[ExI] Bender's Octopus (re: LLMs like ChatGPT)

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: Gordon Swobe <gordon.swobe at gmail.com> 
Sent: Thursday, 23 March, 2023 5:20 PM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Cc: spike at rainier66.com
Subject: Re: [ExI] Bender's Octopus (re: LLMs like ChatGPT)

 

On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 5:23 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:


> I really don’t think it thinks, but it makes us think it thinks.  ChatGPT is wicked cool.

I agree 100%. Also, …In linguistics and epistemology and in philosophy in general, usually terms like "understand" and "comprehend" and "recall factual knowledge" have meanings that are not applicable to these languuge models. They do not actually comprehend or understand anything whatosever. They only make us think they do. 

 https://docslib.org/doc/6282568/climbing-towards-nlu-on-meaning-form-and-understanding-in-the-age-of-data

-gts



 

Note also that our notion of how to define machine intelligence has changed dramatically.  By the definition Turing initially proposed, ChatGPT passes as intelligence.

As you have patiently endured for so long, you already know my personal obsession with all this is all about creating digital companions for the elderly, for I have witnessed firsthand in a most heartbreaking way elderly people who sit alone in a room full of other elderly people who are similarly alone.  Their minds decline rapidly from lack of stimulation.  They’re bored.  As soon as they can no longer walk and visit with the neighbors, they lack mental stimulation.

My theory is that when one lands in a wheelchair in a nursing home, one can have at least a trace of enjoyment and fulfillment in one’s last few declining years.  If you want something depressing, do consider those declining years in the nursing home are not always just one or two, it can be a decade (oh mercy.)  So… if we could arrange for them to have a digital companion or possibly two, with whom they can carry fun interesting conversation, their brains might not decline as rapidly.

Furthermore… if the elderly had that in the home, they might hold it together longer, which means they can stay in their own homes longer, which is something I do hope you ponder carefully.  My own mother and my bride’s father live in homes they own, so their expenses are low.  But if they move into assisted living, their expenses are appalling.  Those things reeeeeaaallly cost ya.  So every month they can stay in their own homes with their own pets and their own stuff and their own everything is another month of low expenses and way better quality of life, waaaaay better.

So… good luck to us with GPT.

Parting note: I did some experiments with my own mother to see if she would know she was talking to a computer.  She didn’t.  I intend to repeat the experiment with my father in law in a coupla weeks, see if he will catch on that he is conversing with software.  I suspect he won’t either.

Cool!

spike

 

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