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I don't understand why generating language, or code, would be a good thing. Language, and code, is a tool for communication. If you treat it as fodder or mercha

I don't understand why generating language, or code, would be a good thing. Language, and code, is a tool for communication. If you treat it as fodder or merchandise, you loose the main use: transport meaning between different people. I fail to understand why we would want automatically generated language at all, except for the fact that you can sometimes make money off of it. Considering we're where we are as a civilization because people could make money off of poisoning the Earth and causing catastrophic ecosystem and climate change for profit, I think we should examine our motives more closely.

omarfarooq 3y ago
Would you be so kind as to demonstrate how generated language and code does not transport meaning between different people.
- SanderNL 3y ago
  I'd say the symbols themselves are meaningless without their ground truths, whatever that is. We can call this "experience" or "thinking". The results of these opaque processes are somehow amenable to be encoded into symbols which are themselves deprived of any significance. Which I guess makes them usable as such in the first place. Extreme example: if a random algorithm picked out a few words from a dictionary and somehow cobbled a sentence together using those words, would you say "meaning" has been transported? The "generation" of these symbols should be the result of a process equivalent to whatever we are doing when we "experience" or "cognate" or whatever, otherwise the results will be only very superficially useful.
  - bheadmaster 3y ago
    > I'd say the symbols themselves are meaningless without their ground truths, whatever that is. We can call this "experience" or "thinking". So you're basically dismissing the whole field of genetic algorithms?
    - SanderNL 3y ago
      If said genetic algorithms were used to directly spew forth symbols that represent or point towards human experience (“language”) as if the underlying processes that ultimately form the foundation of said symbols could be approximated by slowly changing random walks, then, yes, I’d question the usefulness of that approach. If not, what do you mean?
      - bheadmaster 3y ago
        I mean, just because an array of symbols is generated mechanically doesn't inherently make it meaningless, because meaning arises from the execution of those symbols (in case of computer programs; or interpretation, in case of human language). If you read a sentence (whose source is unknown to you) and it has meaning to you and affects you, what difference does it make if the sentence was written by a human or a machine?
        SanderNL 3y ago
        That’s an excellent observation. I struggled with this too and because I am fond of defective analogies this made me think of the meaning of a personal note to, say, a lover. Does it matter by whom or indeed what it was written? The experience of reading occurs solely in the recipient’s mind. Surely it does not affect him/her differently if said note was produced by a romantic slot machine. Before I meander towards my confused and shaky conclusion, let me clear one thing out of the way: I did not mean to imply that mechanically generated sequences are meaningless. They absolutely carry meaning, because meaning is ultimately created by us. We are meaning-creation machines. We can find meaning in tea-leaves. Surely tea-leaves carry meaning, but sadly not the will-of-the-gods-kind. Although that doesn’t stop us from thinking they do. What I am tentatively suggesting is that the meaning of the lover’s note is as much found in the experience of the relationship they share as it is found in the symbols on the paper. The symbols reference that experience. Because it is ultimately a human that reads and interprets I think failure to take into account the origin of the material will be the source of a subtle and highly impactful, but inexorable error not dissimilar to that of the tasseographer: what you see doesn’t mean what you think it does. Language used to be a domain dominated by humans only. We are wired for it and biased by it. If it sounds intelligent, it is intelligent, right? This bias could make us defer to the machine quicker than we should. What’s the difference between GPT4 generating a good piece of code and a human? Maybe I should shut up now. I am open to interesting reading suggestions by the way.
ChrisRR 3y ago
You can't understand why software that can do in a fraction of a section what a human would do in hours would be valuable?
- namaria 3y ago
  You're describing automation. I'm talking about a very specific subset of it: automatically generating human or (human readable) language.
  - ChrisRR 3y ago
    So if the job is to generate articles, technical reports, presentations, emails, marketing materials are the task, then generating human-like text is automating that task.
- SanderNL 3y ago
  The software indeed has to do what I do, which is understanding my environment and mentating solutions that are somehow appropriate for either fixing or alleviating any one of the uncountable challenges said environment faces. I cannot even describe what I am doing, only that relatively small parts of the end-result are encoded into symbols called code. This reminds me of what Bohr said to Oppenheimer - in the movie - when some doubt arose around his mathematical ability: "Algebra is like sheet music. The important thing isn't 'can you read music', it's 'can you hear it'. Can you hear the music, Robert?" I'm very much wondering if GPT can hear the music, but time will tell if and to what degree this even matters.
  - wryanzimmerman 3y ago
    But the real question is whether or not an LLM can let someone who can hear the music (they’re an expert in the context, the project, and the business environment) but who can’t read or write the sheet music (can’t code) will be able to make the computer do what it needs to do well enough using the LLM as a sort of person to machine translator to eliminate the need for a person to listen to the subject matter expert and write the code.
selfhoster11 3y ago
The purpose of code is first and foremost to make a computer do things. Legibility is, strictly speaking, secondary.
- nwalizer 3y ago
  I see you've never had to maintain code.
  - namaria 3y ago
    Precisely my point. If you see code, or written language, just as something you dump in a box to get paid, creating code or text with LLMs makes perfect sense. If you realize code and language are ways to communicate asynchronously and conserve information across time and space to enable developing and maintaining systems, the apparent value of generic concatenation of words that looks good and functions but has not meaningful message conveyed drops off precipitously.
  - selfhoster11 3y ago
    Code that doesn't run is just dead bytes. It's not useful for anything. Code that does run, even if impossible to comprehend without considerable research (like, say, DNA), is useful for something. You just cannot change its function. I have maintained code, and even wrote some terrible stuff myself. All I'm saying is that once you strip all the lofty ideas about what code should be (which are all very good ideas!), then you are left with the very simple core idea: code is supposed to run and do stuff.

omarfarooq 3y ago

Would you be so kind as to demonstrate how generated language and code does not transport meaning between different people.

