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

[Jason Resch]

On Fri, Mar 24, 2023, 2:20 AM Gordon Swobe via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> 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.
>


Did you not see my approach for an alien civilization to begin to decode a
dictionary in an unknown language?

Or did you not agree I would be able to learn words like ocean and land
just from the patterns present in the dictionary and my existing knowledge
of my own language and about the world?

If you don't agree then please try the test I suggested, giving me one of
those constants encoded using "alien symbols".

Jason



> -gts
>
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