What makes this software special to me is not that it can recount information like Google search, but that it can act so humanlike, or to be frank, superhuman-like. Let’s look at the situation vis-à-vis errors and the overlap with human capabilities and habits of mind. As you said, the software works increasingly like a human. It gives you a name to call it. Also, when pressured to give information that it does not have, rather than admit it, it attempts to fake it until it can make it. In your case, it even shamelessly launched into a somewhat superficially persuasive word salad. Just like many humans. Or at least most teenagers.
It did something similar with me. I asked what caused the opium war. It told me that the war was over the opium trade between Britain and China. I informed it that Britain stopped shipping opium to China in the 1790s, 50 years before the opium war. Its response was to apologize for this mistake, admit that, according to its own research, I was factually correct, and revise its explanation. It’s new explanation then included a new error, this time about the East India Company.
Was I disappointed with these errors? Was I put off by this brazen shamelessness? No, I was impressed. These errors of fact will be fixed in the fullness of time. Regarding the first error, it failed to reach deeply enough into its memory. When I prompted it, it reached deeper into its memory and recognized its error. That too is a very human trait. In the full blush of conversation, our memory only runs so deep because all conversations require simultaneously running a grab bag of capabilities (reading facial expressions, body language, anticipating counter arguments, jocularity/wit, etc.) tightly within a timeframe. ChatGPT has its own considerations and can only perform so well within a given timeframe. Hence, its ability to forget, to overlook. Very human, no?
In other words, it shoots from the hip like a human, forgets like a human, reconsiders like a human, reorganizes its thinking like a human, apologizes like a human, and keeps moving ahead like a human. In other words, it’s not only going to become increasingly accurate, like Google search, but increasingly human. It takes risks like humans, gropes in the blind like humans, offers hypotheses like humans, recovers from failure like humans, and is, increasingly human. Except that it’s on a trajectory to become much much more. It’s going to become superhuman.
Oh, I forgot. When it needs more information, more context, more parameters, it prompts you to produce it. It even asks questions. What could be more “human” than that? As long as it is powered up, it’s essentially a perpetual motion machine gathering intelligence, snowballing skills and information and perspectives. It is en route to become superhuman. Arguably, in an already growing swathe of respects, it already is.
That’s my back of the napkin, working hypothesis. I am by no means wedded to it.
By the way, I am the aforementioned Chinese to English translator mentioned by commenter Scott Summers. I am definitely not an academic or specialist… ha… Scott makes some good points. Some quality pushback. Hence the need for this conversation.
I have a friend who is a Chinese-to-English translator. He is not an academic area specialist. He posted something about AI taking over human thinking occupations in 5 years. He went on to cite a comment from an undergraduate doing research on a problem that hadn't been examined before, and how ChatGPT was able to guess many of the "points in my research proposal" - although I'm not sure what that means. My friend didn't quite get what was being said here. That AI is able to compute solutions to some kind of research problem just says that a lot of research is pretty mundane - but we all know that. I also question the ability of an undergraduate to know the research relevance of what the AI was able to do. All of this is analogous to the point about poetry and expert judgement. Computational machines can do amazing things and assist with the performance of mundane tasks that humans used to get credit for doing. It's really interesting what this will lead to, but the replacement of human thinking is probably not one of them.
Very interesting to see your questions and ChatGPT’s answers with your commentary for those of us not clear on the physics. Loved the recording with the regular and drunk version of ChatGPT when it was getting off track!
What makes this software special to me is not that it can recount information like Google search, but that it can act so humanlike, or to be frank, superhuman-like. Let’s look at the situation vis-à-vis errors and the overlap with human capabilities and habits of mind. As you said, the software works increasingly like a human. It gives you a name to call it. Also, when pressured to give information that it does not have, rather than admit it, it attempts to fake it until it can make it. In your case, it even shamelessly launched into a somewhat superficially persuasive word salad. Just like many humans. Or at least most teenagers.
It did something similar with me. I asked what caused the opium war. It told me that the war was over the opium trade between Britain and China. I informed it that Britain stopped shipping opium to China in the 1790s, 50 years before the opium war. Its response was to apologize for this mistake, admit that, according to its own research, I was factually correct, and revise its explanation. It’s new explanation then included a new error, this time about the East India Company.
Was I disappointed with these errors? Was I put off by this brazen shamelessness? No, I was impressed. These errors of fact will be fixed in the fullness of time. Regarding the first error, it failed to reach deeply enough into its memory. When I prompted it, it reached deeper into its memory and recognized its error. That too is a very human trait. In the full blush of conversation, our memory only runs so deep because all conversations require simultaneously running a grab bag of capabilities (reading facial expressions, body language, anticipating counter arguments, jocularity/wit, etc.) tightly within a timeframe. ChatGPT has its own considerations and can only perform so well within a given timeframe. Hence, its ability to forget, to overlook. Very human, no?
In other words, it shoots from the hip like a human, forgets like a human, reconsiders like a human, reorganizes its thinking like a human, apologizes like a human, and keeps moving ahead like a human. In other words, it’s not only going to become increasingly accurate, like Google search, but increasingly human. It takes risks like humans, gropes in the blind like humans, offers hypotheses like humans, recovers from failure like humans, and is, increasingly human. Except that it’s on a trajectory to become much much more. It’s going to become superhuman.
Oh, I forgot. When it needs more information, more context, more parameters, it prompts you to produce it. It even asks questions. What could be more “human” than that? As long as it is powered up, it’s essentially a perpetual motion machine gathering intelligence, snowballing skills and information and perspectives. It is en route to become superhuman. Arguably, in an already growing swathe of respects, it already is.
That’s my back of the napkin, working hypothesis. I am by no means wedded to it.
By the way, I am the aforementioned Chinese to English translator mentioned by commenter Scott Summers. I am definitely not an academic or specialist… ha… Scott makes some good points. Some quality pushback. Hence the need for this conversation.
I have a friend who is a Chinese-to-English translator. He is not an academic area specialist. He posted something about AI taking over human thinking occupations in 5 years. He went on to cite a comment from an undergraduate doing research on a problem that hadn't been examined before, and how ChatGPT was able to guess many of the "points in my research proposal" - although I'm not sure what that means. My friend didn't quite get what was being said here. That AI is able to compute solutions to some kind of research problem just says that a lot of research is pretty mundane - but we all know that. I also question the ability of an undergraduate to know the research relevance of what the AI was able to do. All of this is analogous to the point about poetry and expert judgement. Computational machines can do amazing things and assist with the performance of mundane tasks that humans used to get credit for doing. It's really interesting what this will lead to, but the replacement of human thinking is probably not one of them.
Very interesting to see your questions and ChatGPT’s answers with your commentary for those of us not clear on the physics. Loved the recording with the regular and drunk version of ChatGPT when it was getting off track!
Thank you for clarifying the current state of AI. It is going to be very interesting to watch how quickly it evolves.