I’m just trying to “prove” that it isn’t just randomly statistically choosing the next logical word. It has to know context and have some level of “understanding” of other contexts.
People are acting as if ChatGPT is a glorified Eliza clone.
People are acting as if ChatGPT is a glorified Eliza clone.
But you ... aren't. The statistically most likely words coming after problem X may well be solution X. Because it's following the pattern of humans using rules. And context is also part of a prediction.
The only this is different from something just using rules is that it will also put in other random things from it's training - but only at the rate they occur, which for some things can be quite low. But only some things.
How is this different from humans?
If you give me the same coding assignment on different days, I’m not going to write my code the exact same way or even structure it the same way.
But I did once see a post on HN where someone ran an analysis on all HN posters and it was able to tell that I posted under two different names based on my writing style. Not that I was trying to hide anything. My other username is scarface_74 as opposed to Scarface74.
I think I’m beginning to understand the problem here. The folks here who keep poo-pooing these interactions don’t just see the AIs as unconscious robots. I think they see everyone that way.
ChatGPT's underlying structures do not. What it does, effectively, is look at the totality of the conversation thus far, and use the characters and words in it, combined with its training data, to predict, purely statistically, what characters would constitute an appropriate response.
I know that some people like to argue that what humans do cannot be meaningfully distinguished from this, but I reject this notion utterly. I know that my own thought processes do not resemble this procedure, and I believe that other people's are similar.
It’s all emergent behavior from a system that behaves under process.
They really, really don't know what they're talking about it, and yet it's becoming a kind of truth through repetition.
Pretty soon, the bots will start saying it!
Kind of like religion or that people working for the state are more trustworthy than people taking drugs or sleeping on the street or under the age of 18.
>Pretty soon, the bots will start saying it!
We are chemical based repetition machines, psychologists see this with kids using bobo dolls exposed to new ideas on tv or in books repeating learned behaviour on bobo dolls.
I think some of the chemicals we make like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N,N-Dimethyltryptamine actually help to create new idea's, as many people say they come up with solutions after some sleep. There appears to be a sub culture in silicon valley were microdosing lsd helps to maintain the creativity with coding.
It would seem logical for the bots to start saying it. If the bots start amplifying flawed knowledge like a lot of Reddit content or Facebook content, the internet will need to deal with the corruption of the internet, like using Wikipedia as a source of reference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversie...
In practice, sources of reference will need cleaning up and the question about who should be responsible for that will probably ensue. It will call into question such entities like encyclopaedia companies who have been the gatekeeper of the knowledge they sell, in much the same way the Guinness World Record are the self declared arbitrators of world records.
We already see Judges working in a semi cohesive manner, but the appeals process tells you its flawed and inefficient, ergo can the judiciary even be trusted to interpret law properly?
Its also interesting how the financial system also reinforces this mob rule mentality and not always for the better, but then some people will no doubt suggest we should be grateful we have bungled our way to this point in history.
Bonus points: If you ask Google Search this, it knows the right answer.
“Write an AppleSoft Basic program to do the computation”
(Here it gives me a simplistic Basic program that wouldn’t work because the number would be too large)
Me: “AppleSoft Basic can’t handle numbers that long”
ChatGPT:
You're correct that the integer arithmetic in AppleSoft BASIC has some limitations and cannot handle numbers as large as the sum of the two numbers you provided. AppleSoft BASIC is a 16-bit programming language, which means that it can handle integer values from -32,768 to 32,767.
If you want to work with very large numbers in AppleSoft BASIC, you can use a string to store the numbers and write your own code to perform arithmetic operations on the strings. Here's an example program that demonstrates this approach:
10 A$ = "12348120348102341"
20 B$ = "10823401828482"
30 L = LEN(A$)
40 M = LEN(B$)
50 IF L < M THEN A$ = LEFT$("0", M - L) + A$ : L = M
60 IF M < L THEN B$ = LEFT$("0", L - M) + B$ : M = L
70 C$ = ""
80 R = 0
90 FOR I = L TO 1 STEP -1
100 D = ASC(MID$(A$, I, 1)) + ASC(MID$(B$, I, 1)) - 96 + R
110 C$ = CHR$(D MOD 10 + 48) + C$
120 R = INT(D / 10)
130 NEXT I
140 IF R > 0 THEN C$ = CHR$(R + 48) + C$
150 PRINT C$
Really for code generation ChatGPT is an incremental step over StackOverflow. It can kind of nicely template the things you tell it into the code, for the most part, but the code is almost always fundamentally wrong or just mashed together in some way.
Criticizing ChatGPT for getting one line wrong that a human who hasn’t programmed in the same language in over 30 years would also get wrong (I happened to remember the technique from reading it in the back of a magazine in the 80s) and then being able to use it to iterate is like criticizing a monkey who song the national anthem because one note was off key?
How is mashing code together any different than the average human does?
Its incrementally better than just copy & pasting from StackOverflow, since it will customize the code for you, but if you try to go beyond what can easily be found on StackOverflow it will fail you.
I asked it to “explain every line of code”. I had to copy and paste the original code back into a new session.
Yes I know, they comments should have been separated by a “:REM”. But that wouldn’t work either on a real Apple //. Lines can’t be longer than 256 characters
That is one issue I have with ChatGPT. It is only helpful as a shortcut for coding based on a domain you already know - not something I haven’t coded in since 1992.
I could have immediately caught errors with generated Python/boto3 (AWS SDK). I use that everyday and I could have tested it.
me: “left$ doesn’t do padding, it returns the first characters of a string”
ChatGPT: (Gave me another sample with the String() function)
Me: That function isn’t available in AppleSoft Basic
ChatGPT: (Gave me something with the syntax of “0” * n to pad)
Me: that syntax doesn’t work in AppleSoft basic
ChatGPT:
10 A$ = "12348120348102341" ' Initialize first number
20 B$ = "10823401828482" ' Initialize second number
30 L = LEN(A$) ' Determine length of first number
40 M = LEN(B$) ' Determine length of second number
50 IF L < M THEN FOR I = 1 TO M - L : A$ = "0" + A$ : NEXT I : L = M ' Pad first number with zeros if it is shorter than second number
60 IF M < L THEN FOR I = 1 TO L - M : B$ = "0" + B$ : NEXT I : M = L ' Pad second number with zeros if it is shorter than first number
70 C$ = "" ' Initialize result string
80 R = 0 ' Initialize carry variable to 0
90 FOR I = L TO 1 STEP -1 ' Loop through the digits of the numbers, starting from the rightmost digit
100 D = ASC(MID$(A$, I, 1)) + ASC(MID$(B$, I, 1)) - 96 + R ' Add the two digits, subtract 96 to convert from ASCII to digit value, and add any carry from the previous digit
110 C$ = CHR$(D MOD 10 + 48) + C$ ' Compute the digit value of the sum and append it to the result string
120 R = INT(D / 10) ' Determine the carry for the next digit 130 NEXT I ' Move on to the next digit
(I left off the last two lines they are the same as before. It was a bad copy paste error)
FCOL, you can't use "complex output" as proof that the process has any intelligence directing it.
If you could, we would take the Intelligent Design argument seriously. We don't. We never did. We need a good clear argument to convince us now why it is a good idea to accept Intelligent Design as an argument.
You can say the same thing about Intelligent Design, and yet we dismiss it anyway.