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but the fact that predicting the next words based on past models does such a good job of masquerading as human thinking indicates that much of human thinking is

but the fact that predicting the next words based on past models does such a good job of masquerading as human thinking indicates that much of human thinking isn't much more than that. It may even simplify the task of figuring human thinking by narrowing down the last details of of the smaller set of missing pieces. an analagous result was obtained back when they mapped the small finite number of neurons in a snail brain, or the behavior of individuals in ant colonies. What looks like complex behavior turns out to be very simple under the hood. for the vast ocean of the population who... not sure how to describe them... not good students when in school, would rather spend the bulk of their time with the TV blaring, eating cheetos and swiping on tik-tok, following the lives of celebrities and fighting about it, rather than do anything long term productive with their own lives... chat gpt may have already exceeded what they do with their cranial talents. even a level up on the ladder, the types of office situations lampooned in The Office or Dilbert, are they doing much more as a percentage of time spent than chat GPT can do? "Mondays, amirite!?" then the question becomes, are the intellectual elites among us doing that much more, or just doing much more of the same thing? I think a large portion of what we do is exactly what chap GPT does. The question is what is this other piece of our brains' that intervenes to say "hmm, need to think about this part a lot harder"

kortilla 4y ago
>such a good job of masquerading as human thinking indicates that much of human thinking isn't much more than that. No, that doesn’t follow. It just means it roughly looks like human thinking. Your comment is akin to saying a high resolution photo of a human has basically figured out a way to replicate humans. It looks like it in one aspect but it’s laughably wrong. Humans thought without language.
- fsckboy 4y ago
  chatgpt is only laughably wrong to educated people. it's sadly better than most people can achieve on their own. Even for educated people, the laughable part is only a personal quirk that they focus on for psychological reasons, but taken seriously a paper written by chatgpt is a good place to start and would save an educated person a lot of time in just touching it up to make it presentable, or changing the query to pare down its search for a better starting point. It's not doing nothing, it's doing a lot.
  - kortilla 4y ago
    You’re still missing the forest for the trees. It is doing a lot and it’s better at producing text that is how a human would write about topics better than many humans. That’s not at all related to being close to general human intelligence.
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    > taken seriously a paper written by chatgpt is a good place to start and would save an educated person a lot of time in just touching it up to make it presentable If we ignore the minor requirement of the paper having any connection to reality, of course.
    - throwaway1851 4y ago
      Judging from a lot of the commentary on this subject, it appears to me that a surprising number of people think that reality is little more than a quaint idea.
xthrown1 4y ago
>but the fact that predicting the next words based on past models does such a good job of masquerading as human thinking indicates that much of human thinking isn't much more than that. Going in a straight line does such a good job of predicting the next position of the car that it indicates driving isn't much more than going in a straight line.
- fsckboy 4y ago
  Alonzo Church showed that lambda calculus can replace all of abstract numerical mathematics with manipulation of meaningless symbols laid out in straight lines, or curved around.
- abc_lisper 4y ago
  I would give this 10 points if I could! But that’s level 2 driving. It is not nothing.
- LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
  I know that's meant to be snarky, but yeah. A good portion of driving is simply going where the car is already headed. A good portion of conversation is probably just stochastically stuffing filler words and noises into your ideas to aid in their reception. Haven't you ever had a situation where you were speaking and you get distracted, but not interrupted, and your speech trails off or gets garbled after ten or so words? It feels sort of like you've got a few embeddings as a filter and you push words past them to speak, but if you lose focus on the filter the words get less meaningful. I'm sure we're different than an LLM, but seeing how they generate words - not operate on meaning - rings true with how I feel when I don't apply continual feedback to my operating state.
  - mderazon 4y ago
    I like the metaphore. Politicians are exceptionally great at it, filling up conversations with nothing
vixen99 4y ago
Many would, I suspect, echo your thoughts. In terms of the people you're not sure how to describe (the 'vast ocean'), I'm just wondering how these ideas might find effect politically were they to be held by candidates. Clearly ascent to executive office would have to entail being economical with the truth (lying) to the electorate. Not that much of this does not happen already - some might think.
mecha_ghidorah 4y ago
> but the fact that predicting the next words based on past models does such a good job of masquerading as human thinking indicates that much of human thinking isn't much more than that. I'm not sure I agree with that logic. What it proves is that we as humans are bad at recognizing that text generation aren't thinking like we are... that doesn't necessarily mean thinking isn't much more than what it is doing though, it just means we are fooled. Given that nothing like this has existed before and our entire lives up until now have trained us to think something that looks like it is trying to communicate with us in this way is actually a human being I'd kind of expect us to be fooled.

