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It seems only yesterday that we were marvelling at the capabilities of ChatGPT - it's ability to parse the sum knowledge of humankind and synthesise not trivial

It seems only yesterday that we were marvelling at the capabilities of ChatGPT - it's ability to parse the sum knowledge of humankind and synthesise not trivial responses to questions we posed. But look how far we've come since those heady and carefree days. We're already able to pour buckets of scorn on its capabilities, and brush them aside as if designing a language (albeit a derivative and uninspired one) is a trivial task that any human could achieve.

Jensson 4y ago
> We're already able to pour buckets of scorn on its capabilities No we don't, we are just trying to put a damper on all the "the singularity is here!" style comments that seems to flood any discussion about GPT.
- KyeRussell 4y ago
  Oh please. This community is filled to the brim with people that are addicted to negativity and contrarianism. LLM criticisms very typically go far far beyond “this isn’t the singularity”, well toward “LLMs do nothing of value, snd certainly can’t I - the esteemed developer - with anything I find hard in my job!”
  - Jensson 4y ago
    Not many say "LLMs do nothing of value". Many comments say LLMs aren't useful to them, but I haven't seen many say that LLMs aren't useful at all.
    - UncleEntity 4y ago
      I’ve seen countless comments stating that it is just predicting the next token, move along, nothing to see here.
      - Jensson 4y ago
        That is literally what LLMs do though. Those comments try to explain how it works so you better can see how it produced the results you see, they aren't trying to say that the program is worthless just that it isn't the magic some people think it is. These models are trained to produce text snippets that look like text snippets it has seen before, and it has seen all internet. That means it can do a lot of impressive things, but also that it is very dumb in other ways.
        dm33tri 4y ago
        These comments are deceptive. Yes, this is how LLMs work, but that doesn't mean they only repeat things they have seen before. LLMs are capable of following instructions to construct new words in any language they know, words never seen before. I've seen it being dumb in maths or real world problems. But as a large language models, they understand and speak languages fine, and even mistakes they make look like mistakes humans who are not natives in the language would make. We may as well say that when we speak, we are just predicting words we have trained on. I don't see how these models are worse than people in that regard. The general knowledge and thinking of these models are surely limited. But seeing GPT-4 go from text only input to text with images, I think it is very possible to break the barriers very soon.
        oska 4y ago
        Ok, since you called out the gp comment as 'deceptive', I in turn am going to call out your comment (and others like it) as delusional, and point to specific places in your comment that exhibit this state of delusion (about LLMs). > they understand and speak languages fine No, they neither 'understand' nor 'speak' languages. The first word here is the more delusional, they have no understanding of languages. They have simply generated a model of the language. And they do not 'speak' the language they have modeled; they generate text in that language. Speaking generally implies an active intelligence; there is no intelligence behind an LLM. There is simply a machine generating (wholly derivative) output text from input text. > We may as well say that when we speak, we are just predicting words we have trained on This is the delusion, commonly being