9 ms·

A lot of people are already benefiting from ChatGPT. I know I am, and I am only paying $20 a month for a digital assistant that is expert in everything.

paulryanrogers 4y ago
An expert that bullshits part of the time. You get to figure out when it's the expert and when it's the bullshitter.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  It also will never be possible for a transformer model trained on words and optimized to put valid sentences together to even "know" WHEN it is "right" or "wrong". A lie or falsehood is just as valid a sentence as a fact. When and with what subjects it makes shit up is also heavily dependent on training data, and the result is straight up a black box. What good is a fact generator that can't be trusted?
  - nicksrose7224 4y ago
    I see this argument all the time. Why are you assuming that this technology just "stops" at the LLM level? If I'm openAI or Google or whatever, I'm definitely going to run extra classifiers on top of the output of the LLM to determine & improve accuracy of results. You can layer on all kinds of interesting models to make a thing that's generally useful & also truthful.
    - lanstin 4y ago
      Your last word is a bit of a weasel word. There is no currently known way to get truth except to try something out and see what happens. Even the marvelous GPS routing takes feedback from people driving down the routes and succeeding or failing. Add more layers but without some equivalent of arms and legs, it won’t be able to be sure about truth. The nice thing about the easy to bamboozle GPT4 is that it can’t hurt anything, so its flaws are safe. Giving it these arms and legs is where the risks increase, even as the reward increases.
  - jameshart 4y ago
    What even is a 'fact generator'? And why do you think an LLM is meant to function as one? If you ask Wolfram Alpha - something which I think is actually meant to be a fact generator - "Which is the heaviest Pokemon?" it will happily tell you that it is Celesteela, and it weighs 2204.4lbs. Is that a 'fact'? It certainly 'true', for some definition of the word true. The game Pokemon exists, and in it Pokemon have a weight. Of all the official Pokemon, that one is the heaviest. Wolfram Alpha has given you an accurate answer to your question. But it's also completely made up. There's no such thing as a Pokemon, and they do not actually have weights. So sure, transformer models can't be relied upon to generate facts. But so what? There's a lot more to the world than mere facts.
- yreg 4y ago
  >you get to figure out when… A usefull skill to train. Increasingly so…
- keymasta 4y ago
  In JRR Tolkien's terms the pair are called "slinker and stinker", but in that case they are both kind of evil, whereas I don't see GPT's as anything more than correlation of large sets of integers. A correlation that yields incredible utility (for me), when it isn't stinking.
amluto 4y ago
You may be getting ahead of yourself. You can spend $20 and ask ChatGPT to make plentiful food and energy, but it won’t actually do so.
- Teever 4y ago
  How long until you can spend $20 and ask ChatGPT to design a machine and provide the schematics and assembly instructions? How long until that machine can self replicate? How long until that machine can generate other self replicating machines, like bipedal humanoids? How long until you can spend $20 and ask ChatGPT for the schematics of a Von Nuemann probe?
  - allturtles 4y ago
    In broad strokes, I see roughly two ways things could go: 1) Current AI tech is already nearing the top of the S-curve. In this case it will do nothing to help humans in the "real world", it will just replace much of the human labor currently used to create/manipulate bits. 2) Current AI tech is near the bottom of the S-curve. It continues to ratchet up and its capabilities become super-human, as you outline. In which case, how long until the AI capable of creating self-replicating machines realizes it doesn't need to listen to humans anymore, or even keep them around?
    - lagrange77 4y ago
      > In which case, how long until the AI capable of creating self-replicating machines realizes it doesn't need to listen to humans anymore, or even keep them around? Transformer models don't realize or need stuff.
      - andyfleming 4y ago
        Not independently, but if wrapped with a loop, given memory, given internet access, and directives as intrinsic motivations, it could, in theory, come to conclusions and take actions to acquire resources aligned with its motivations. If that outer loop does not have rules (or rules that are effective and immutable), it could become very powerful and potentially misaligned with our interests.
HybridCurve 4y ago
It is an expert in nothing. Try asking it for general information and then ask it to produce citations for said information. It's a language model which is good at synthesizing certain information based on it's learned probability distributions. It has superficial knowledge at best and all information it produces must be cross checked for accuracy. Yes, it can be incredibly useful but it literally has no comprehension of anything.
- MacsHeadroom 4y ago
  >Yes, it can be incredibly useful but it literally has no comprehension of anything. Someone else who obviously doesn't have GPT-4 or plugins beta access. It has comprehension alright.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    GPT-4 being behind a paywall is genius, that way only the true believers will use it and once again discussions are shut down and we only get to see cherry picked articles about it, just like GPT-3 before ChatGPT came and was free so everyone could see how bad it was.
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      It's like the google researcher who claimed their model was sentient because he heavily coached it to give the output he wanted and ignored the output that didn't confirm his belief. In that case, we've had AGI since ELIZA If this was the standard in other areas of science we would still be using the miasma theory of medicine and bloodletting women for their hysteria. AI "Research" is a bunch of motivated people throwing stuff at the wall and claiming something sticking means they are scientists. Nevermind all of the groups are HEAVILY motivated to overhype their models.
      - HybridCurve 4y ago
        People are also quick to aggrandize or anthropomorphize these systems as well because they lack a fundamental understanding of the underlying mathematics or mechanisms which allow these models to function as well as they do. There is an inherent danger in how much trust people are willing to grant to something like a language(or image) model simply because it is so adept at synthesis. This is a great cause of concern to me, especially when it is not particularly difficult to invalidate general credibility of these models. In the near future, it will not be as easy and I anticipate many(even the well educated) will surrender their rationale to these systems easily with little to no scrutiny. The hype from these companies is contributing to this problem and I consider it to be highly unethical.
janalsncm 4y ago
That’s very nice until your company also realizes that for $20 a month they get a computer program that’s an “expert at everything” including your job.

