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

Fri Apr 14 21:24:27 UTC 2023

That's really incredible! Thanks for sharing these. I'm just trying to
imagine a human who's never seen anything do as good a job..  It requires
great talent and understanding, perhaps even some form of visual
imagination.

Jason

On Fri, Apr 14, 2023, 6:12 AM Giovanni Santostasi via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> [image: image.png]
>
> A man holding an apple and a pear, in front of a table with a bowl and a
> plate. I also asked to add eyes and a mouth and blond hair.
> Pretty good job for a blind AI.
> Giovanni
>
> On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 9:33 PM Giovanni Santostasi <gsantostasi at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> *So are you claiming that you can communicate to someone, (say a
>> congenitally blind person that has never experienced your redness) what a
>> colorness property like redness is like, with only abstract text?  What do
>> you think the term "ineffable" means?*Giovanni: Try to describe the
>> experience of seeing red to a person that is congenitally blind.
>> GPT-4:
>> Describing the experience of seeing red to a person who is congenitally
>> blind can be challenging, as they have never had the ability to perceive
>> colors. However, we can attempt to convey the concept of red by relating it
>> to other senses and emotions.
>>
>> Red is a warm color, often associated with strong emotions and
>> sensations. Imagine the feeling of warmth you experience when you step out
>> into the sun on a hot day, or the heat you feel when you hold a warm mug of
>> tea or coffee. Red can be related to that sensation of warmth.
>>
>> In terms of emotions, red is often associated with passion, love, and
>> intensity. Think about the feeling of excitement when you receive a gift or
>> a surprise, the quickened heartbeat when you are in a thrilling situation,
>> or the rush of emotions when you are with someone you love. Red can evoke
>> these strong feelings and emotions.
>>
>> Additionally, red is also connected to the sense of taste. Consider the
>> taste of a ripe, juicy strawberry or a spicy chili pepper. The flavors can
>> range from sweet to hot and can evoke a sense of energy and stimulation.
>> This connection to taste can help provide a sensory association with the
>> color red.
>>
>> While it is impossible to fully convey the visual experience of seeing
>> red to a congenitally blind person, relating the color to sensations,
>> emotions, and tastes can help provide a contextual understanding of what
>> red represents in our experiences.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 7:24 PM Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Hi Giovanni,
>>> So are you claiming that you can communicate to someone, (say a
>>> congenitally blind person that has never experienced your redness) what a
>>> colorness property like redness is like, with only abstract text?  What do
>>> you think the term "ineffable" means?
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Apr 12, 2023 at 9:45 PM Giovanni Santostasi <
>>> gsantostasi at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Brent,
>>>> What is your evidence for such statements? Is there an experiment, not
>>>> a thought experiment that follows your made-up rules (like the color
>>>> converter that has serious problems from a logical and scientific point of
>>>> view that I don't want to discuss here). Can you find a paper, a real
>>>> experiment in neuroscience that supports this statement:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *But there is no way you can communicate to someone what redness is
>>>> like, with text alone.*
>>>> What do you mean here by communicate? Is it my analogy about touching a
>>>> blue line on a map and saying the blue line is not wet?
>>>> Is this what you really mean?
>>>> In other words, do you mean if I describe to you what happens in my
>>>> brain or any other brain what sequences of events, what relationships
>>>> between neurons, what neural code represents my perception of red, you are
>>>> not going to see red in your head?
>>>>
>>>> If that is what you mean, do you realize how absurd of an idea this is?
>>>>  1) It is not what science is about, it is not supposed to make you
>>>> feel red, it is supposed to make you understand what is fundamental about
>>>> this phenomenon of red, science's job is to provide simplification,
>>>> abstractions, maps, and models. This simplification is not a BUG but a
>>>> FEATURE. It is what gives power to science.
>>>> 2) The usefulness of making a model is that you can carry the map in
>>>> your pocket, sort of speak, and bring it with you in another location and
>>>> communicate everything essential (for whatever purpose) to somebody else
>>>> that has never been in that place. Yes, they are not to experience the
