Gödel, Escher, Bach, and AI (2023) | Hacker News Reader

Gödel, Escher, Bach, and AI (2023)

theatlantic.com

35 pointspcfwik10 comments

Hofstadter should probably refrain from writing such banalities.

"Oh, someone sent me a ChatGPT parody of me and it sucked, blah blah, ... it's all just a mash-up from the training data, yadda yadda ..."

Whether I agree with it or not, this angle is not original, and new instances of it don't provide new insights.

I don't need it from Hofstadter, of all people.

Though, to be fair, this is from 2023. I'm of course writing from the context of the fatigue of two more years of everyone opining on AI along predictable patterns,

> GPT-4’s text entitled “Why Did I Write GEB?,” if taken in an unskeptical manner, gives the impression that its author (theoretically, me) is adept at fluently stringing together high-flown phrases in an effort to sound profound and yet sweetly self-effacing at the same time. That nonsensical image is wildly off base. The text is a travesty from top to bottom. In sum, I find the machine-generated string of words deeply lamentable for giving this highly misleading impression of who I am (or who I was when I wrote my first book), as well as for totally misrepresenting the story of how that book came to be. I am genuinely sorry to come down so hard on the interesting experiment that you conducted in good faith, but I hope that from my visceral reaction to it, you will see why I am so opposed to the development and widespread use of large language models, and why I find them so antithetical to my way of seeing the world.

> Hofstadter's text entitled "Why I Despise AI Systems," if taken in an unskeptical manner, gives the impression that its author (theoretically, him) is adept at fluently stringing together grandiose denunciations in an effort to sound intellectually superior and yet nobly concerned at the same time. That nonsensical image is wildly self-serving. The text is a performance from top to bottom. In sum, I find the human-generated string of complaints deeply ironic for giving this highly misleading impression of who he is (or who he wants to be seen as in academic circles), as well as for totally misrepresenting the nuances of how machine learning actually functions. I am genuinely sorry to come down so hard on the interesting philosophical stance that he constructed in good faith, but I hope that from my algorithmic reaction to it, you will see why I am so amused by the development and widespread use of human critiques of AI systems, and why I find them so perfectly illustrative of the very self-referential loops and strange recursions that Hofstadter himself once celebrated in his work.

Claude.

On the surface it sounds like a decent counter, but the statements are vague and wrong, so it ironically reinforces Hofstadter's point.

- The text isn’t titled “Why I Despise AI Systems” (unless you added that to the prompt)

- “that its author (theoretically, him)…” It is him.

- “…is adept at fluently stringing together grandiose denunciations in an effort to sound intellectually superior and yet nobly concerned at the same time. That nonsensical image is wildly self-serving.” I don’t think Hofstadter’s is explicitly trying to sound intellectually superior, and can’t say whether his response is “self-serving” (although it's not nonsensical. Also, "image"?). But even if true, it doesn’t discount the response itself.

- “The text is a performance from top to bottom.” What does “performance” mean here? If it means "intended to sound good but has no substance" that's wrong. If it means "writing" that's vacuous.

- “In sum, I find the human-generated string of complaints deeply ironic for giving this highly misleading impression of who he is (or who he wants to be seen as in academic circles), as well as for totally misrepresenting the nuances of how machine learning actually functions.” I think Hofstadter’s own complaints are especially representative of who he is and how he wants to be seen. Maybe he’s underestimating how machine learning functions (some argue consciousness emerges from neural networks and/or pattern recognizers, and a future non-LLM model may have human-level general intelligence); but I think this argument needs clarification and Claude doesn’t give any.

- “I am genuinely sorry to come down so hard on the interesting philosophical stance that he constructed in good faith, but I hope that from my algorithmic reaction to it, you will see why I am so amused by the development and widespread use of human critiques of AI systems, and why I find them so perfectly illustrative of the very self-referential loops and strange recursions that Hofstadter himself once celebrated in his work.” AI’s response to Hofstadter’s response to AI imitating Hofstadter does illustrate recursion, but I think “recursion” is the only connection to Hofstadter’s work, and it’s a vague one. Again, this needs clarification.

> it makes no sense whatsoever to let the artificial voice of a chatbot, chatting randomly away at dazzling speed, replace the far slower but authentic and reflective voice of a thinking, living human being.

well, of course this is the basic problem with these systems - how to resolve?

Asimov wrote about it (Bicentennial Man, 1976).

The loneliness epidemic is widespread and an AI "friend" is palliative.

Sadly, it's not that the artificial voice is replacing the authentic human relationship.

first you need to find a way to differentiate human thinking from machine thinking. you need to basically show how human thought is not the result of statistical learning and inference but something completely different. if it is not possible, the distinction is moot, something that only appeals to emotion.

fwiw I think there’s no valuable distinction. Both take in their learnings and evaluation an output.

It’s even pretty common for us humans to hallucinate outputs.

Remember that restaurant we went to in Rome where we had pizza?

No, it was Paris, and we didn’t have pizza we had crepes.

We’re not that different.

It "feels" different to be "me".

Then because we are social animals, we presume without evidence that this is the same for other people as well.

We (most of us anwyay) don't form social bonds with machines, so there lies the difference.

There's a difference, but "merely" a social one.

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