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I hate being the bearish guy during the hype cycle, but I think a lot of that is just anthropomorphizing it. They fed it TBs of human text, it spits out human t

I hate being the bearish guy during the hype cycle, but I think a lot of that is just anthropomorphizing it. They fed it TBs of human text, it spits out human text, we think it's humanesque. Of course maybe I'm wrong and it's AGI and it will find this comment and torture me for for insulting it's intelligence.

deleted 4y ago
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rootusrootus 4y ago
> I hate being the bearish guy No, please keep it up. Someone needs to keep pushing back against all the "I don't understand it, but it says smart-sounding things, and I don't understand the human brain either, so they're probably the same, it must be sentient!" It's a pretty handy technology, to be sure. But it's still just a tool.
- danaris 4y ago
  Yeah; there's way too much "humanity of the gaps" here recently. We don't have to fully understand the brain, or fully understand what LLMs are doing, to be able to say that what LLMs are doing is neither that close to what the brain does, nor anything that we would recognize as consciousness or sentience. There is enough that we do understand about those things—and the ways in which they differ—to be able to say with great confidence that we are not particularly close to AGI with this.
- anotherman554 4y ago
  >"I don't understand it, but it says smart-sounding things, and I don't understand the human brain either, so they're probably the same, it must be sentient!" This perfectly summarize so much of the discourse around GPT. Except people lack the humility to say they don't understand the brain, so instead they type "It works just like your brain," or "Food for thought: can you prove it isn't just like your brain?"
rimliu 4y ago
I really liked the analogy to a student given in this wonderful article: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-web https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-... Basically, due to it's nature ChatGPT cannot repeat things verbatim, so it rephrases it. In humans we associate the ability to rephrase stuff with the understanding the material as opposed to rote learning, so we transfer the same concept over to ChatGPT and it suddenly appears "intelligent" despite having zero concepts of whatever stuff it spits out.
robwwilliams 4y ago
LoL: how many of us are trying to kiss up to our future AGI overlords or children? I think almost all in HN space would confidently assert that there is no AGI lurking in GPT4+. But add the right higher order modules and self-controlled recursion and Bingo.
int_19h 4y ago
It doesn't just "spit out text". You can give it instructions, and it carries them out. If you give it access to an API, it can actually use that API to perform tasks (e.g. draw images). And it can do all that for tasks that are verifiably not a part of its training set.
olddustytrail 4y ago
It's more like you feed a million cows into a meat grinder, then into a sausage machine, and then weirdly what appears to be a mooing cow comes out the other end. It's weird it works when you know how it works.
habosa 4y ago
I’m also quite bearish on all the AI hype but part of my skepticism means I don’t trust that the AI experts actually know everything. I believe there’s a possibility that their invention this time is actually more interesting (in some dimensions) than they understand it to be.

deleted 4y ago

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rootusrootus 4y ago

> I hate being the bearish guy No, please keep it up. Someone needs to keep pushing back against all the "I don't understand it, but it says smart-sounding things, and I don't understand the human brain either, so they're probably the same, it must be sentient!" It's a pretty handy technology, to be sure. But it's still just a tool.

danaris 4y ago
Yeah; there's way too much "humanity of the gaps" here recently. We don't have to fully understand the brain, or fully understand what LLMs are doing, to be able to say that what LLMs are doing is neither that close to what the brain does, nor anything that we would recognize as consciousness or sentience. There is enough that we do understand about those things—and the ways in which they differ—to be able to say with great confidence that we are not particularly close to AGI with this.
anotherman554 4y ago
>"I don't understand it, but it says smart-sounding things, and I don't understand the human brain either, so they're probably the same, it must be sentient!" This perfectly summarize so much of the discourse around GPT. Except people lack the humility to say they don't understand the brain, so instead they type "It works just like your brain," or "Food for thought: can you prove it isn't just like your brain?"

rimliu 4y ago

I really liked the analogy to a student given in this wonderful article: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-web https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-... Basically, due to it's nature ChatGPT cannot repeat things verbatim, so it rephrases it. In humans we associate the ability to rephrase stuff with the understanding the material as opposed to rote learning, so we transfer the same concept over to ChatGPT and it suddenly appears "intelligent" despite having zero concepts of whatever stuff it spits out.

robwwilliams 4y ago

LoL: how many of us are trying to kiss up to our future AGI overlords or children? I think almost all in HN space would confidently assert that there is no AGI lurking in GPT4+. But add the right higher order modules and self-controlled recursion and Bingo.

int_19h 4y ago

It doesn't just "spit out text". You can give it instructions, and it carries them out. If you give it access to an API, it can actually use that API to perform tasks (e.g. draw images). And it can do all that for tasks that are verifiably not a part of its training set.

olddustytrail 4y ago

It's more like you feed a million cows into a meat grinder, then into a sausage machine, and then weirdly what appears to be a mooing cow comes out the other end. It's weird it works when you know how it works.

habosa 4y ago

I’m also quite bearish on all the AI hype but part of my skepticism means I don’t trust that the AI experts actually know everything. I believe there’s a possibility that their invention this time is actually more interesting (in some dimensions) than they understand it to be.