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That isn't a model of truth, that is a model of grammar. A sentence can be a lie but still a perfectly valid sentence and a perfect continuation of the previous

That isn't a model of truth, that is a model of grammar. A sentence can be a lie but still a perfectly valid sentence and a perfect continuation of the previous text, ChatGPT could give such a sentence a perfect match score. In fact it can give a lie a higher score than a truth, if it thinks that a lie fits there in the text. So the score has nothing at all to do with truthiness, its just a grammar model not a logic model, it doesn't score logic or truth. Edit: Note that we get a lot of strange side effects from that grammar model, as it can also generate reasonable text continuations matching previous text. But it doesn't score the truth, it just scores how much the text matches the last line, not the truth of the text.

rhn_mk1 4y ago
What does a model of truth imply then? The ability to perfectly classify a statement between "truth" and "lie"? If so, then it's not needed for thinking, because humans can't do that, either. The only definition that makes sense to me is "some way to classify statements into lies and truth based on inputs", and that fits into what the parent came up with.
- Jensson 4y ago
  Consider the difference between spellchecking an essay or fact checking an essay. The two are very different actions, you can ask a human to spellcheck an essay and he will mark spelling errors, or you can ask him to fact check it and he will mark out statements he thinks are wrong. So humans know the difference. So a spellchecker isn't a fact checker, you don't call the automated spellcheckers we have "truth models" or "truth checkers", they just check the spelling. ChatGPT is the same as that but more advanced, it just checks that the text looks nice, it doesn't care about the facts in the text. Humans can do that too, if you give a novel to a human and ask him to read it with comments, he wont go and ask for proof that the novel has happened or that everything you wrote is possible or factful, he will just check that the story makes sense. Edit: So we know that humans can tell the difference between these kinds of actions. We might not be able to define a strict rule for them, but since human can tell the difference a general intelligence should also be able to have a truth model, a grammar model, a story model etc. ChatGPT has just one way to evaluate texts, it doesn't have the many ways human has that lets them evaluate the truth, the grammar or the story separately.
  - rhn_mk1 4y ago
    The difference between spell checking and fact checking is in what you're checking against: the facts of grammar or the facts of the world. I don't see any qualitative difference between them. The data is facts, the output is either "correct" or "wrong", and the function from one to the other is the model. What do we gain from calling one of them "truth function" and the other "grammar function"? What makes that relevant to reasoning?
    - Jensson 4y ago
      > I don't see any qualitative difference between them. You don't see any qualitative difference between fact checking or spell checking a text? Well then you are a lost cause, we can't discuss this any longer. Basically every human understands that those two are qualitatively different, if you don't then you are so alien to most human thinking that we can't discuss this further, there will be no common ground.
      - rhn_mk1 4y ago
        Well, it's a shame, because I thought you were really on to something. No, I don't see a qualitative difference. There is a huge quantitative difference because the facts that describe the world overwhelm the facts that make up language, but that doesn't obviously make a connection to reasoning clear.
        Jensson 4y ago
        Extreme quantitative differences results in qualitative difference. Anyway, just realized that you side-tracked the whole conversation by moving it into comparing them to each other. That discussion isn't relevant here. We are talking about a truth model directly, not whether it resembles a truth model in some ways. A spellchecker and a truth checker are both evaluators, but that doesn't mean that a spellchecker is a truth checker or vice versa. Therefore it is wrong to say that ChatGPT has a truth model, since it doesn't evaluate what we call truth, it evaluates the structure of the text not the truth of the text. Evaluators returns a boolean or some number, but that "true" or "false" are just programmatic terms, that isn't want humans normally consider trueness of falseness. Otherwise you would call any evaluator a "truth checker", since they check if the result is a true boolean. You could do that, but that doesn't make sense for this discussion, since we care about truth and false in the world, not in programmatic terms. Edit: As for why this is relevant for ChatGPT smartness. It is because we know how to evaluate text structure now, that is the new thing with ChatGPT. But we still don't know how to evaluate the truth of a text, ChatGPT can evaluate the structure but we have no way of turning a structure evaluator into a truth evaluator. We need another kind of model to start evaluating the truth of statements, and until then AI's like ChatGPT will continue to make up facts, since they have no idea what a fact is.
coldtea 4y ago
>That isn't a model of truth, that is a model of grammar. A sentence can be a lie but still a perfectly valid sentence and a perfect continuation of the previous text, ChatGPT could give such a sentence a perfect match score. Human models of truth can also promote a lie (or rather, something not true, as lie also implies intention) as a truth (and give perfect confidence to the person uttering it that it is true).
- Jensson 4y ago
  But that is an error in the truth model, it is still a truth model. Spell checkers often flag correctly spelled words since they are configured wrongly or don't have a large enough dictionary, but they are still spell checkers. Same with human truth models. Humans can evaluate the facts in a text without evaluating the structure, and vice versa. ChatGPT can only evaluate the structure, that indirectly evaluates truth a bit in the text but the main factor when ChatGPT evaluates is whether the text fits in structurally, which includes whether statements align with each other, but the major factor is grammar and other kinds of text structure.

rhn_mk1 4y ago

What does a model of truth imply then? The ability to perfectly classify a statement between "truth" and "lie"? If so, then it's not needed for thinking, because humans can't do that, either. The only definition that makes sense to me is "some way to classify statements into lies and truth based on inputs", and that fits into what the parent came up with.

