Posted over on Knuth's webpage is an email he recently wrote to Stephen Wolfram in which he describes some prodding of ChatGPT. He posed 20 questions and gives the verbatim answers as well as commentary on the answers.
Preface: Since one of today's popular recreations is to play with
chatGPT, I decided on 07 April 2023 to try my own little experiment,
as part of a correspondence with Stephen Wolfram.The results were sufficiently interesting that I passed them on
to a few friends the next day, and I've also been mentioning them in
conversation when the topic comes up.So I was asked to post the story online, and here it is (lightly edited)!
-- Don Knuth
PS: I did not edit my questions or the computer's answers, only my
own commentary at the end.
It is an interesting read that I highly recommend. And he ends his letter:
Well this has been interesting indeed. Studying the task of
how to fake it certainly leads to insightful subproblems galore.
As well as fun conversations during meals.On the other hand, Gary Marcus's column in the April CACM
brilliantly describes the terrifying consequences of these
developments.I find it fascinating that novelists galore have written for decades
about scenarios that might occur after a "singularity" in which
superintelligent machines exist. But as far as I know, not a single
novelist has realized that such a singularity would almost surely
be preceded by a world in which machines are 0.01% intelligent
(say), and in which millions of real people would be able to interact
with them freely at essentially no cost.
The Gary Marcus CACM piece he refers to is Hoping for the Best as AI Evolves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Mojibake Tengu on Sunday May 14, @01:58PM (1 child)
Frankly, I do not understand why all the pop-culture FUD emerging about ChatGPT.
Seriously, Markov Chains is 1906, over 100 years old now. We knew for at least a century this is coming. Why the panic?
We who knew were already waiting for decades, you guys are 50 years late with this funny tech.
I need a different civilization. The one which prefers Logical Inference before Preconditioned Speechcraft. And Justice before Malice.
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16, @01:35AM
Hope you feel special. Humanity is hamstrung by doubt, just look at climate change. Until the symptoms are undeniably bad humanity rarely lifts a finger. We're still arguing about universal healthcare for fuck's sake!