5 ms·

Dood, it's not "deciding" to do anything. It's autocompleting commands that statistically follow other commands. It might do anything.

imwillofficial 2y ago
Isn't that what we all do to some degree?
- xkqd 2y ago
  I mean, sure I can do anything. However i won’t because despite it not being in my training data, i recognize that blindly running updates could fuck my day up. This process isn’t a statistical model expressed through language, this is me making judgement calls based on what I know and more importantly, don’t know.
Spivak 2y ago
This is reductive to the point of not being helpful, these models display actual intelligence and can work through sight-unseen problems that can't be solved by "get a bunch of text and calculate the most often used next word." I understand why people say this because they see knowledge fall off once it's something outside their training data but when provided the knowledge the reasoning capability stays. These models don't have will which is why it can't decide anything.
- ratedgene 2y ago
  How are you defining intelligence here?
- Brian_K_White 2y ago
  Incorrect.
- wrs 2y ago
  The models literally do just repeatedly calculate the most (or randomly not quite the most) often used next word. So those problems can in fact be solved by doing that, because that's how they're being solved.
  - Spivak 2y ago
    It's really not though, you're confusing one teeny tiny part of the decoder with the entire decoder. Yes you sample from output probabilities but that's literally the least interesting bit. How you generate those probabilities is the hard part. You do this! When you're speaking or writing you're going one word at a time just like the model, and just like the model your attention is moving between different things to form the thoughts. When you're writing you need at least a semi-complete thought in order for you figure out what word you should write next. The fact that it generates one word at a time is a red herring as to what's really going on.
    - Brian_K_White 2y ago
      If neither an AI nor a person does anything but fit the next word by matching with other prior texts, then where did those other texts come from? A language is a vocabulary and a set of rules which can be described and codified, and is generally learned from others and other prior examples. But all that describes is a tool called a language. The tool itself is mechanistic. The wielder may or may not be. The tool and the wielder are two different things. A piece of paper with text on it is not a writer. A machine that writes text onto paper is still not a writer even though a human writer performs the same physical part of the process as the machine. Similarly, just like it's possible for an mp3 player to make the same sounds we use to express concepts and convey understanding, without itself having any concepts or understanding, it is also possible for an intellect to perform mechanistic acts that don't require an intellect. Sure, actually quite a lot of human activity can be described by simple rules that a machine can replicate. So what? You can move a brick from one place to another. And so can a cart. And so can gravity. Therefor you are no different from a field? It's utterly silly to be mystified by this. It's challenging the other ape in mirror for looking at you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaMylwohL14&t=23s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaMylwohL14&t=23s
    - dmvdoug 2y ago
      Now you’re being remarkably reductive—-about the human language facility. We don’t ”go one word at a time.” (Simple example: “hey, look at that tig boad! Uh… ha! Tig boad, I meant big toad.” Stupid example but the point is that the cognitive psychology of language is much more complex that you’re making out.) Also, what are these “thoughts” you have when writing and what’s a “complete” vs. “semi-complete” one? Stupid question, yes, but you again vastly over-trivialize the real dynamic interplay between figuring out what word(s) to write and figuring out what precisely you’re actually trying to say at all. Writing really is another form of thinking for us.
- xkqd 2y ago