Jensson 4y ago
Consider the difference between spellchecking an essay or fact checking an essay. The two are very different actions, you can ask a human to spellcheck an essay and he will mark spelling errors, or you can ask him to fact check it and he will mark out statements he thinks are wrong. So humans know the difference. So a spellchecker isn't a fact checker, you don't call the automated spellcheckers we have "truth models" or "truth checkers", they just check the spelling. ChatGPT is the same as that but more advanced, it just checks that the text looks nice, it doesn't care about the facts in the text. Humans can do that too, if you give a novel to a human and ask him to read it with comments, he wont go and ask for proof that the novel has happened or that everything you wrote is possible or factful, he will just check that the story makes sense. Edit: So we know that humans can tell the difference between these kinds of actions. We might not be able to define a strict rule for them, but since human can tell the difference a general intelligence should also be able to have a truth model, a grammar model, a story model etc. ChatGPT has just one way to evaluate texts, it doesn't have the many ways human has that lets them evaluate the truth, the grammar or the story separately.
- rhn_mk1 4y ago
  The difference between spell checking and fact checking is in what you're checking against: the facts of grammar or the facts of the world. I don't see any qualitative difference between them. The data is facts, the output is either "correct" or "wrong", and the function from one to the other is the model. What do we gain from calling one of them "truth function" and the other "grammar function"? What makes that relevant to reasoning?
  - Jensson 4y ago
    > I don't see any qualitative difference between them. You don't see any qualitative difference between fact checking or spell checking a text? Well then you are a lost cause, we can't discuss this any longer. Basically every human understands that those two are qualitatively different, if you don't then you are so alien to most human thinking that we can't discuss this further, there will be no common ground.
    - rhn_mk1 4y ago
      Well, it's a shame, because I thought you were really on to something. No, I don't see a qualitative difference. There is a huge quantitative difference because the facts that describe the world overwhelm the facts that make up language, but that doesn't obviously make a connection to reasoning clear.
      - Jensson 4y ago
        Extreme quantitative differences results in qualitative difference. Anyway, just realized that you side-tracked the whole conversation by moving it into comparing them to each other. That discussion isn't relevant here. We are talking about a truth model directly, not whether it resembles a truth model in some ways. A spellchecker and a truth checker are both evaluators, but that doesn't mean that a spellchecker is a truth checker or vice versa. Therefore it is wrong to say that ChatGPT has a truth model, since it doesn't evaluate what we call truth, it evaluates the structure of the text not the truth of the text. Evaluators returns a boolean or some number, but that "true" or "false" are just programmatic terms, that isn't want humans normally consider trueness of falseness. Otherwise you would call any evaluator a "truth checker", since they check if the result is a true boolean. You could do that, but that doesn't make sense for this discussion, since we care about truth and false in the world, not in programmatic terms. Edit: As for why this is relevant for ChatGPT smartness. It is because we know how to evaluate text structure now, that is the new thing with ChatGPT. But we still don't know how to evaluate the truth of a text, ChatGPT can evaluate the structure but we have no way of turning a structure evaluator into a truth evaluator. We need another kind of model to start evaluating the truth of statements, and until then AI's like ChatGPT will continue to make up facts, since they have no idea what a fact is.

coldtea 4y ago

>That isn't a model of truth, that is a model of grammar. A sentence can be a lie but still a perfectly valid sentence and a perfect continuation of the previous text, ChatGPT could give such a sentence a perfect match score. Human models of truth can also promote a lie (or rather, something not true, as lie also implies intention) as a truth (and give perfect confidence to the person uttering it that it is true).

Jensson 4y ago
But that is an error in the truth model, it is still a truth model. Spell checkers often flag correctly spelled words since they are configured wrongly or don't have a large enough dictionary, but they are still spell checkers. Same with human truth models. Humans can evaluate the facts in a text without evaluating the structure, and vice versa. ChatGPT can only evaluate the structure, that indirectly evaluates truth a bit in the text but the main factor when ChatGPT evaluates is whether the text fits in structurally, which includes whether statements align with each other, but the major factor is grammar and other kinds of text structure.