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Okay but that's not "learning" how to do basic math in the same way I can't "learn" japanese just by mimicking the mouth noises. Yeah I'll get some of the pronu

Okay but that's not "learning" how to do basic math in the same way I can't "learn" japanese just by mimicking the mouth noises. Yeah I'll get some of the pronunciation right sometime, maybe even get it in the right order, but only for the listener. To me, it's still just mouth noises.

qingdao99 4y ago
If you were given the task "mimic the sound of Japanese as best you can", at first, you would just learn the basic phonology and just try and mimic the general sounds of the language. You would get good at that, and eventually you would be perfectly mimicking the pronunciation of Japanese phonemes. At some point, it would become worth your time to actually learn how different sounds are put together, e.g. Japanese can't have an S sound followed by a T sound. After that, you may start to learn how the different syllables interact. And at some point, you would learn how words are put together to form sentences. At a certain point, there really is no difference between "being really good at mimicking the sound of Japanese" and actually knowing it, because in order to mimic it to a high level you will have to actually know it. "Mimic the sound of Japanese" is the equivalent task here to "predict the next token in this text".
- Retric 4y ago
  Where that argument falls apart is when you’re talking about something that’s still bad a mimicry. ChatGPT still completely fails the touring test it’s not even vaguely close to that threshold. For now it’s slightly better than fake crowd noise you’re hearing in movies, but still frequently just gibberish.
  - Kiro 4y ago
    ChatGPT passes the Turing test and is not even the first bot to have done so. No idea why you're so keen on downplaying it but soon there won't be anyone left that you will be able to convince that this is no big deal. You're fighting an uphill battle.
    - Retric 4y ago
      That’s completely false. The Touring test allows unlimited topics, time, etc. There are competitions that use rules heavily favor bots where bots have “won” in the past but they aren’t actually preforming the test. ChatGPT seems amazing at first, but that’s because its flaws are so novel to them. People just aren’t used to looking for them so they can overlook how quickly it completely forgets about previous parts of a conversation etc.
      - Kiro 4y ago
        And when it passes your current interpretation of the Turing test you will find another excuse why it still "completely fails" and is "not even vaguely close". That's called moving the goalposts. Passing the Turing test does not imply general intelligence but saying that what it outputs is "just gibberish" is obviously just another hyperbole from you.
        Retric 4y ago
        Gibberish is just a shortcut for words without meaning. I don’t have some arbitrary rules for what passes the Turing test, but it’s about the worst case not the best. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing_Machinery_and_Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing_Machinery_and_Intell...
        Kiro 4y ago
        [edit: You edited your comment but it used to say it fails "the test as described" and that the competitions are invalid since they do not follow the rules. I presume you looked up the actual test afterwards and realized how wild your "completely fails" comments were - and did a 360 and rewrote the comment. Keeping my original response below.] > the test as described I hope you realize that the original Turing test is where you have a man and a woman trying to convince an interrogator that they are of the opposite sex. The test is to replace one with a machine and see if the interrogator would decide the wrong sex as often as when there's an actual human playing. So if we're talking about the actual test, as described, the most basic bots have passed it a long time ago. If we're talking about the standard interpretation (convince the interrogator that the bot is human) it's a derived version that has no intrinsic rules and was not described by Turing.
  - SamPatt 4y ago
    >For now it’s slightly better than fake crowd noise you’re hearing in movies, but still frequently just gibberish. You've clearly never used ChatGPT to help you build or troubleshoot anything before. Try it before you knock it.
    - Retric 4y ago
      I wasted quite a bit of time trying. Its utility falls off a cliff if it can’t copy something from its existing corpus. That said, it’s got a lot of code to copy from. So I may try again if when I suspect I am reinventing the wheel.
Kiro 4y ago
Did we read the same comment? What spion describes would be complete science-fiction just a couple of years ago and yet your reaction is "meh".
- Jensson 4y ago
  Everyone things this tech is cool, the main question discussed is how close it is to general intelligence. The poster you respond to argues that it is very far from general intelligence still, there are many who argues that it basically is general intelligence so he isn't arguing against a strawman. If you told me "We have made a natural language parser/processor that is at human level" I'd think that was a huge step forward for computing. Nobody can argue with that.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    The real question in that context is what "general intelligence" even means, for starters. Until we have a clear answer to that, we can't really say anything meaningful about how close and far it is. And it is quite possible that it's a question without any meaningful answer. We basically have a "gut feeling" that it is a qualitative rather than a quantitative difference, but is that really based on hard data, or it's just more comfortable for us to think that way? In the meantime, the practical question is - how useful is it? What can it do?