SanderNL 3y ago
I'd say the symbols themselves are meaningless without their ground truths, whatever that is. We can call this "experience" or "thinking". The results of these opaque processes are somehow amenable to be encoded into symbols which are themselves deprived of any significance. Which I guess makes them usable as such in the first place. Extreme example: if a random algorithm picked out a few words from a dictionary and somehow cobbled a sentence together using those words, would you say "meaning" has been transported? The "generation" of these symbols should be the result of a process equivalent to whatever we are doing when we "experience" or "cognate" or whatever, otherwise the results will be only very superficially useful.
- bheadmaster 3y ago
  > I'd say the symbols themselves are meaningless without their ground truths, whatever that is. We can call this "experience" or "thinking". So you're basically dismissing the whole field of genetic algorithms?
  - SanderNL 3y ago
    If said genetic algorithms were used to directly spew forth symbols that represent or point towards human experience (“language”) as if the underlying processes that ultimately form the foundation of said symbols could be approximated by slowly changing random walks, then, yes, I’d question the usefulness of that approach. If not, what do you mean?
    - bheadmaster 3y ago
      I mean, just because an array of symbols is generated mechanically doesn't inherently make it meaningless, because meaning arises from the execution of those symbols (in case of computer programs; or interpretation, in case of human language). If you read a sentence (whose source is unknown to you) and it has meaning to you and affects you, what difference does it make if the sentence was written by a human or a machine?
      - SanderNL 3y ago
        That’s an excellent observation. I struggled with this too and because I am fond of defective analogies this made me think of the meaning of a personal note to, say, a lover. Does it matter by whom or indeed what it was written? The experience of reading occurs solely in the recipient’s mind. Surely it does not affect him/her differently if said note was produced by a romantic slot machine. Before I meander towards my confused and shaky conclusion, let me clear one thing out of the way: I did not mean to imply that mechanically generated sequences are meaningless. They absolutely carry meaning, because meaning is ultimately created by us. We are meaning-creation machines. We can find meaning in tea-leaves. Surely tea-leaves carry meaning, but sadly not the will-of-the-gods-kind. Although that doesn’t stop us from thinking they do. What I am tentatively suggesting is that the meaning of the lover’s note is as much found in the experience of the relationship they share as it is found in the symbols on the paper. The symbols reference that experience. Because it is ultimately a human that reads and interprets I think failure to take into account the origin of the material will be the source of a subtle and highly impactful, but inexorable error not dissimilar to that of the tasseographer: what you see doesn’t mean what you think it does. Language used to be a domain dominated by humans only. We are wired for it and biased by it. If it sounds intelligent, it is intelligent, right? This bias could make us defer to the machine quicker than we should. What’s the difference between GPT4 generating a good piece of code and a human? Maybe I should shut up now. I am open to interesting reading suggestions by the way.

ChrisRR 3y ago

You can't understand why software that can do in a fraction of a section what a human would do in hours would be valuable?

namaria 3y ago
You're describing automation. I'm talking about a very specific subset of it: automatically generating human or (human readable) language.
- ChrisRR 3y ago
  So if the job is to generate articles, technical reports, presentations, emails, marketing materials are the task, then generating human-like text is automating that task.
SanderNL 3y ago
The software indeed has to do what I do, which is understanding my environment and mentating solutions that are somehow appropriate for either fixing or alleviating any one of the uncountable challenges said environment faces. I cannot even describe what I am doing, only that relatively small parts of the end-result are encoded into symbols called code. This reminds me of what Bohr said to Oppenheimer - in the movie - when some doubt arose around his mathematical ability: "Algebra is like sheet music. The important thing isn't 'can you read music', it's 'can you hear it'. Can you hear the music, Robert?" I'm very much wondering if GPT can hear the music, but time will tell if and to what degree this even matters.
- wryanzimmerman 3y ago
  But the real question is whether or not an LLM can let someone who can hear the music (they’re an expert in the context, the project, and the business environment) but who can’t read or write the sheet music (can’t code) will be able to make the computer do what it needs to do well enough using the LLM as a sort of person to machine translator to eliminate the need for a person to listen to the subject matter expert and write the code.

selfhoster11 3y ago

The purpose of code is first and foremost to make a computer do things. Legibility is, strictly speaking, secondary.

nwalizer 3y ago
I see you've never had to maintain code.
- namaria 3y ago
  Precisely my point. If you see code, or written language, just as something you dump in a box to get paid, creating code or text with LLMs makes perfect sense. If you realize code and language are ways to communicate asynchronously and conserve information across time and space to enable developing and maintaining systems, the apparent value of generic concatenation of words that looks good and functions but has not meaningful message conveyed drops off precipitously.
- selfhoster11 3y ago
  Code that doesn't run is just dead bytes. It's not useful for anything. Code that does run, even if impossible to comprehend without considerable research (like, say, DNA), is useful for something. You just cannot change its function. I have maintained code, and even wrote some terrible stuff myself. All I'm saying is that once you strip all the lofty ideas about what code should be (which are all very good ideas!), then you are left with the very simple core idea: code is supposed to run and do stuff.