[ExI] Language models are like mirrors

[spike at rainier66.com]

…> On Behalf Of Giovanni Santostasi via extropy-chat…
Subject: Re: [ExI] Language models are like mirrors

 

Gordon,

 

>…Your analogy of the mirror…

Giovanni

 

 

Think about what we have been doing here the last few weeks: debating whether or not ChatGPT is a form of artificial intelligence.  As software advanced over the last four decades at least, we dealt with the problem by repeatedly moving the goal posts and saying it isn’t there yet.  Well OK then, but suddenly ChatGPT shows up and is capable of doing so many interesting things: mastering any profession which relies primarily on memorization or looking up relevant data (goodbye paralegals) entertaining those who are entertained by chatting with software, training students and Science Olympiad teams, generating genuine-looking scientific research papers and so on.

Over the years we have been debating this question of whether software is AI, but this is the first time where it really isn’t all that clear.  We have always concluded it is not true AI, because it isn’t doing what our brains are doing, so it must not be intelligence.  But now… now we don’t really know.  The reason we don’t really know is not because we don’t understand how the software works, but rather we don’t understand how our brains work.

Conclusion: the reason we don’t know isn’t so much we don’t know what the software is doing, but rather we don’t really know what we are doing.

spike

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