qingdao99 4y ago

If you were given the task "mimic the sound of Japanese as best you can", at first, you would just learn the basic phonology and just try and mimic the general sounds of the language. You would get good at that, and eventually you would be perfectly mimicking the pronunciation of Japanese phonemes. At some point, it would become worth your time to actually learn how different sounds are put together, e.g. Japanese can't have an S sound followed by a T sound. After that, you may start to learn how the different syllables interact. And at some point, you would learn how words are put together to form sentences. At a certain point, there really is no difference between "being really good at mimicking the sound of Japanese" and actually knowing it, because in order to mimic it to a high level you will have to actually know it. "Mimic the sound of Japanese" is the equivalent task here to "predict the next token in this text".

Retric 4y ago
Where that argument falls apart is when you’re talking about something that’s still bad a mimicry. ChatGPT still completely fails the touring test it’s not even vaguely close to that threshold. For now it’s slightly better than fake crowd noise you’re hearing in movies, but still frequently just gibberish.
- Kiro 4y ago
  ChatGPT passes the Turing test and is not even the first bot to have done so. No idea why you're so keen on downplaying it but soon there won't be anyone left that you will be able to convince that this is no big deal. You're fighting an uphill battle.
  - Retric 4y ago
    That’s completely false. The Touring test allows unlimited topics, time, etc. There are competitions that use rules heavily favor bots where bots have “won” in the past but they aren’t actually preforming the test. ChatGPT seems amazing at first, but that’s because its flaws are so novel to them. People just aren’t used to looking for them so they can overlook how quickly it completely forgets about previous parts of a conversation etc.
    - Kiro 4y ago
      And when it passes your current interpretation of the Turing test you will find another excuse why it still "completely fails" and is "not even vaguely close". That's called moving the goalposts. Passing the Turing test does not imply general intelligence but saying that what it outputs is "just gibberish" is obviously just another hyperbole from you.
      - Retric 4y ago
        Gibberish is just a shortcut for words without meaning. I don’t have some arbitrary rules for what passes the Turing test, but it’s about the worst case not the best. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing_Machinery_and_Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing_Machinery_and_Intell...
        Kiro 4y ago
        [edit: You edited your comment but it used to say it fails "the test as described" and that the competitions are invalid since they do not follow the rules. I presume you looked up the actual test afterwards and realized how wild your "completely fails" comments were - and did a 360 and rewrote the comment. Keeping my original response below.] > the test as described I hope you realize that the original Turing test is where you have a man and a woman trying to convince an interrogator that they are of the opposite sex. The test is to replace one with a machine and see if the interrogator would decide the wrong sex as often as when there's an actual human playing. So if we're talking about the actual test, as described, the most basic bots have passed it a long time ago. If we're talking about the standard interpretation (convince the interrogator that the bot is human) it's a derived version that has no intrinsic rules and was not described by Turing.
- SamPatt 4y ago
  >For now it’s slightly better than fake crowd noise you’re hearing in movies, but still frequently just gibberish. You've clearly never used ChatGPT to help you build or troubleshoot anything before. Try it before you knock it.
  - Retric 4y ago
    I wasted quite a bit of time trying. Its utility falls off a cliff if it can’t copy something from its existing corpus. That said, it’s got a lot of code to copy from. So I may try again if when I suspect I am reinventing the wheel.

Kiro 4y ago

Did we read the same comment? What spion describes would be complete science-fiction just a couple of years ago and yet your reaction is "meh".

Jensson 4y ago
Everyone things this tech is cool, the main question discussed is how close it is to general intelligence. The poster you respond to argues that it is very far from general intelligence still, there are many who argues that it basically is general intelligence so he isn't arguing against a strawman. If you told me "We have made a natural language parser/processor that is at human level" I'd think that was a huge step forward for computing. Nobody can argue with that.
- int_19h 4y ago
  The real question in that context is what "general intelligence" even means, for starters. Until we have a clear answer to that, we can't really say anything meaningful about how close and far it is. And it is quite possible that it's a question without any meaningful answer. We basically have a "gut feeling" that it is a qualitative rather than a quantitative difference, but is that really based on hard data, or it's just more comfortable for us to think that way? In the meantime, the practical question is - how useful is it? What can it do?