because of fear. Because of bias. Care to expand a bit more on what you think those fears may be? Or that bias?
- dnaddie 4y ago
  I think it's obvious. ChatGPT could be a precursor to a future AI that is more intelligent then humans. I don't think this means skynet apocalypse. I think this means most people will be out of a job. A lot of people on HN take a lot of pride in thinking they have some sort of superior programming skills that places them on the top end of the programming spectrum. ChatGPT represents the possibility that they can be beaten easily. That their skills are entirely useless and generic in a world dominated by AI programmers. It truly is a realistic possibility that AI can take over programming jobs in the future, no one can deny this. Does one plan for that future? Or do they live in denial? Most people choose to live in denial, because that AI inflection point happened so quickly that we can't adapt to the paradigm shift. The human brain would rather shape logic and reality to fit an existing habit and lifestyle rather then acknowledge the cold hard truth. We saw it with global warming and oil execs and we're seeing it with programmers and AI.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    So far the only AI danger is that stupid people ascribe emotions and thoughts to some matrix math and start a cult and start talking about Roko's basilisk.
    - kilgnad 4y ago
      I don't think that's a danger. What danger is there to anyone if people falsely think AI has emotions? It doesn't follow. Also it's just wrong. I think 99% of people are clear about the fact that chatGPT doesn't have emotions.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- kilgnad 4y ago
Donckele 4y ago
> Well you're just a jumble of electrons and protons interacting with each other. That's a 100% true interpretation is it not? NO.
- kilgnad 4y ago
  YES.
imtringued 4y ago
I use the thing almost every day and the disappointment doesn't get better. After all, it behaves like a machine. It doesn't respond without your input and when you ask it something and then are unhappy with the result and change the prompt to add some extra words, it gives you something completely different even though all I wanted is the existing response plus one thing. If I ask it in more than one prompt, then it will forget or repeat things. It behaves like a random word predictor because that is how it was built. They didn't give it a memory or the initiative to respond automatically.
notfed 4y ago
I don't think it's true that most people are skeptical due to fear. Some skepticism here is healthy. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.