5 ms·
What does GPT know beyond what we have (directly or indirectly) taught it? Could it have figured out how to extract five seconds of video from an MPG file if th
by tjr 4y ago
What does GPT know beyond what we have (directly or indirectly) taught it? Could it have figured out how to extract five seconds of video from an MPG file if that knowledge had not been made available to it? Would it have invented the MPG format (or something comparable) on its own? Would it have developed the web and HTTP protocol on top of TCP/IP?
And so on. Maybe the answer is in fact "yes", or even "yes, and it would have done these things even better than humans did". But so far it seems to be amazingly good at doing things that we showed it how to do.
If we stop creating actually new things, will it do that for us also?
Why would it care to do so? What interest does it have in creating new things on its own?
- crop_rotation 4y agoThe amount of people who create genuinely new things is so tiny that I am not sure it is even relevant to the discussion. And here I mean genuinely new things, not translating some C lib to java or similar stuff, or changing existing libraries to handle more stuff. If the amount of people that will have social mobility opportunities will be equivalent to the amount of people who could have invented the MPG format or something comparable, then my point is made.
- intelVISA 4y ago> people who create genuinely new things is so tiny This is my insurance against LLMs, only works if the market demands new things...
- crop_rotation 4y agoI doubt anyone would want their livelihood to depend upon being able to create genuinely new things with extreme consistency.
- illiarian 4y ago> The amount of people who create genuinely new things The question isn't really about "genuinely new things". The number of permutations of existing things is such that at any given job you're likely to do old things in a new way. E.g. you'd think that all streaming services are the same. Superficially, yes. Internally, Netflix, Disney+ and Apple Tv+ are likely to be different as night and day.
- antibasilisk 4y ago>Could it have figured out how to extract five seconds of video from an MPG file if that knowledge had not been made available to it? Could you?
- tjr 4y agoA good highlight to an ambiguous question! Which knowledge, exactly, is not being made available? But let's say that an MPG format specification is available. Even other code examples of interacting with an MPG file. But no examples, no library, no documentation on specifically how to extract a subset of one file into another file. I would think a competent programmer could figure that out. Perhaps an AI tool could also; I have not yet seen an example of it doing so, but perhaps it could. Of the handful of questions I asked, this might be the least interesting one. More generally, can AI tools advance the state of the art?
- meghan_rain 4y ago> What does GPT know beyond what we have (directly or indirectly) taught it? Could it have figured out how to extract five seconds of video from an MPG file if that knowledge had not been made available to it? Would it have invented the MPG format (or something comparable) on its own? Would it have developed the web and HTTP protocol on top of TCP/IP? Would you?