kortilla 4y ago

>such a good job of masquerading as human thinking indicates that much of human thinking isn't much more than that. No, that doesn’t follow. It just means it roughly looks like human thinking. Your comment is akin to saying a high resolution photo of a human has basically figured out a way to replicate humans. It looks like it in one aspect but it’s laughably wrong. Humans thought without language.

fsckboy 4y ago
chatgpt is only laughably wrong to educated people. it's sadly better than most people can achieve on their own. Even for educated people, the laughable part is only a personal quirk that they focus on for psychological reasons, but taken seriously a paper written by chatgpt is a good place to start and would save an educated person a lot of time in just touching it up to make it presentable, or changing the query to pare down its search for a better starting point. It's not doing nothing, it's doing a lot.
- kortilla 4y ago
  You’re still missing the forest for the trees. It is doing a lot and it’s better at producing text that is how a human would write about topics better than many humans. That’s not at all related to being close to general human intelligence.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  > taken seriously a paper written by chatgpt is a good place to start and would save an educated person a lot of time in just touching it up to make it presentable If we ignore the minor requirement of the paper having any connection to reality, of course.
  - throwaway1851 4y ago
    Judging from a lot of the commentary on this subject, it appears to me that a surprising number of people think that reality is little more than a quaint idea.

xthrown1 4y ago

>but the fact that predicting the next words based on past models does such a good job of masquerading as human thinking indicates that much of human thinking isn't much more than that. Going in a straight line does such a good job of predicting the next position of the car that it indicates driving isn't much more than going in a straight line.

fsckboy 4y ago
Alonzo Church showed that lambda calculus can replace all of abstract numerical mathematics with manipulation of meaningless symbols laid out in straight lines, or curved around.
abc_lisper 4y ago
I would give this 10 points if I could! But that’s level 2 driving. It is not nothing.
LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
I know that's meant to be snarky, but yeah. A good portion of driving is simply going where the car is already headed. A good portion of conversation is probably just stochastically stuffing filler words and noises into your ideas to aid in their reception. Haven't you ever had a situation where you were speaking and you get distracted, but not interrupted, and your speech trails off or gets garbled after ten or so words? It feels sort of like you've got a few embeddings as a filter and you push words past them to speak, but if you lose focus on the filter the words get less meaningful. I'm sure we're different than an LLM, but seeing how they generate words - not operate on meaning - rings true with how I feel when I don't apply continual feedback to my operating state.
- mderazon 4y ago
  I like the metaphore. Politicians are exceptionally great at it, filling up conversations with nothing

vixen99 4y ago

Many would, I suspect, echo your thoughts. In terms of the people you're not sure how to describe (the 'vast ocean'), I'm just wondering how these ideas might find effect politically were they to be held by candidates. Clearly ascent to executive office would have to entail being economical with the truth (lying) to the electorate. Not that much of this does not happen already - some might think.

mecha_ghidorah 4y ago

> but the fact that predicting the next words based on past models does such a good job of masquerading as human thinking indicates that much of human thinking isn't much more than that. I'm not sure I agree with that logic. What it proves is that we as humans are bad at recognizing that text generation aren't thinking like we are... that doesn't necessarily mean thinking isn't much more than what it is doing though, it just means we are fooled. Given that nothing like this has existed before and our entire lives up until now have trained us to think something that looks like it is trying to communicate with us in this way is actually a human being I'd kind of expect us to be fooled.