4 ms·

Except in the example that you read, it cannot have done what it did without understanding what it was asked.

simonh 4y ago
It depends exactly what you mean by understanding. It has a map of connections between word tokens that allow it to generate an output of word tokens that are useful to us, and which has now just recently been specifically trained for this particular problem domain. So now for these sorts of questions it no longer produces gibberish. None of that works in a way at all analogous to how the human brain processes language, reasons about concepts, or connects ideas beyond just words. It’s not meaning in the sense that we generally understand meaning. If you take a step outside its trained response envelope, it will still fail hilariously generating meaningless drivel. It’s grasp of concepts just isn’t there, it has no concrete foundation. All it knows is word frequency weightings. Don’t get me wrong it’s amazing engineering, it’s probably going to be incredibly useful.
- kilgnad 4y ago
  No. Your explanation applies to transformations from question to explanation. For this transformation you have an argument because explanations themselves exist in the training set. This makes sense. Even a novel explanation could be just an patch work of existing information. The transformation from query to emulation, especially the emulation shown in the article is much more massive. No training data exists for emulation. Emulation is time dependent with inputs and outputs at different frames, the training data does not provide a tutorial on this, chatGPT must derive the behavior from true understanding. There is literally no other explanation. Just because it fails hilariously at times does not preclude it from truly understanding things. You also cannot just characterize it as a word probability generator. There is clearly emergent higher level structures here and just parroting the definition of the underlying model is inaccurate. What I mean by understanding is an isomorphism to the way you understand things. Not just a simple mapping from sentence to explanation but actual understanding where complex transformations can occur. Query to explanation and query to full on imitation and emulation are possible. Including novel creative emulated reactions applied to novel situations and events. The situation in the article I sent you cannot be fully explained by simple probabilities and mappings. There is a higher level structures at play here.
  - simonh 4y ago
    > What I mean by understanding is an isomorphism to the way you understand things. If that was the case I’d expect LLMs to fail in the same way humans do, to exhibit similar self correction. I’d expect them to not fail in the ways they do fail, in the ways that humans don't. It’s these completely different behaviours that map out the strength and limitations of these systems, and I believe illustrate that they function in a fundamentally different way. If you just look at the results it’s been tuned to do well at it’s easy to imagine it produced those results in the same way, but that’s just an assumption. You have to look at the full map of behaviours.
    - kilgnad 4y ago
      >If that was the case I’d expect LLMs to fail in the same way humans do, to exhibit similar self correction. I’d expect them to not fail in the ways they do fail, in the ways that humans don't. It’s these completely different behaviours that map out the strength and limitations of these systems, and I believe illustrate that they function in a fundamentally different way. No. Do you expect a child to understand everything in the same way you do? Of course not. There are certain things chatGPT clearly doesn't understand. But you can't use that to say that chatGPT understands nothing. Do you understand all of quantum physics? Is that a feature expected out of you in order for you to qualify as a entity that can understand things? No. ChatGPT is a nascent technology. There is clear merit in investigating this line of thought: "Like a baby chatGPT doesn't understand a lot. But What it does understand, it understands exactly the same way you understand it." Because as of now, nobody knows the answer.
      - simonh 4y ago
        > Do you expect a child to understand everything in the same way you do? Of course not. They don’t understand things in the way children do either. It’s a completely different mechanism. But you’re right, they don’t understand things the way we do. That’s the point I’m making. > But you can't use that to say that chatGPT understands nothing. I’m not claiming that. To repeat myself, it depends what you mean by understanding. I’m saying it doesn’t understand things in the way that we do. It’s like an alien intelligence with a completely different neural architecture. Well, we know that’s a fact, it’s neutral architecture is radically different from ours. >But What it does understand, it understands exactly the same way you understand it. Do you think that the way humans understand things is the only possible way things are understood? Do you think the way we form meaning and process concepts cognitively is the only way those cognitive tasks could be done? Take the programming LLMs. If you train it on a complex set of programmes, and it’s super sophisticated, suppose that code contains bugs. It will spot the subtle hard to find bugs and encode those into its model of programming. It will get very good at introducing subtle hard to find bugs and vulnerabilities into its code. The problem is, you can’t stop it. You can’t explain to it that it shouldn’t do that. There’s no way to teach it out of doing it because it doesn’t reason about code in a way at all analogous to humans.