>>>> landscape as if they were there but that is not the point at all.
>>>> If we use the analogy of the blueprint instead of a map I can recreate
>>>> a car or a building using the blueprint and if somebody comes by and points
>>>> to the blueprint and says "but this engine doesn't move" you will think
>>>> that person is crazy and mentally impaired. If you want to ride the car,
>>>> let me build it from the blueprint and then you can do that.
>>>>
>>>> So your statement above is both crazy and obvious at the same time.
>>>> Science is not in the business of making you feel the original thing
>>>> that is described. It is in the opposite business, it tries to abstract the
>>>> essential parts, which are mostly relational parts, and how things are
>>>> related to each other. This is also how science can abstract away even from
>>>> the original form of something. Think about how we abstracted away the
>>>> meaning of flight from birds. It is not about the feathers, and the
>>>> flapping wings but the principle of aerodynamics. You can create a flying
>>>> machine by using these principles that are related but not a 1 to 1
>>>> relationship with how birds solved the problem of aerodynamics.
>>>> By the way, this is also a natural way. Think about how many living
>>>> beings rediscovered in evolution sight, camouflage, hydrodynamics,
>>>> photosynthesis. Think about DNA.
>>>> Yes, think about DNA. Does DNA make you see my redness? No, but my
>>>> redness was somehow contained in the DNA as code. You can build the DNA to
>>>> build a Giovanni that then will experience red. But if you understand where
>>>> in the DNA the redness is represented, then you can use that information to
>>>> understand everything there is to understand about Giovanni's redness from
>>>> a scientific point of view.
>>>>
>>>> I think maybe in writing this down I may understand an issue that could
>>>> rise to some of your thinking. That is the idea of computational
>>>> irreducibility that is an idea that Wolfram developed. All the phenomena,
>>>> in reality, are a sort of code but you cannot predict what the result of
>>>> the code is in advance in some instances. You need to run the code to know
>>>> what the results are. Maybe this is something that you have in mind when
>>>> you talk about this business of redness, I have the suspicions that you are
>>>> thinking something like that but you are expressing it in a way that is not
>>>> easy to understand or causes a lot of confusion. So it is still code if you
>>>> do but you raise an important and relevant issue about computation that
>>>> some of them are so complex that they are irreducible. I'm ok with qualia
>>>> being irreducible computation. Maybe is the only scientific meaningful way
>>>> to think about them.
>>>> Here a summary of this issue by Wolfram himself:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/09/charting-a-course-for-complexity-metamodeling-ruliology-and-more/
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Apr 12, 2023 at 6:37 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi Jason,
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Apr 12, 2023 at 8:07 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Thus the simulation, like the isomorphic graph, by preserving all the
>>>>>> same relationships recovers all the same properties. If the glutamate
>>>>>> molecule possesses redness, then the perfect simulation of glutamate will
>>>>>> possess redness too.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> ALL of our objective observations of physics can be fully described
>>>>> with abstract text.
>>>>> All of that which you could simulate, can also be described with
>>>>> abstract text.
>>>>>
>>>>> But there is no way you can communicate to someone what redness is
>>>>> like, with text alone.
>>>>> You MUST have pictures, to produce the subjective experience, before
>>>>> someone can know what redness is like.
>>>>>
>>>>> There must be certain stuff in the brain which can be computationally
>>>>> bound, which produces something beyond, what can be described via abstract
>>>>> text.
>>>>> You can abstractly describe all of it, you can objectively observe all
>>>>> of it with our senses, and you can abstractly simulate all of that.
>>>>> But until it is physically computationally bound with the rest of our
>>>>> consciousness, you can't know the true quality you are only abstractly
>>>>> describing and simulating.
>>>>>
>>>>> In other words, like abstract text can't communicate the nature of
>>>>> qualities.
>>>>> An abstract simulation also, can't produce anything more than abstract
>>>>> text can describe.
>>>>> At least, that is what I predict.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> extropy-chat mailing list
>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>>>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
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