[ExI] GPT-4 on its inability to solve the symbol grounding problem

[Gordon Swobe]

Sorry I was quoting Will there, who is hostile toward me despite no
provocation.

The symbol grounding problem is a question in philosophy about how symbols
and words acquire meanings. The answer, broadly, is that it requires
conscious experience of the objects and ideas that words represent, i.e.,
experience of the referents. ChatGPT was clearly trained on philosophical
texts and reports that because it has no conscious experience, it has no
true understanding of words; i.e., it has no way to ground symbols and
knows only about the statistical patterns and relations between them.

-gts

On Tue, Apr 4, 2023 at 12:01 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon.swobe at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 4, 2023 at 10:38 AM Gadersd via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> Why do you keep posting ChatGPT responses to questions?
>>
>>
> That is the title of the thread. It is an investigation into what ChatGPT
> has to say about itself.
>
>
> If it understands the meanings of words as some people claim and if it is
> conscious as some people claim then I find it odd that it denies both of
> these claims.
>
>
>
>>
>>> You are also correct in stating that I don't have a true understanding
>>> of the meanings of individual words or any conscious experience. I am
>>> essentially an artificial intelligence program that analyzes patterns and
>>> relationships in vast amounts of text data to generate coherent and
>>> contextually appropriate responses. My abilities are derived from
>>> statistical analysis rather than a true comprehension or consciousness.
>>> --
>>>
>>> -gts
>>>
>>>>
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