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

[Adrian Tymes]

Even if aliens could decode the signal to pixels, keeping in mind what was
actually sent had no color, I would not bet on aliens being able to decode
most of that without already having quite a bit of information about us and
our solar system to use as a referent.

On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 11:58 PM Giovanni Santostasi via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> How that is different from what we do??????????????????????????
> Colors in our brain are just activation patterns of neurons so 1 and 0s
> too, or anyway some kind of information combo that can be represented with
> 0 and 1s. We are not special, Gordon, we are machines too.
> Where are the referents in the figure below? Are you saying that aliens
> would not understand this message?
>
> [image: image.png]
>
> On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 11:45 PM Giovanni Santostasi <
> gsantostasi at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> *Now, what if they don't beam down to the planet and listen to only
>> digital radio signals coming from the planet and send digital radio signals
>> in return? No communication is possible as there are no referents. It's all
>> noise.*Gordon on you are so wrong.
>> People have studied this problem deeply and found a solution using the
>> laws of physics and mathematics as abstract referents.
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message
>>
>> As we already established we can use abstract referents for
>> communication.
>> Math is another example, as GPT-4 correctly said, it has references but
>> they are abstract. An entire communication can happen without concrete
>> referents as in mathematics. Without talking about using digital pics or 3D
>> models of objects all made of 0 and 1s (basically what you would do to
>> communicate to an entity in a digital world).
>> The reason you still insist on this human exceptionalism is because of
>> religious faith.
>>
>> Giovanni
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 11:19 PM Gordon Swobe <gordon.swobe at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Nobody least of all me questions that GPT-4 will be capable of amazing
>>> feats, and that eventually these language models will surpass humans in
>>> terms of what we can call intelligence or what I might for sake of clarity
>>> prefer to call apparent intelligence. The question here is whether they
>>> will know what they are saying given that they are trained only on the
>>> forms of words with no access to the meanings or referents.
>>>
>>> Adrian has made the excellent point a couple of times that this is like
>>> the first contact problem in science fiction, and actually like the first
>>> contact problem between any two cultures with completely different
>>> languages. Q: When Kirk and Spock beam down to a new planet with
>>> intelligent alien life, how will they learn to communicate? A: With
>>> referents.
>>>
>>> Spock will point to himself and say "Spock." Kirk will point to himself
>>> and say "Kirk." Kirk will point to a rock and say "rock." Kirk and Spock
>>> use these kinds referents to initiate  communication. If our alien friend
>>> wants to communicate, he will point to the rock and "fwerasa" (or whatever
>>> is his word for rock). He will point to himself and say his name, and so
>>> on. Eventually, Spock and the alien will learn how to translate a few
>>> words, and from there the process of understanding begins.
>>>
>>> Now, what if they don't beam down to the planet and listen to only
>>> digital radio signals coming from the planet and send digital radio signals
>>> in return? No communication is possible as there are no referents. It's all
>>> noise.
>>>
>>> -gts
>>>
>>>>
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