4 ms·

It effectively "believes" some things, as it will consistently emit certain statements in response to certain types of queries. It considers that information pa

It effectively "believes" some things, as it will consistently emit certain statements in response to certain types of queries. It considers that information part of a good response. There is information stored in its model. That information might not be correct.

Brian_K_White 4y ago
An mp3 player repeating something does not believe it. There is no way even at any level of abstraction and squinting just right to use a term like that for what chatgpt is or does. It's fancy auto-complete. Literally matching and mashing up patterns against other writings by probability. That's it. Auto-complete is neither understanding nor believing.
- nitwit005 4y ago
  Basically, you reject using any normal words for intelligence when discussing an AI, even when it's a metaphor, or clearly labeled as not being literally true. I'm not sure how that's productive, but feel free.
  - Brian_K_White 4y ago
    I reject that it's productive to use the wrong words for things especially when a lot of people already have practically no grasp of it and are already primed to have the wrong understanding, and using the wrong words only facilitates that wrong understanding. I'm quite sure how that's counter-productive, and please do not feel free.
    - Brian_K_White 4y ago
      To add, put it this way, it's not pedantry: I really do not need my mother in law thinking that she is interacting with an entity when it turns up in some interface she uses. And she does, or is about 1mm from doing so. That's the harm. "quacks like a duck" is not good enough to just let people operate as though it's a duck, and they are, and it's not ok and it's not harmless and it's not their own fault, it's yours and mine.
TheRealPomax 4y ago
Using anthropomorphic terms for ChatGPT does more harm than good. There is no belief, there are no hallucinations, there is no intelligence, and pretending that people understand those terms don't apply is just willfully ignoring that people really don't. People really are that gullible when it comes to things they don't understand, even if you aren't. If you have to use anthropomorphic terms, then there's only one that applies: it lies. Nothing it tells you is in any way shape or form "true", it's only ever plausible, and if it's true, that's still just a coincidence because it has no concept of data validation against reality. It's just an autocompleter; it's algorithmically incredibly simple software that's been written exclusively for the purpose of "finishing a story, given a prompt" and the fact that the prompt can be in the form of a question makes zero difference for that, so that's the part that ChatGPT leaned into hard. Using anthropomorphic terms is a bit cringy at best, but in general, they actively interfere with both people's understanding of what these things are, and their ability to talk about them based on, ironically, a true understanding of them, rather than people's hallucinations about what this current generation of LLM autocompleters is.
- archon1410 4y ago
  > There is no belief, there are no hallucinations, there is no intelligence, and pretending that people understand those terms don't apply is just willfully ignoring that people really don't. People really are that gullible when it comes to things they don't understand, even if you aren't. No, you're pretending something is settled as "incorrect", when it's not, trying to unilaterally force one viewpoint on the issue. "It's just an automcomplete and cannot believe anything" is not something agreed upon by all experts/philosophers of LLMs/consciousness. Some "behaviourist" philosopher might easily agree that ChatGPT does indeed believe it, for example.
  - TheRealPomax 4y ago
    Cite studies (real ones, not popular science opinion pieces) or I call BS on this claim. The academic world is more aware than anyone how little this is "AI" and how far from even a whiff of AGI this is. Even if the question of "can we argue that the outward appearance of conversational intelligence implies actual intelligence" is one that by definition should be discussed in science philosophy context, now more than ever before, and can get you "easy" funding/grant money to publish papers on.

Brian_K_White 4y ago

An mp3 player repeating something does not believe it. There is no way even at any level of abstraction and squinting just right to use a term like that for what chatgpt is or does. It's fancy auto-complete. Literally matching and mashing up patterns against other writings by probability. That's it. Auto-complete is neither understanding nor believing.

nitwit005 4y ago
Basically, you reject using any normal words for intelligence when discussing an AI, even when it's a metaphor, or clearly labeled as not being literally true. I'm not sure how that's productive, but feel free.
- Brian_K_White 4y ago
  I reject that it's productive to use the wrong words for things especially when a lot of people already have practically no grasp of it and are already primed to have the wrong understanding, and using the wrong words only facilitates that wrong understanding. I'm quite sure how that's counter-productive, and please do not feel free.
  - Brian_K_White 4y ago
    To add, put it this way, it's not pedantry: I really do not need my mother in law thinking that she is interacting with an entity when it turns up in some interface she uses. And she does, or is about 1mm from doing so. That's the harm. "quacks like a duck" is not good enough to just let people operate as though it's a duck, and they are, and it's not ok and it's not harmless and it's not their own fault, it's yours and mine.

TheRealPomax 4y ago

Using anthropomorphic terms for ChatGPT does more harm than good. There is no belief, there are no hallucinations, there is no intelligence, and pretending that people understand those terms don't apply is just willfully ignoring that people really don't. People really are that gullible when it comes to things they don't understand, even if you aren't. If you have to use anthropomorphic terms, then there's only one that applies: it lies. Nothing it tells you is in any way shape or form "true", it's only ever plausible, and if it's true, that's still just a coincidence because it has no concept of data validation against reality. It's just an autocompleter; it's algorithmically incredibly simple software that's been written exclusively for the purpose of "finishing a story, given a prompt" and the fact that the prompt can be in the form of a question makes zero difference for that, so that's the part that ChatGPT leaned into hard. Using anthropomorphic terms is a bit cringy at best, but in general, they actively interfere with both people's understanding of what these things are, and their ability to talk about them based on, ironically, a true understanding of them, rather than people's hallucinations about what this current generation of LLM autocompleters is.

archon1410 4y ago
> There is no belief, there are no hallucinations, there is no intelligence, and pretending that people understand those terms don't apply is just willfully ignoring that people really don't. People really are that gullible when it comes to things they don't understand, even if you aren't. No, you're pretending something is settled as "incorrect", when it's not, trying to unilaterally force one viewpoint on the issue. "It's just an automcomplete and cannot believe anything" is not something agreed upon by all experts/philosophers of LLMs/consciousness. Some "behaviourist" philosopher might easily agree that ChatGPT does indeed believe it, for example.
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  Cite studies (real ones, not popular science opinion pieces) or I call BS on this claim. The academic world is more aware than anyone how little this is "AI" and how far from even a whiff of AGI this is. Even if the question of "can we argue that the outward appearance of conversational intelligence implies actual intelligence" is one that by definition should be discussed in science philosophy context, now more than ever before, and can get you "easy" funding/grant money to publish papers on.