paulryanrogers 4y ago

An expert that bullshits part of the time. You get to figure out when it's the expert and when it's the bullshitter.

mrguyorama 4y ago
It also will never be possible for a transformer model trained on words and optimized to put valid sentences together to even "know" WHEN it is "right" or "wrong". A lie or falsehood is just as valid a sentence as a fact. When and with what subjects it makes shit up is also heavily dependent on training data, and the result is straight up a black box. What good is a fact generator that can't be trusted?
- nicksrose7224 4y ago
  I see this argument all the time. Why are you assuming that this technology just "stops" at the LLM level? If I'm openAI or Google or whatever, I'm definitely going to run extra classifiers on top of the output of the LLM to determine & improve accuracy of results. You can layer on all kinds of interesting models to make a thing that's generally useful & also truthful.
  - lanstin 4y ago
    Your last word is a bit of a weasel word. There is no currently known way to get truth except to try something out and see what happens. Even the marvelous GPS routing takes feedback from people driving down the routes and succeeding or failing. Add more layers but without some equivalent of arms and legs, it won’t be able to be sure about truth. The nice thing about the easy to bamboozle GPT4 is that it can’t hurt anything, so its flaws are safe. Giving it these arms and legs is where the risks increase, even as the reward increases.
- jameshart 4y ago
  What even is a 'fact generator'? And why do you think an LLM is meant to function as one? If you ask Wolfram Alpha - something which I think is actually meant to be a fact generator - "Which is the heaviest Pokemon?" it will happily tell you that it is Celesteela, and it weighs 2204.4lbs. Is that a 'fact'? It certainly 'true', for some definition of the word true. The game Pokemon exists, and in it Pokemon have a weight. Of all the official Pokemon, that one is the heaviest. Wolfram Alpha has given you an accurate answer to your question. But it's also completely made up. There's no such thing as a Pokemon, and they do not actually have weights. So sure, transformer models can't be relied upon to generate facts. But so what? There's a lot more to the world than mere facts.
yreg 4y ago
>you get to figure out when… A usefull skill to train. Increasingly so…
keymasta 4y ago
In JRR Tolkien's terms the pair are called "slinker and stinker", but in that case they are both kind of evil, whereas I don't see GPT's as anything more than correlation of large sets of integers. A correlation that yields incredible utility (for me), when it isn't stinking.

