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It’s suspect until it’s demonstrated. Once someone has demonstrated it, counterexamples are meaningless. I claim I can juggle. I pick up three tennis balls and
by travisjungroth 3y ago
It’s suspect until it’s demonstrated. Once someone has demonstrated it, counterexamples are meaningless.
I claim I can juggle. I pick up three tennis balls and juggle them. You hand me three basketballs. I try and fail. My original claim, that I can juggle, still stands.
- physPop 3y agoI disagree -- that would disprove your claim, as your claim was too broad. Same if they handed you chainsaws or elephants, or seventy-two tennis balls. The more correct claim is you can juggle [some small number of items with particular properties].
- travisjungroth 3y agoNormal English implies that you can do something, not everything. It’s an any versus all distinction, and all is totally unreasonable except for the most formal circumstances. “Can you ride a bike?” “Yeah.” “Prove it. Here I have the world’s smallest bicycle.” <- this person is not worth your time and attention.
- alienicecream 3y agoIt can't even count reliably. And this is a computer, not a human. That is one of the simplest things a computer should be able to do. It can't count because it doesn't know what counting is, not because it's unreliable in the way a human would be when counting. You cannot reason if you do not understand the concepts you are working with. The result is not the measure of success here, because it is good at mimicking, but when it fails at such a basic computing task, you can reasonably conclude it has no idea what it's doing.
- travisjungroth 3y agoThink about it step by step. There are people not able to count. We still say they can reason. A low ability to count does not disprove reasoning.
- alienicecream 3y agoA child may not be able to count, because they don't yet understand the concept, but may be able to reason at a more basic level, yes. But GPT has ingested most of the books in the world and the entire internet. So if it hasn't learned to count, or what counting is by now, what is going to change? A child can learn the concept, GPT cannot. It doesn't understand concepts at all, it only seems like it does because the output is so close to what beings that do understand concepts generate themselves, and it's mimicking that.
- travisjungroth 3y agoThere are adults who can't count as well as ChatGPT.
- alienicecream 3y agoOk, but how does that change the argument?
- travisjungroth 3y agoInability to count does not prove inability to reason.
- alienicecream 3y agoIt can't count because it doesn't know what counting is. Otherwise it would be able to count like a computer can. After ingesting all the literature in the world, why can't it count yet?
- travisjungroth 3y agoIt can, just not very well. Often the issue is people have it count letters and words but those aren’t the abstractions or deals with. It would be like if I told you to pick up the ball primarily reflecting 450nm light and called you colorblind if you couldn’t do it. GPT is built on a computer. It is not a computer itself. I am made of cells, but I am not able to perform mitosis. It’s also very capable of offloading counting tasks, since computers are so good at that. Just suggest it format things in code and evaluate it. Here’s an example of it counting. I’m pretty confident it’s never seen this exact problem before. How many fruits are in this list? banana, hammer, wrench, watermelon, screwdriver, pineapple, peach There are 4 fruits in the list you provided: banana, watermelon, pineapple, and peach. The other items are tools, not fruits.
- pxc 3y agoThat's because > I can juggle is here shorthand for > I can juggle at all; I can juggle at least some things and the basketball case is only a counterexample to the much stronger claim > I can juggle anything But the argument about AIs reasoning has little to do with such examples, because juggling is about the ability to complete the task alone. When it comes to reasoning there are questions about authenticity that don't have analogs I'm determine whether a person can juggle.
- travisjungroth 3y agoThis thread is exactly such examples. What would “not alone” mean? Do you think someone is passing it the answers? Of course it was trained, but that’s like cheating on a test by reading the material so you can keep a cheat sheet in your brain.