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> For example, GPT-3 has been used to generate essays on complex topics such as the philosophy of mind, and these essays have been well-received by readers.

That's the other problem with GPT-3... it will happily say things that are absolutely false :)

I think this response actually illustrates my point quite nicely; it is a plausible sounding rebuttal but does not actually engage on a logical level.

That said, I don't mean to diminish the impressiveness here. It's quite evident that it could pass a Turing test in a wide variety of circumstances. After all, it's not like humans are consistently great at concept-informed writing either. I'm pretty sure the majority of undergrad college papers have more in common with GPT than with real critical thought... generating something that looks plausibly like an argument rather than actually having one.

Lol, that last point about undergraduate papers is exactly what I was thinking reading your initial statement. As a current student, it feels that sometimes we're forced to just generate something that looks plausibly like an argument as opposed to actually generating one.

Well, it was trained on a lot of internet comments after all…

> I think this response actually illustrates my point quite nicely

Absolutely. From a surface-level read it may sound sensible but it all falls apart very easily.

The lines of reasoning for each attempted rebuttal are practically non sequiturs.

Out of curiosity, I’d be interested in seeing some attempts using prompts intended to induce CoT reasoning (“let’s think step-by-step“ etc.)

The argument seems very poorly reasoned to me.

> First, he conflates the ability to generate human-like text with the ability to communicate.

This is incorrect. In fact, lukev does the opposite. That is one of the fundamental parts of his argument -- that those two things are different.

> Second, LukeV claims that GPT-3 is at its weakest when writing about the relationships between a set of concepts. However, this is not necessarily true. GPT-3 may not be able to generate text that is perfectly grammatical or that makes perfect sense, but it is often able to generate text that is nonetheless meaningful and insightful. For example, GPT-3 has been used to generate essays on complex topics such as the philosophy of mind, and these essays have been well-received by readers.

I believe this is the best paragraph of the argument, but it is also the most difficult to rebut because it is rather subjective. Whether a text is meaningful or insightful is up the individual reading it. I would be surprised, however, if experts on the philosophy of mind found the essays mentioned by GPT-3 to be meaningful or insightful -- as opposed to regurgitations of concepts that are in the texts that have been fed to GPT-3's model.

> Third, LukeV argues that the world does not need more words, but this is clearly not the case. The world needs more communication...

The presence of more words in the world does not necessarily entail more communication. The two concepts are fairly closely related but are definitely not synonymous.

This doesn't necessarily mean that I agree with lukev, of course. I do think that GPT-3 as it currently exists should not be used to generate text that is meant for human consumption without being edited first. I can certainly see how it would be useful as a tool for generating an outline of an essay, especially with well-crafted prompts.

I am of course open to more arguments and data on the subject =)

I noticed that when GPT-3 has trouble continuing a sentence or create a difficult argument it relies on filler words to stretch out a sentence until it has no choice but to write something meaningful.

To be fair we have all been there.

LLMs are great and have many use cases but ultimately they’re just very talented bullshit machines.

This is due to the way they were trained: predict the most likely next word. In a difficult context the most likely next word is a filler word.

Wow, pretty much every single word of that rebuttal is complete nonsense. This is like 7th-grade level writing, filled up almost entirely of non-sequiturs, filler words, and regurgitating the prompt back at you. I may not have agreed with lukev before reading this response, but I certainly do now.

I’m siding with GPT in this debate. GPT is a writing tool like MS word, grammarly, or the printing press. Its innovative not destructive