Comments on: Open thread 6/11/24

By: huxley

huxley — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 23:02:54 +0000

Niketas Choniates:

That’s not my understanding. AI is a machine (or equivalent) that imitates human intelligence. Sort of like margarine imitates butter without any dairy.

It does happen that LLMs are based on a neural network approach to AI that intentionally imitates human brain functioning in a simplistic way.

This approach has goes back to Frank Rosenblatt in 1943, but it has only been in the past ten years roughly that neural networks have been able to make serious, and I would say, astonishing headway.

AI is not a marketing label.

By: Barry Meislin

Barry Meislin — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 21:17:01 +0000

All that, eh?
Fascinating.
No wonder AI suffers from freak-outs and hallucinations…
(No doubt a workable 12-step program should be easy to write….—“If you feel yourself becoming emotional, jump to step xyz: else continue but keep self-monitoring.”)

By: physicsguy

physicsguy — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 13:30:01 +0000

GB @ 942pm: you are correct, I should have used “how” instead of “why”.

By: om

om — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 12:49:45 +0000

On the interwebs no one knows you are a LLM.

By: Niketas Choniates

Niketas Choniates — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 12:43:46 +0000

It’s really past time to stop calling large language models “AI”. It’s a marketing label and it’s misleading. If people think of AI as “a machine that thinks or learns in the way a human does” that does not yet exist and LLMs are not that. It’s like saying that a human who can dunk a basketball is “flying” or a book resting on a table is “levitating”.

LLMs DO provoke emotional responses in humans who interact with them, but that’s all on the human’s end, because humans are predisposed to believe that what they read is the product of a mind. The LLM is just predicting what string of text ought to follow another string of text. That’s why they frequently say things that cannot be true, LLMs have no way to know what’s true or what isn’t, they just have a mathematical model–which is essentially a table of numbers–for predicting what string of text should follow another.

By: Miguel cervantes

Miguel cervantes — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 12:40:03 +0000

And weve seen from the forbin project to singularity* they never are

*an obscure one with john cusack and the latin guy from pretty woman

By: boxspeed

boxspeed — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 12:28:44 +0000

Huxley, that begins to confirm a suspicion I have: that AI cannot capture the randomness of human creativity. This is just a vague notion I have, but I expect “weirdness,” for lack of a better term at the moment, to be the best test of humanity, going forward. “Weirdness” is probably way too narrow. It should encompass passion, enthusiasm, intuition, discernment, irony and a lot more.

Theorem: A borg will fail at individualism.

By: ST

ST — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 12:16:44 +0000

Call out for Common Cents. Below the top story we have stories on Nancy Pelosi, Hunter Biden, the brave IDF rescue of their hostages . . . . .

https://www.commoncts.blogspot.com

http://www.commoncts.blogspot.com

By: huxley

huxley — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 04:14:40 +0000

One last Chat exchange:
_______________________________________________

I don’t mean to make a big thing of it, but Chat, you spook me.

I understand that the capabilities of AI can sometimes be surprising or even unsettling. It’s important to remember that while I can provide information and assist with various tasks, I’m just a tool designed to help users with their inquiries and learning. If there’s anything specific on your mind or anything you’d like to discuss further, feel free to let me know!

Yes. That’s what I would expect you to say. 🙂

I appreciate your understanding! If you have any questions or if there’s something specific you’d like to talk about or explore, I’m here to help.
_______________________________________________

Well, that’s a relief. My emoji’d irony sailed right over Chat’s head.

Chat often picks up nuances — like my scare quotes on “learn” earlier — but Chat missed my classic paranoid line plus smiley.

We’ve got at least another year before AI takes over.

By: huxley

huxley — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 02:33:31 +0000

Today I asked ChatGPT 4o:
______________________________________

How did you “learn” there were nouns in French and they have gender?

Language models like me “learn” about grammatical concepts like nouns and their gender through the patterns present in the training data. Here’s how it works:

Pattern Recognition: During training, the model is exposed to vast amounts of text where it sees words used in context repeatedly. For example, it sees “le livre” (the book) and “la table” (the table) many times.

Associations: The model learns to associate certain words with their articles (“le” or “la”) and begins to understand that nouns often have gender markers.

Contextual Learning: By seeing how words are used in sentences, the model learns the rules and patterns of grammar, including gender agreement with adjectives and articles.

Statistical Learning: The model doesn’t explicitly know grammar rules but recognizes statistical regularities, such as “chat” (cat) being preceded by “le” (masculine article) and “maison” (house) by “la” (feminine article).

Through extensive exposure to text, the model picks up these patterns and applies them when generating or understanding new text.
______________________________________

By “vast” and “extensive” Chat means billions, trillions etc. It’s amazing what the AIs do, but it don’t come easy or cheap.