I don't want to spam this link but seriously watch this 3blue1brown video on how text transformers work. You're right on that last part, but its a far fetch from an intelligence. Just a very intelligent use of statistical methods. But its precisely that reason that reason it can be "convinced", because parameters restraining its output have to be weighed into the model, so its just a statistic that will fail.

Im not intending to downplay the significance of GPTs, but we need to baseline the hype around them before we can discuss where AI goes next, and what it can mean for people. Also far before we use it for any secure services, because we've already seen what can happen

[–] swordsmanluke 37 points 8 months ago

Oh, for sure. I focused on ML in college. My first job was actually coding self-driving vehicles for open-pit copper mining operations! (I taught gigantic earth tillers to execute 3-point turns.)

I'm not in that space anymore, but I do get how LLMs work. Philosophically, I'm inclined to believe that the statistical model encoded in an LLM does model a sort of intelligence. Certainly not consciousness - LLMs don't have any mechanism I'd accept as agency or any sort of internal "mind" state. But I also think that the common description of "supercharged autocorrect" is overreductive. Useful as rhetorical counter to the hype cycle, but just as misleading in its own way.

I've been playing with chatbots of varying complexity since the 1990s. LLMs are frankly a quantum leap forward. Even GPT-2 was pretty much useless compared to modern models.

All that said... All these models are trained on the best - but mostly worst - data the world has to offer... And if you average a handful of textbooks with an internet-full of self-confident blowhards (like me) - it's not too surprising that today's LLMs are all... kinda mid compared to an actual human.

But if you compare the performance of an LLM to the state of the art in natural language comprehension and response... It's not even close. Going from a suite of single-focus programs, each using keyword recognition and word stem-based parsing to guess what the user wants (Try asking Alexa to "Play 'Records' by Weezer" sometime - it can't because of the keyword collision), to a single program that can respond intelligibly to pretty much any statement, with a limited - but nonzero - chance of getting things right...

This tech is raw and not really production ready, but I'm using a few LLMs in different contexts as assistants... And they work great.

Even though LLMs are not a good replacement for actual human skill - they're fucking awesome. 😅

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

but its a far fetch from an intelligence. Just a very intelligent use of statistical methods.

Did you know there is no rigorous scientific definition of intelligence?

Edit. facts

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago

We do not have a rigorous model of the brain, yet we have designed LLMs. Experts of decades in ML recognize that there is no intelligence happening here, because yes, we don't understand intelligence, certainly not enough to build one.

If we want to take from definitions, here is Merriam Webster

(1)

: the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying >situations : reason

also : the skilled use of reason

(2)

: the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's >environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective >criteria (such as tests)

The context stack is the closest thing we have to being able to retain and apply old info to newer context, the rest is in the name. Generative Pre-Trained language models, their given output is baked by a statiscial model finding similar text, also coined Stocastic parrots by some ML researchers, I find it to be a more fitting name. There's also no doubt of their potential (and already practiced) utility, but a long shot of being able to be considered a person by law.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

"I offered no insights. I simply parroted that which I have read in books, seen in films, observed in all of you."

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

That statement of yours just means "we don't yet know how it works hence it must work in the way I believe it works", which is about the most illogical "statement" I've seen in a while (though this being the Internet, it hasn't been all that long of a while).

"It must be clever statistics" really doesn't follow from "science doesn't rigoroulsy define what it is".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yes, corrected.

But my point stads: claiming there is no intelligence in AI models without even knowing what "real" intelligence is, is wrong.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I think the point is more that the word "intelligence" as used in common speech is very vague.

I suppose a lot of people (certainly I do it and I expect many others do it too) will use the word "intelligence" in a general non-science setting in place of "rationalization" or "reasoning" which would be clearer terms but less well understood.

LLMs easilly produce output which is not logical, and a rational being can spot it as not following rationality (even of we don't understand why we can do logic, we can understand logic or the absence of it).

That said, so do lots of people, which makes an interesting point about lots of people not being rational, which nearly dovetails with your point about intelligence.

I would say the problem is trying to defined "inteligence" as something that includes all humans in all settings when clearly humans are perfectly capable of producing irrational shit whilst thinking of themselves as being highly intelligent whilst doing so.

I'm not sure if that's quite the point you were bringing up, but it's a pretty interesting one.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's a good video (I've seen it; very informative and accessible cannot recommend enough), but I think you each mean different things when you use the word "intelligence".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Oh for sure! The issue is that one of those meanings can also imply sentience, and news outlets love doing that shit. I talk to people every day who fully believe that “AI” text transformers are actually parsing human language and responding with novel and reasoned information.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The problem is that majority of human population is dumber than GPT.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

See, I understand that you're trying to joke but the linked video explains how the use of the word dumber here doesn't make any sense. LLMs hold a lot of raw data and will get it wrong at a smaller percent when asked to recite it, but that doesn't make them smart in the way that we use the word smart. The same way that we don't call a hard drive smart.

They have a very limited ability to learn new ways of creating, understand context, create art outside of its constraints, understand satire outside of obvious situations, etc.

Ask an AI to write a poem that isn't in AABB rhyming format, haiku, or limerick, or ask it to draw a house that doesn't look like an AI drew it.

A human could do both of those in seconds as long as they understand what a poem is and what a house is. Both of which can be taught to any human.