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There’s nothing surreal about this. It’s an iterative, semi-deterministic process. It’s simply a place where context and generation lead to weird outputs. Yo

There’s nothing surreal about this. It’s an iterative, semi-deterministic process. It’s simply a place where context and generation lead to weird outputs. You can get similar outputs by asking OpenAi to repeat a number 100 times. It will eventually get into some weird, low probability paths and generate non-sense output.

dumbaccount123 3y ago
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itishappy 3y ago
You don't find anything surreal about that?
- dncornholio 3y ago
  It's only surreal when you think what ChatGPT is saying is 'real', when in fact it's 'just tokens'.
- SkyPuncher 3y ago
  No. Not at all. This type of complete garbage is not uncommon in AI. It's simply the nature of asking a non-intelligent system to generate human readable content. Maybe this is a different way to think about it. In most of the country, your cellphone has _amazing_ coverage. It can talk clearly with a cell tower. Your data and calls work perfectly. In some parts of the country, you're going to have no service. Your cell phone won't work. It doesn't have cell towers to talk to. At the intersection of service and no-service, you'll find an area where your cell phone works sporadically. It might barely have 1 bar of service. You might need to hold your phone a certain way. It will work seemingly randomly. Calls might have a few words go through. That edge of service is essentially where the LLM is at. Its in an internal state where it has enough signal to attempt to generate a response, but not a strong enough signal to generate a meaningful response. It ends up falling back to something it's "memorized".
  - itishappy 3y ago
    I find your example surreal as well... I get the surreal feel from these kinds of technological liminal spaces where hard and fast rules break down into seemingly black magic. "You might be able to get cell service by holding your phone differently. Try waving it randomly around the room, one corner might work better than others." "The USB stick enters on the third try." "An iterative semi-deterministic bag of matrix multiplications can convincingly communicate. Undefined behavior appears schizophrenic." On an intellectual level, I get it, but it's still fuckin' weird.
goatlover 3y ago
Which bolsters the claim that it doesn't really understand what it's generating in a way humans understand language. Sure, it can be said to have a kind of understand for the rules of language it's been trained successfully on, but when you get it in a weird place, that understanding breaks down in a way it doesn't for people.
- blangk 3y ago
  I tend to agree with the sentiment here, but reading the output made me think of disorders like schizophrenia, which is to say sometimes humans enter this mode too.
  - goatlover 3y ago
    For a different reason though having to do with a brain disorder where they have trouble distinguishing their thoughts and imagination from perception.

dumbaccount123 3y ago

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itishappy 3y ago

You don't find anything surreal about that?

dncornholio 3y ago
It's only surreal when you think what ChatGPT is saying is 'real', when in fact it's 'just tokens'.
SkyPuncher 3y ago
No. Not at all. This type of complete garbage is not uncommon in AI. It's simply the nature of asking a non-intelligent system to generate human readable content. Maybe this is a different way to think about it. In most of the country, your cellphone has _amazing_ coverage. It can talk clearly with a cell tower. Your data and calls work perfectly. In some parts of the country, you're going to have no service. Your cell phone won't work. It doesn't have cell towers to talk to. At the intersection of service and no-service, you'll find an area where your cell phone works sporadically. It might barely have 1 bar of service. You might need to hold your phone a certain way. It will work seemingly randomly. Calls might have a few words go through. That edge of service is essentially where the LLM is at. Its in an internal state where it has enough signal to attempt to generate a response, but not a strong enough signal to generate a meaningful response. It ends up falling back to something it's "memorized".
- itishappy 3y ago
  I find your example surreal as well... I get the surreal feel from these kinds of technological liminal spaces where hard and fast rules break down into seemingly black magic. "You might be able to get cell service by holding your phone differently. Try waving it randomly around the room, one corner might work better than others." "The USB stick enters on the third try." "An iterative semi-deterministic bag of matrix multiplications can convincingly communicate. Undefined behavior appears schizophrenic." On an intellectual level, I get it, but it's still fuckin' weird.

goatlover 3y ago

Which bolsters the claim that it doesn't really understand what it's generating in a way humans understand language. Sure, it can be said to have a kind of understand for the rules of language it's been trained successfully on, but when you get it in a weird place, that understanding breaks down in a way it doesn't for people.

blangk 3y ago
I tend to agree with the sentiment here, but reading the output made me think of disorders like schizophrenia, which is to say sometimes humans enter this mode too.
- goatlover 3y ago
  For a different reason though having to do with a brain disorder where they have trouble distinguishing their thoughts and imagination from perception.