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

[Gordon Swobe]

On Fri, Apr 14, 2023 at 3:18 PM Giovanni Santostasi <gsantostasi at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Gordon,
> So you got your answer.
>
> *Apples are generally round, sometimes with a slightly flattened top and
> bottom. They may have a small indentation at the top, where the stem
> connects to the fruit, and a shallow, star-shaped indentation at the
> bottom, where the apple's calyx is located. The skin of an apple can be
> smooth or slightly bumpy and comes in various colors, such as red, green,
> or yellow.*How this is not understanding what the heck an apple is?
>

To know it if truly understands the shape of an apple, we need now to ask
it what it means by "round" and "flattened" and "top" and "bottom" and
"small indentation" and so on, which only leads to more word definitions in
an endless search for the meanings.

What it *does*, however, "know" is how these words relate statistically to
one another and in patterns in combination with other words about geometry
and drawing and so on, such that it can construct something resembling an
apple that has meaning to *us*.


-gts



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