[ExI] Language models are like mirrors

[Gordon Swobe]

On Fri, Mar 31, 2023 at 3:17 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Think about what we have been doing here the last few weeks: debating
> whether or not ChatGPT is a form of artificial intelligence.
>
I think GPT absolutely is a form of AI and was not aware that anyone
thought otherwise. My issue is with those who think GPT is a person in the
sense of having conscious awareness of its existence and experience, and in
the sense of having conscious awareness of its so-called mental states and
thought processes.

The ELIZA effect is the tendency of humans to anthropomorphize computers
that behave in human-like ways. I contend that those who attribute
consciousness to ChatGPT are under the influence of the ELIZA effect.

I remember "meeting" ELIZA at the Lawrence Berkeley Hall of Science in
about 1972. It was pretty mind-blowing and tempting to think there was a
person there, but of course there was nobody there. Methinks ChatGPT is
ELIZA on steroids, with who knows how many more thousands of lines of code,
more amazing than I could ever have imagined in 1972, but qualitatively no
different.

The designer of ELIZA Joseph Weizenbaum is quoted in the article: “What I
had not realized is that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple
computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal
people.”

-gts
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