repeated, that humans themselves are only LLMs. This is a dangerous delusion, in my view, and one that has no evidence behind it. It is only a supposition, and a sterile and nihilistic one in my view. > The general knowledge and thinking of these models are surely limited [...] I think it is very possible to break the barriers very soon The limitations are fundamental to LLMs. LLMs have no general knowledge and LLMs don't do any 'thinking'. Your understanding of what they are doing is in grave error, and that error is based on a personification of the machine. An error coming from the delusion that because they generate 'natural' language they are operating similarly to us (false and addressed above). They are never going to break the limits because they have never started to transcend those limits in the first place, nor can they. They don't and will never 'think' or 'reason'.
  - adt 4y ago
    >Oh please. This community is filled to the brim with people that are addicted to negativity and contrarianism. LLM criticisms very typically go far far beyond “this isn’t the singularity”, well toward “LLMs do nothing of value, snd certainly can’t I - the esteemed developer - with anything I find hard in my job!” Yep. Welcome to HN. And welcome to the majority of humanity! https://lifearchitect.ai/contrarianism/ https://lifearchitect.ai/contrarianism/ https://lifearchitect.ai/why-does-ai-make-you-so-angry/ https://lifearchitect.ai/why-does-ai-make-you-so-angry/ https://lifearchitect.ai/ai-panic/ https://lifearchitect.ai/ai-panic/
alto22 4y ago
Aren't all new languages a mishmash of older languages, even?
sbergot 4y ago
ChatGPT is both impressive and scary. We know how things work: there is no way to slow down this train. However it is already having an impact on things like education. Teacher don't have good enough tools to detect cheaters, and students are going to suffer because of that. Honest ones will be wrongly accused. Cheaters will get good grades. The only solution I see is to ban any graded homework. What will be the other impacts?
- dgb23 4y ago
  Students have been “cheating” with homework forever. Many get help from their parents and some even have professional help. Many collaborate or copy. This is just another tool in the student’s toolbox and should be treated as such.
- dzhiurgis 4y ago
  > ban any graded homework. Modern countries don't do homework, other than reading, for ages
geraneum 4y ago
> designing a language (albeit a derivative and uninspired one) is a trivial task that any human could achieve. It is, isn’t it? You just need to be able to read and write words and symbols that reassemble a programming language coherently and follow the pattern. This is what humans do after all; remixing. Anyone can do this.
- eitland 4y ago
  Sorry if I am missing something here, but I think we all know well functioning, productive humans, maybe even in our field, who wouldn't have been able to create this language or a similarly well thought out one. I know a competent man should be able to "change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders [...]" and what not and specialization is for insects, but even on the Mysterious Island not everyone is Cyrus Smith (Harding).
  - KyeRussell 4y ago
    Don’t bother. Hacker News takes the throne for “I could do this in a weekend” rhetoric.
    - lostmsu 4y ago
      "in a weekend" now is too slow. They'd have to do it in 5 minutes or even less.
  - geraneum 4y ago
    I think you are missing my sarcasm. I don’t think every human can design a well thought out language, let alone an LLM. I was trying to point out that we are more than this. More than what humans are being demoted to in some HN comments recently. My problem is with some characterizations of humans here. edit: typo fix

