4 ms·

It's pretty bad because Chomsky provided only two examples of things ChatGPT cannot do - even implying its underlying architecture could not ever do that -, and

by epups 4y ago

It's pretty bad because Chomsky provided only two examples of things ChatGPT cannot do - even implying its underlying architecture could not ever do that -, and it's obvious that neither he, his coauthors or the editors at the NYT bothered to fact check these assertions. I would bet that Chomsky himself has never played around with ChatGPT itself.

masswerk 4y ago
If we subscribe for a moment to the tradition that conceptuality, creativity, even certainty, are born from negativity, that crucial "what if not" assumption, the ponderability of existential alternatives, we may indeed defer that this is not something LLMs (in their current configuration) can do. (In a more statistical tradition, proximity to the semantic center is pretty much opposed to this.) Which poses yet another question, namely, how essential and significant are these things for us? Is the alleged promise aligned to our basic assumptions?
- epups 4y ago
  I'm not sure why we should hold on to such tradition on creativity and certainty emerging from negativity - the reference that comes to mind when you talk about this is the "negation" concept from post-modern continental philosophers like Lacan. If so, I would say I hold zero weight to any argument appealing to such concepts as they have no empirical grounds. I would appreciate if you could correct me here if you mean something else.
  - masswerk 4y ago
    Lacan was much influenced by Hegel in his philosophical foundations, or rather, by the French interpretation as by Alexandre Kojève (who was in turn inspired by some, who started rather in a Neo-Kantian tradition, like Heidegger and Alexandre Koyré.) Moreover, Lacan had quite extensive empirical ground (having worked in psychiatric institutions for quite some time) and was informed by the state of art in Cybernetics and nascent AI research. (E.g., his prime example for fascination was derived from interlocking automata.) What all these have in common, is that reasoning about conceptuality, language, consciousness, expression and ethics, even hard along the edges of what is called the "language barrier", isn't exactly new. (Also, I'm personally part of a European tradition and can't help it.) Last but not least, there was already this post-structuralist notion of "text", which emphasized how text was essentially writing itself, without suggesting that this would imply us letting go of our agency. Anyways, what I tried to suggest was that there is some base for reasoning that what we're encountering here is more like a cargo cult of conceptuality than conceptuality itself at work. And that it is still on us to decide, if want to be persuaded by this to land our planes of reason next to it, or not.
    - epups 4y ago
      Thank you for your reply. I do understand where you are coming from (although my reading is more circumscribed to psychoanalysis itself) but I think our views diverge. I don't think the conceptual framework of psychoanalysis is based in true empiricism (ie the scientific method), so what we are left with is essentially a lot of self referential frameworks that ultimately did not lead us anywhere, and it was built upon fraud. The psychoanalytic conception of language did not help us treat any mental disorder and likely never will. So throwing this purely conceptual work away is thus very easy for someone like me - in fact, we largely already have. I cannot imagine that anyone will read Lacan in even 100 years from now, but I do think we will increasingly develop a computational understanding of language that will stand the test of time.

by epups 4y ago

masswerk 4y ago

If we subscribe for a moment to the tradition that conceptuality, creativity, even certainty, are born from negativity, that crucial "what if not" assumption, the ponderability of existential alternatives, we may indeed defer that this is not something LLMs (in their current configuration) can do. (In a more statistical tradition, proximity to the semantic center is pretty much opposed to this.) Which poses yet another question, namely, how essential and significant are these things for us? Is the alleged promise aligned to our basic assumptions?

epups 4y ago
I'm not sure why we should hold on to such tradition on creativity and certainty emerging from negativity - the reference that comes to mind when you talk about this is the "negation" concept from post-modern continental philosophers like Lacan. If so, I would say I hold zero weight to any argument appealing to such concepts as they have no empirical grounds. I would appreciate if you could correct me here if you mean something else.
- masswerk 4y ago
  Lacan was much influenced by Hegel in his philosophical foundations, or rather, by the French interpretation as by Alexandre Kojève (who was in turn inspired by some, who started rather in a Neo-Kantian tradition, like Heidegger and Alexandre Koyré.) Moreover, Lacan had quite extensive empirical ground (having worked in psychiatric institutions for quite some time) and was informed by the state of art in Cybernetics and nascent AI research. (E.g., his prime example for fascination was derived from interlocking automata.) What all these have in common, is that reasoning about conceptuality, language, consciousness, expression and ethics, even hard along the edges of what is called the "language barrier", isn't exactly new. (Also, I'm personally part of a European tradition and can't help it.) Last but not least, there was already this post-structuralist notion of "text", which emphasized how text was essentially writing itself, without suggesting that this would imply us letting go of our agency. Anyways, what I tried to suggest was that there is some base for reasoning that what we're encountering here is more like a cargo cult of conceptuality than conceptuality itself at work. And that it is still on us to decide, if want to be persuaded by this to land our planes of reason next to it, or not.
  - epups 4y ago
    Thank you for your reply. I do understand where you are coming from (although my reading is more circumscribed to psychoanalysis itself) but I think our views diverge. I don't think the conceptual framework of psychoanalysis is based in true empiricism (ie the scientific method), so what we are left with is essentially a lot of self referential frameworks that ultimately did not lead us anywhere, and it was built upon fraud. The psychoanalytic conception of language did not help us treat any mental disorder and likely never will. So throwing this purely conceptual work away is thus very easy for someone like me - in fact, we largely already have. I cannot imagine that anyone will read Lacan in even 100 years from now, but I do think we will increasingly develop a computational understanding of language that will stand the test of time.