  These statistical models certainly don’t have will, they hardly have understanding, but they do a great job at emulating reasoning. As we increase parameter sizes and increment on the architecture, they’re just going to get better as statistical models. If we decide to assign terms reserved for human beings, that’s more a reflection on the individual. Also they certainly can decide to do things, but so can my switch statements. I’m going to admit that I get a little unnerved when people say these statistical models have “actual intelligence”. The counter is always along the lines of “if we can’t tell the difference, what is the difference?”
  - Spivak 2y ago
    Why reserve them for humans? Is it more or less rational to assume that we have some special intangible spark? I think it is cool as hell that we can now make a machine that exhibits an emergent property previously only observed in living things. I'm not saying they're alive, conscious, sentient, or any of that stuff. Silly. It would actually be less interesting if that was the case, more of a breakthrough, but less interesting. A machine that can reason about a huge variety of topics and on data that is nothing like it's ever seen before is wild. Draw the line wherever you like, if you want to say that intelligence can't be meaningfully separated from stuff like self-awareness, memory, self-learning, self-consistency then that's fine. But is intelligence and reason really so special that you have to be a full being to exhibit it?
    - xkqd 2y ago
      > Is it more or less rational to assume that we have some special intangible spark? My comment is predicated on the belief that yes, at this moment it is more rational to assume we have a special spark. Moreso, it’s irrational that individuals believe that in these models there’s a uniqueness beyond a few emergent properties. It’s a critique on the individuals, not the systems. I worry many of us are a few Altman statements short of having a Blake Lemoine break. To look at our statistical models and say they exhibit “actual intelligence” concerns me that individuals are losing groundness with what we have in front of us.
- wrs 2y ago
  I see the point you're trying to make, but you're being a bit too hyperbolic. The entire decoder is a loop over a function that takes context and generates some next-word probabilities. It's a very complicated function, certainly, but it literally is solving things by "get[ting] a bunch of text and calculat[ing] the most often used next word". What's impressive is how much it can do by just doing that, because that function is so complicated. But it clearly has limits that aren't related to the scope of the training data, as is demonstrated to me daily by getting into a circular argument with ChatGPT about something.
fragmede 2y ago
I thought they were stoichastic parrots that couldn't do anything outside their training data. Now they might do anything? I don't know what to believe, let me ask ChatGPT and have it tell me what to think!
- DirkH 2y ago
  Always seems to me that the goalposts keep moving as capabilities of AI improves. I swear to God we could have AGI+robotics capable of doing anything a human can do (but better) and we'll still - as a species - have multi-hour podcasts pondering and mostly concluding "yea, impressive, but they're not really intelligent. That's not what intelligence actually is."
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    They aren't and it isn't. So far it's all pure mechanism. However, when people talk like this, it does make one wonder if the opposite isn't true. No AI has done more than what an mp3 player does, but apparently there are people who hear an mp3 player say "Hello neighbor!" and actually believe that it greeted them.
    - DirkH 2y ago
      I think you are confusing intelligence with consciousness. They're orthogonal. Otherwise I do not know what definition of intelligence you are using. For me I just use wiki's: "Intelligence can be described as the ability to perceive or infer information; and to retain it as knowledge to be applied to adaptive behaviors within an environment or context." Nothing in that definition disallows a system from being "pure mechanism" and also being intelligent. An mp3 player isn't intelligent because - unlike AI - it isn't taking in information to retain it as knowledge to be applied to adaptive behaviors within an environment or context. An mp3 player that learns my preferences over time and knows exactly when to say hi and how based on contextual cues is displaying intelligence. But I would be mistaken for thinking that it doing so means it is also conscious.
- Brian_K_White 2y ago