amluto 4y ago

You may be getting ahead of yourself. You can spend $20 and ask ChatGPT to make plentiful food and energy, but it won’t actually do so.

Teever 4y ago
How long until you can spend $20 and ask ChatGPT to design a machine and provide the schematics and assembly instructions? How long until that machine can self replicate? How long until that machine can generate other self replicating machines, like bipedal humanoids? How long until you can spend $20 and ask ChatGPT for the schematics of a Von Nuemann probe?
- allturtles 4y ago
  In broad strokes, I see roughly two ways things could go: 1) Current AI tech is already nearing the top of the S-curve. In this case it will do nothing to help humans in the "real world", it will just replace much of the human labor currently used to create/manipulate bits. 2) Current AI tech is near the bottom of the S-curve. It continues to ratchet up and its capabilities become super-human, as you outline. In which case, how long until the AI capable of creating self-replicating machines realizes it doesn't need to listen to humans anymore, or even keep them around?
  - lagrange77 4y ago
    > In which case, how long until the AI capable of creating self-replicating machines realizes it doesn't need to listen to humans anymore, or even keep them around? Transformer models don't realize or need stuff.
    - andyfleming 4y ago
      Not independently, but if wrapped with a loop, given memory, given internet access, and directives as intrinsic motivations, it could, in theory, come to conclusions and take actions to acquire resources aligned with its motivations. If that outer loop does not have rules (or rules that are effective and immutable), it could become very powerful and potentially misaligned with our interests.

HybridCurve 4y ago

It is an expert in nothing. Try asking it for general information and then ask it to produce citations for said information. It's a language model which is good at synthesizing certain information based on it's learned probability distributions. It has superficial knowledge at best and all information it produces must be cross checked for accuracy. Yes, it can be incredibly useful but it literally has no comprehension of anything.

MacsHeadroom 4y ago
>Yes, it can be incredibly useful but it literally has no comprehension of anything. Someone else who obviously doesn't have GPT-4 or plugins beta access. It has comprehension alright.
- Jensson 4y ago
  GPT-4 being behind a paywall is genius, that way only the true believers will use it and once again discussions are shut down and we only get to see cherry picked articles about it, just like GPT-3 before ChatGPT came and was free so everyone could see how bad it was.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    It's like the google researcher who claimed their model was sentient because he heavily coached it to give the output he wanted and ignored the output that didn't confirm his belief. In that case, we've had AGI since ELIZA If this was the standard in other areas of science we would still be using the miasma theory of medicine and bloodletting women for their hysteria. AI "Research" is a bunch of motivated people throwing stuff at the wall and claiming something sticking means they are scientists. Nevermind all of the groups are HEAVILY motivated to overhype their models.
    - HybridCurve 4y ago
      People are also quick to aggrandize or anthropomorphize these systems as well because they lack a fundamental understanding of the underlying mathematics or mechanisms which allow these models to function as well as they do. There is an inherent danger in how much trust people are willing to grant to something like a language(or image) model simply because it is so adept at synthesis. This is a great cause of concern to me, especially when it is not particularly difficult to invalidate general credibility of these models. In the near future, it will not be as easy and I anticipate many(even the well educated) will surrender their rationale to these systems easily with little to no scrutiny. The hype from these companies is contributing to this problem and I consider it to be highly unethical.

janalsncm 4y ago

That’s very nice until your company also realizes that for $20 a month they get a computer program that’s an “expert at everything” including your job.