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

Brent Allsop brent.allsop at gmail.com
Sat Apr 15 19:38:22 UTC 2023


Hi Ben,
Hopefully, you have seen my reply to you in another thread, pointing out
our failure to communicate, where I went over what I think is the core
issue.
After I sent this email, I realized I should have sent something like I'm
attempting, below.

On Sat, Apr 15, 2023 at 8:14 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> The differences, in these hypothetical two peoples' minds, regarding the
> word 'Smaug', will be many and varied. One person may have read The Hobbit
> as a chlld with the idea that dragons were like cows with wings. Another
> has been exposed to images of chinese dragons with beards and elaborate
> hairdos. Someone else may have read Anne McCaffrey's books about Pern, or
> seen "How to Train your Dragon", And so on. And on, and on. There will be
> thousands or even millions, of permutations. So, everyone's Smaug will be
> different. Trying to define the exact differences between one person's
> 'Smaug' and another's would be like trying to define the exact differences
> between two galaxies, in terms of each star, it's type, trajectory, mass,
> all the gas clouds etc. Well, maybe less difficult, but you get the idea (I
> hope).
>

All of these differences you describe will be objectively observable
differences you will see, when you look in their brains, when they hear the
word Smaug.
Similarly  These 3 systems will have very different associations for the
word 'red', all of these differences will be objectively observable, if you
look inside the brain and see these differences.
[image: 3_functionally_equal_machines_tiny.png]
You care that both of these systems (with their diverse types of knowledge
associations) can tell you the strawberry is 'red'.
I am asking, what are the differences in their subjective knowledge, which
allows them to do this?
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