It depends exactly what you mean by understanding. It has a map of connections between word tokens that allow it to generate an output of word tokens that are useful to us, and which has now just recently been specifically trained for this particular problem domain. So now for these sorts of questions it no longer produces gibberish. None of that works in a way at all analogous to how the human brain processes language, reasons about concepts, or connects ideas beyond just words. It’s not meaning in the sense that we generally understand meaning. If you take a step outside its trained response envelope, it will still fail hilariously generating meaningless drivel. It’s grasp of concepts just isn’t there, it has no concrete foundation. All it knows is word frequency weightings. Don’t get me wrong it’s amazing engineering, it’s probably going to be incredibly useful.

kilgnad 4y ago
No. Your explanation applies to transformations from question to explanation. For this transformation you have an argument because explanations themselves exist in the training set. This makes sense. Even a novel explanation could be just an patch work of existing information. The transformation from query to emulation, especially the emulation shown in the article is much more massive. No training data exists for emulation. Emulation is time dependent with inputs and outputs at different frames, the training data does not provide a tutorial on this, chatGPT must derive the behavior from true understanding. There is literally no other explanation. Just because it fails hilariously at times does not preclude it from truly understanding things. You also cannot just characterize it as a word probability generator. There is clearly emergent higher level structures here and just parroting the definition of the underlying model is inaccurate. What I mean by understanding is an isomorphism to the way you understand things. Not just a simple mapping from sentence to explanation but actual understanding where complex transformations can occur. Query to explanation and query to full on imitation and emulation are possible. Including novel creative emulated reactions applied to novel situations and events. The situation in the article I sent you cannot be fully explained by simple probabilities and mappings. There is a higher level structures at play here.
- simonh 4y ago
  > What I mean by understanding is an isomorphism to the way you understand things. If that was the case I’d expect LLMs to fail in the same way humans do, to exhibit similar self correction. I’d expect them to not fail in the ways they do fail, in the ways that humans don't. It’s these completely different behaviours that map out the strength and limitations of these systems, and I believe illustrate that they function in a fundamentally different way. If you just look at the results it’s been tuned to do well at it’s easy to imagine it produced those results in the same way, but that’s just an assumption. You have to look at the full map of behaviours.
  - kilgnad 4y ago
    >If that was the case I’d expect LLMs to fail in the same way humans do, to exhibit similar self correction. I’d expect them to not fail in the ways they do fail, in the ways that humans don't. It’s these completely different behaviours that map out the strength and limitations of these systems, and I believe illustrate that they function in a fundamentally different way. No. Do you expect a child to understand everything in the same way you do? Of course not. There are certain things chatGPT clearly doesn't understand. But you can't use that to say that chatGPT understands nothing. Do you understand all of quantum physics? Is that a feature expected out of you in order for you to qualify as a entity that can understand things? No. ChatGPT is a nascent technology. There is clear merit in investigating this line of thought: "Like a baby chatGPT doesn't understand a lot. But What it does understand, it understands exactly the same way you understand it." Because as of now, nobody knows the answer.
    - simonh 4y ago
      > Do you expect a child to understand everything in the same way you do? Of course not. They don’t understand things in the way children do either. It’s a completely different mechanism. But you’re right, they don’t understand things the way we do. That’s the point I’m making. > But you can't use that to say that chatGPT understands nothing. I’m not claiming that. To repeat myself, it depends what you mean by understanding. I’m saying it doesn’t understand things in the way that we do. It’s like an alien intelligence with a completely different neural architecture. Well, we know that’s a fact, it’s neutral architecture is radically different from ours. >But What it does understand, it understands exactly the same way you understand it. Do you think that the way humans understand things is the only possible way things are understood? Do you think the way we form meaning and process concepts cognitively is the only way those cognitive tasks could be done? Take the programming LLMs. If you train it on a complex set of programmes, and it’s super sophisticated, suppose that code contains bugs. It will spot the subtle hard to find bugs and encode those into its model of programming. It will get very good at introducing subtle hard to find bugs and vulnerabilities into its code. The problem is, you can’t stop it. You can’t explain to it that it shouldn’t do that. There’s no way to teach it out of doing it because it doesn’t reason about code in a way at all analogous to humans.