Jensson 4y ago

> We're already able to pour buckets of scorn on its capabilities No we don't, we are just trying to put a damper on all the "the singularity is here!" style comments that seems to flood any discussion about GPT.

KyeRussell 4y ago
Oh please. This community is filled to the brim with people that are addicted to negativity and contrarianism. LLM criticisms very typically go far far beyond “this isn’t the singularity”, well toward “LLMs do nothing of value, snd certainly can’t I - the esteemed developer - with anything I find hard in my job!”
- Jensson 4y ago
  Not many say "LLMs do nothing of value". Many comments say LLMs aren't useful to them, but I haven't seen many say that LLMs aren't useful at all.
  - UncleEntity 4y ago
    I’ve seen countless comments stating that it is just predicting the next token, move along, nothing to see here.
    - Jensson 4y ago
      That is literally what LLMs do though. Those comments try to explain how it works so you better can see how it produced the results you see, they aren't trying to say that the program is worthless just that it isn't the magic some people think it is. These models are trained to produce text snippets that look like text snippets it has seen before, and it has seen all internet. That means it can do a lot of impressive things, but also that it is very dumb in other ways.
      - dm33tri 4y ago
        These comments are deceptive. Yes, this is how LLMs work, but that doesn't mean they only repeat things they have seen before. LLMs are capable of following instructions to construct new words in any language they know, words never seen before. I've seen it being dumb in maths or real world problems. But as a large language models, they understand and speak languages fine, and even mistakes they make look like mistakes humans who are not natives in the language would make. We may as well say that when we speak, we are just predicting words we have trained on. I don't see how these models are worse than people in that regard. The general knowledge and thinking of these models are surely limited. But seeing GPT-4 go from text only input to text with images, I think it is very possible to break the barriers very soon.
        oska 4y ago
        Ok, since you called out the gp comment as 'deceptive', I in turn am going to call out your comment (and others like it) as delusional, and point to specific places in your comment that exhibit this state of delusion (about LLMs). > they understand and speak languages fine No, they neither 'understand' nor 'speak' languages. The first word here is the more delusional, they have no understanding of languages. They have simply generated a model of the language. And they do not 'speak' the language they have modeled; they generate text in that language. Speaking generally implies an active intelligence; there is no intelligence behind an LLM. There is simply a machine generating (wholly derivative) output text from input text. > We may as well say that when we speak, we are just predicting words we have trained on This is the delusion, commonly being repeated, that humans themselves are only LLMs. This is a dangerous delusion, in my view, and one that has no evidence behind it. It is only a supposition, and a sterile and nihilistic one in my view. > The general knowledge and thinking of these models are surely limited [...] I think it is very possible to break the barriers very soon The limitations are fundamental to LLMs. LLMs have no general knowledge and LLMs don't do any 'thinking'. Your understanding of what they are doing is in grave error, and that error is based on a personification of the machine. An error coming from the delusion that because they generate 'natural' language they are operating similarly to us (false and addressed above). They are never going to break the limits because they have never started to transcend those limits in the first place, nor can they. They don't and will never 'think' or 'reason'.
- adt 4y ago
  >Oh please. This community is filled to the brim with people that are addicted to negativity and contrarianism. LLM criticisms very typically go far far beyond “this isn’t the singularity”, well toward “LLMs do nothing of value, snd certainly can’t I - the esteemed developer - with anything I find hard in my job!” Yep. Welcome to HN. And welcome to the majority of humanity! https://lifearchitect.ai/contrarianism/ https://lifearchitect.ai/contrarianism/ https://lifearchitect.ai/why-does-ai-make-you-so-angry/ https://lifearchitect.ai/why-does-ai-make-you-so-angry/ https://lifearchitect.ai/ai-panic/ https://lifearchitect.ai/ai-panic/

alto22 4y ago

Aren't all new languages a mishmash of older languages, even?

sbergot 4y ago

ChatGPT is both impressive and scary. We know how things work: there is no way to slow down this train. However it is already having an impact on things like education. Teacher don't have good enough tools to detect cheaters, and students are going to suffer because of that. Honest ones will be wrongly accused. Cheaters will get good grades. The only solution I see is to ban any graded homework. What will be the other impacts?

dgb23 4y ago
Students have been “cheating” with homework forever. Many get help from their parents and some even have professional help. Many collaborate or copy. This is just another tool in the student’s toolbox and should be treated as such.
dzhiurgis 4y ago
> ban any graded homework. Modern countries don't do homework, other than reading, for ages

geraneum 4y ago

> designing a language (albeit a derivative and uninspired one) is a trivial task that any human could achieve. It is, isn’t it? You just need to be able to read and write words and symbols that reassemble a programming language coherently and follow the pattern. This is what humans do after all; remixing. Anyone can do this.

eitland 4y ago
Sorry if I am missing something here, but I think we all know well functioning, productive humans, maybe even in our field, who wouldn't have been able to create this language or a similarly well thought out one. I know a competent man should be able to "change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders [...]" and what not and specialization is for insects, but even on the Mysterious Island not everyone is Cyrus Smith (Harding).
- KyeRussell 4y ago
  Don’t bother. Hacker News takes the throne for “I could do this in a weekend” rhetoric.
  - lostmsu 4y ago
    "in a weekend" now is too slow. They'd have to do it in 5 minutes or even less.
- geraneum 4y ago
  I think you are missing my sarcasm. I don’t think every human can design a well thought out language, let alone an LLM. I was trying to point out that we are more than this. More than what humans are being demoted to in some HN comments recently. My problem is with some characterizations of humans here. edit: typo fix