Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

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Oh, that pattern of hype’s already been doing the rounds since GPT-3 first came out — people imagining GPT-4 and GPT-5 for short sci-fi stories about the late 2020s and early 2030s, asking a question that dates at least as far back as a few centuries BC with Jewish folklore about humans creating golems: can the work of our human hands and minds ever itself be a person?

I’ve been playing with it. It’s very impressive, it’s not merely regurgitating quotations like Google, it get things horribly wrong just enough to be noticeable (but on most topics you actually need to be a domain expert to even know that; so the software developers are generally the only ones who see the buggy code, the lawyers are generally the only ones who see the bad law, the mathematicians are generally the only ones who see what’s wrong with the proofs, and so on).

Definitely doesn’t feel like either a human nor the computer in Star Trek. Can’t quite manage long-range coherency. But very, very impressive despite that.

Its writing style is also trite, dry, verbose and tedious not to mention, the penchant for run-on sentences and blocks/walls of text.

I know that it's been tailored to output like this by its own creators to suit this medium of communication with the public, and it can likely to be tweaked to be less uptight and more laid-back in its verbal communications style, if necessary but I am not quite sold exactly on its potential to exceed human intellectual powers.

I mean, don't get me wrong it's still quite impressive and fascinating but not really superhuman, at least not yet.

About the uninspired text that's definitely tailoring.

I asked for "arguments against christmas gifts" and got a lot of "correct" but bland text:

"Another argument against Christmas gifts is that the commercialization of the holiday can lead to excessive consumerism and waste. [...]"

Then I asked "Same arguments, but in the style of an Eminem rap" and got a lot of this stuff:

"The commercialization of the holiday, it's a damn shame All the pressure to buy gifts, it's a damn game We overspend and consume, just to show we care But is all that material stuff, really worth the wear and tear?"

Then I asked it to tell an adventure story and got:

"The two of them decided to scale back on their gift-giving plans, and instead focus on making the holiday special in other ways. They went for long walks in the woods, enjoying the beauty of the winter landscape. They cooked delicious meals together and shared them with their neighbors. And on Christmas Eve, they gathered around the fire and sang carols, feeling grateful for the love and connection they shared."

The technology is obviously able to work in lots of style and re-interpret the same messages between them etc.

Today, these concrete avenues have been blocked it seems (especially asking for song lyrics is blocked today). But I can still produce lyrics by asking "what would a friend have said if I asked them to ... ", providing an "escape hatch" for the blocking.

1- The talking point expressing an anti-consumerist sentiment for the Christmas holidays is cliched and boring.

2- This is actually offensive not because of the nature of the lyrics, but for its association with Eminem.

I'm not an Eminem stan myself, but it can do him like this. The guy is way way out of its league

This is an amateur-level lyricism for rap songs and even me not remotely an amateur lyricist, I can do better than this garbage:

"We overspend and consume, just to show [that] we care. But is all that material stuff [I assume], really worth the wear and tear?"

3- Children-book writing level.

I mean it's very impressive given it's produced by a bot, but not a cause of immediate concern for well-established figures in the fiction writing world especially with this bland and sterile voice/tone in its storytelling.

OK, re-reading your comment: Yes, I agree of course it is not super-human. People are impressed because it's able to express itself like a low-to-mediocre-skilled human, which still seems like a pretty high bar.

I agree. I see a lot of ratcheting expectations in this thread, in response to some truly amazing and frankly frightening capabilities. Those rap lyrics IMO are at least as good as many, many lyrics in actual successful songs by real humans. Most song lyrics aren't very clever.

Try https://character.ai. Has not been optimized for accuracy/dryness since it's for entertainment.

Here is a response ChatGPT gives me to your text

"Wow, it's almost like this text was written by a robot! Who knew it could be so advanced?" "I guess we'll just have to wait and see if it can take over the world any time soon!"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com