imwillofficial 2y ago

Isn't that what we all do to some degree?

xkqd 2y ago
I mean, sure I can do anything. However i won’t because despite it not being in my training data, i recognize that blindly running updates could fuck my day up. This process isn’t a statistical model expressed through language, this is me making judgement calls based on what I know and more importantly, don’t know.

Spivak 2y ago

This is reductive to the point of not being helpful, these models display actual intelligence and can work through sight-unseen problems that can't be solved by "get a bunch of text and calculate the most often used next word." I understand why people say this because they see knowledge fall off once it's something outside their training data but when provided the knowledge the reasoning capability stays. These models don't have will which is why it can't decide anything.

ratedgene 2y ago
How are you defining intelligence here?
Brian_K_White 2y ago
Incorrect.
wrs 2y ago
The models literally do just repeatedly calculate the most (or randomly not quite the most) often used next word. So those problems can in fact be solved by doing that, because that's how they're being solved.
- Spivak 2y ago
  It's really not though, you're confusing one teeny tiny part of the decoder with the entire decoder. Yes you sample from output probabilities but that's literally the least interesting bit. How you generate those probabilities is the hard part. You do this! When you're speaking or writing you're going one word at a time just like the model, and just like the model your attention is moving between different things to form the thoughts. When you're writing you need at least a semi-complete thought in order for you figure out what word you should write next. The fact that it generates one word at a time is a red herring as to what's really going on.
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    If neither an AI nor a person does anything but fit the next word by matching with other prior texts, then where did those other texts come from? A language is a vocabulary and a set of rules which can be described and codified, and is generally learned from others and other prior examples. But all that describes is a tool called a language. The tool itself is mechanistic. The wielder may or may not be. The tool and the wielder are two different things. A piece of paper with text on it is not a writer. A machine that writes text onto paper is still not a writer even though a human writer performs the same physical part of the process as the machine. Similarly, just like it's possible for an mp3 player to make the same sounds we use to express concepts and convey understanding, without itself having any concepts or understanding, it is also possible for an intellect to perform mechanistic acts that don't require an intellect. Sure, actually quite a lot of human activity can be described by simple rules that a machine can replicate. So what? You can move a brick from one place to another. And so can a cart. And so can gravity. Therefor you are no different from a field? It's utterly silly to be mystified by this. It's challenging the other ape in mirror for looking at you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaMylwohL14&t=23s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaMylwohL14&t=23s
  - dmvdoug 2y ago
    Now you’re being remarkably reductive—-about the human language facility. We don’t ”go one word at a time.” (Simple example: “hey, look at that tig boad! Uh… ha! Tig boad, I meant big toad.” Stupid example but the point is that the cognitive psychology of language is much more complex that you’re making out.) Also, what are these “thoughts” you have when writing and what’s a “complete” vs. “semi-complete” one? Stupid question, yes, but you again vastly over-trivialize the real dynamic interplay between figuring out what word(s) to write and figuring out what precisely you’re actually trying to say at all. Writing really is another form of thinking for us.
xkqd 2y ago
These statistical models certainly don’t have will, they hardly have understanding, but they do a great job at emulating reasoning. As we increase parameter sizes and increment on the architecture, they’re just going to get better as statistical models. If we decide to assign terms reserved for human beings, that’s more a reflection on the individual. Also they certainly can decide to do things, but so can my switch statements. I’m going to admit that I get a little unnerved when people say these statistical models have “actual intelligence”. The counter is always along the lines of “if we can’t tell the difference, what is the difference?”
- Spivak 2y ago
  Why reserve them for humans? Is it more or less rational to assume that we have some special intangible spark? I think it is cool as hell that we can now make a machine that exhibits an emergent property previously only observed in living things. I'm not saying they're alive, conscious, sentient, or any of that stuff. Silly. It would actually be less interesting if that was the case, more of a breakthrough, but less interesting. A machine that can reason about a huge variety of topics and on data that is nothing like it's ever seen before is wild. Draw the line wherever you like, if you want to say that intelligence can't be meaningfully separated from stuff like self-awareness, memory, self-learning, self-consistency then that's fine. But is intelligence and reason really so special that you have to be a full being to exhibit it?
  - xkqd 2y ago
    > Is it more or less rational to assume that we have some special intangible spark? My comment is predicated on the belief that yes, at this moment it is more rational to assume we have a special spark. Moreso, it’s irrational that individuals believe that in these models there’s a uniqueness beyond a few emergent properties. It’s a critique on the individuals, not the systems. I worry many of us are a few Altman statements short of having a Blake Lemoine break. To look at our statistical models and say they exhibit “actual intelligence” concerns me that individuals are losing groundness with what we have in front of us.
wrs 2y ago
I see the point you're trying to make, but you're being a bit too hyperbolic. The entire decoder is a loop over a function that takes context and generates some next-word probabilities. It's a very complicated function, certainly, but it literally is solving things by "get[ting] a bunch of text and calculat[ing] the most often used next word". What's impressive is how much it can do by just doing that, because that function is so complicated. But it clearly has limits that aren't related to the scope of the training data, as is demonstrated to me daily by getting into a circular argument with ChatGPT about something.

fragmede 2y ago

I thought they were stoichastic parrots that couldn't do anything outside their training data. Now they might do anything? I don't know what to believe, let me ask ChatGPT and have it tell me what to think!

DirkH 2y ago
Always seems to me that the goalposts keep moving as capabilities of AI improves. I swear to God we could have AGI+robotics capable of doing anything a human can do (but better) and we'll still - as a species - have multi-hour podcasts pondering and mostly concluding "yea, impressive, but they're not really intelligent. That's not what intelligence actually is."
- Brian_K_White 2y ago
  They aren't and it isn't. So far it's all pure mechanism. However, when people talk like this, it does make one wonder if the opposite isn't true. No AI has done more than what an mp3 player does, but apparently there are people who hear an mp3 player say "Hello neighbor!" and actually believe that it greeted them.
  - DirkH 2y ago
    I think you are confusing intelligence with consciousness. They're orthogonal. Otherwise I do not know what definition of intelligence you are using. For me I just use wiki's: "Intelligence can be described as the ability to perceive or infer information; and to retain it as knowledge to be applied to adaptive behaviors within an environment or context." Nothing in that definition disallows a system from being "pure mechanism" and also being intelligent. An mp3 player isn't intelligent because - unlike AI - it isn't taking in information to retain it as knowledge to be applied to adaptive behaviors within an environment or context. An mp3 player that learns my preferences over time and knows exactly when to say hi and how based on contextual cues is displaying intelligence. But I would be mistaken for thinking that it doing so means it is also conscious.
Brian_K_White 2y ago