Kissinger: “ChatGPT Heralds an Intellectual Revolution”
wsj.com
wsj.com
Why do you think it "definitely" doesn't think? If this is about lacking consciousness, then you should make that explicit. But then the question just gets pushed back further, why are you sure it isn't conscious?
The problem with the Chinese room at its core is the problem of attribution. We want to attribute properties like consciousness or understanding to "things" we are familiar with, and the only sufficient thing in the room is the man. But this intuition misdirects us to bad conclusions. The question to ask is what is responding when questions are being asked of the room. The responses are being generated by the algorithm reified into a causally efficacious process. Essentially, the reified algorithm is a set of properties without objecthood. It's so hard for people to see this as a live option because our cognitive makeup is such that we reason based on discrete entities. Considering extant properties without entities to carry them is just an alien notion.
We can go further and conceptualize a virtual objecthood for the process to help us reason about the entity we interface with in the Chinese room. We can then ask what properties does it have, how much does it understand, and so on. But we can't simply say it doesn't have any of these properties because it's merely a mechanical/computational process.
Because we know how GPTs work. They just return a high-probability "most likely next token" in response to what has gone before (the prompt and previous context). For that to be thought we would have to redefine the word.
If sentience is required to produce the kinds of texts that LLMs produce then sentience is a feature of LLMs of course. But if sentience is required for my computer to produce the "Tada!" noise when it switches on then my computer is sentient also. (It's probably not sentient.) Nothing you have said establishes in any sense that LLMs are sentient, and the Chinese Room experiment shows that we can't just rely on our intuition.
>But if sentience is required for my computer to produce the "Tada!" noise when it switches on then my computer is sentient also.
But there is a large and obvious difference between your PCs boots up sound process and the output of LLMs. For one, its far more plausible that sentience is required to produce the kinds of texts that LLMs produce than to produce a boot up sound.
>Nothing you have said establishes in any sense that LLMs are sentient
I wasn't trying to, I was simply pointing out the error in concluding a lack of sentience from the arguments given. If you want to have a discussion about how/why LLMs might be sentient, I'm happy to have it. But most people don't actually want to have that discussion.
It's Kissinger's wet dream.
At the liberal arts college Wellesley College in 1971, 80% of the courses were aimed at teaching students to regurgitate the dominant theories in the arts and social sciences, and then to defend these views with university-level paper writing. Not much different than Feynman’s encounter with Physics in Brazil. Indeed, isn’t that what the scripts written for the TV meat puppets are, at a ninth grade level?
Then the indeed, LLM, by regurgitating stuff that it has “read,” is indeed “intelligent,” and a lot of people better get good at using it, lest they be part of the percentage that is not good, and is therefore redundant.
No new information, zero understanding. If that’s you, you’re f*cked, the machines are ready. It’s certainly a revolution.
This is just tabloid-level article wrapped in respectability because it's a famous past advisor and not some random tv show starlet...
With no competence in the field his opinion is as worthy as 99.9% of the population. Useless submission.
I addressed that point elsewhere. [1] I'll expand on that here by saying that I don't know or care what Kissinger thinks, but as an eternal student of the present moment I do pay attention to what he says, because so do a lot of other people and because he hasn't spoken only for himself in public since well before I was born if ever. One doesn't therefore need to believe what he says, of course, but petulantly refusing even to attend or consider the fact it's him saying it is like disregarding Cicero's place in Roman history because you think he personally was an asshole. (He was an asshole! But an asshole can still need taking seriously.)
The opinion section of a modern paper is written for the rubes. The Journal's is no different - which is why Kissinger is a sometime contributor there, in general. Even so, finding Kissinger there alongside gray eminences drawn from both the academic and the industrial tendencies of computing is novel. The byline is a tour-de-force performance of authoritative knowledge, partly to reassure any rubes who do remember Theranos, mostly on behalf of arguing that AI is a new thing in the world and will produce a new humanity altogether - or, stripping the text of esoteric baggage, that AI is the mother and grandmother of all growth sectors, and can't help but produce enormous returns for anyone who pours funding into it early.
People will act on that, is the point that I'm making, and I wouldn't assume it will be limited only to funding or only to the private sector. More people will be trying to make an AI future happen tomorrow than were trying to do that last week.
[0] “She Never Looks Back”: Inside Elizabeth Holmes’s Chilling Final Months at Theranos - https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/inside-elizabeth-hol...
>>>"Accustomed to the undomesticated life, Balto frequently urinated and defecated at will throughout Theranos headquarters," Bilton writes. "While Holmes held board meetings with people like Henry Kissinger, Balto could be found in the corner of the room relieving himself while a frenzied assistant was left to clean up the mess."
Suffice to say, I'm not sure this mans opinion is worth the hard drive it's stored on. He was taken in by a charlatan who wasn't even trying very hard.
We have all seen the limitations of ChatGPT at this point.
Also, there's the whole Kissinger is a fucking terrible person who should probably be considered a war criminal thing to top it off. His opinion is gobshite.
[1] The Trial of Henry Kissinger - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial_of_Henry_Kissinger
ChatGPT is today. What's next week, do you think? Next year? But even if it is all bullshit, which I'm far from convinced is the case, how much does that matter if everyone who matters acts on the belief that it's not?
But Kissinger can never get the sh*t off HIS glasses.
"SquadGPT, kill everything in this building."
A computer that tries earnestly to save a human life - I'd never heard of that before today, but now I have [1], and now you have too. If that doesn't suffice to excite your imagination at least a little bit, I'm bewildered as to what possibly could.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bofors/Nexter_Bonus
This has been done since the year 2000, with research demonstrating the ability in the 90s.
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Are you kidding me? We've been putting robots inside of our guns and bullets for decades. Ever since the Nazis flew V1 Flying Bombs automatically during WW2 to automatically hit London, everyone's been putting robots inside of bullets.
USA did Proximity Rounds (Radar "AIs" that automatically blew up our bullets before hitting a target, allowing for a maximum "shotgun" effect to spread our anti-air pellets and maximize damage against Japanese Fighters in WW2).
This isn't even called "AI", its just how weapons work. Guns shoot 3km+ consistently, do you know why? Because we have "fire control computers", which under laymen's terms is an AI gun that calculates distance, movement, and other attributes to land our shots consistently.
That said I think this technology will only be exploited to make big tech only bigger.
I think there's something genuinely new in the world, and I think it is very foolish to assume too much about how that's going to play out. Humans will be human, because we always are. Beyond that, the only way anyone can know is by finding out.
The only relevant "crypto" is Bitcoin, when you're actually holding the keys and not delegated to an exchange, and it's primary purpose is not speculation but just transfering money without a trusted third party. I've been using it to move money for over 10 years, and many people I know do too.