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hubie (1068)
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Been around from the beginning, but only recently volunteered as an editor.
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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12, @03:29AM (1 child)
Fun stuff, appreciate the link to Knuth.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12, @11:28AM
> 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.
Possible counter example, how about the AIs in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Douglas Adams has doors with "Genuine People Personality(TM)" and a drink machine that sucks up all available computing power when you ask for tea.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12, @05:49AM
My feeling precisely. I would add that the world is already way too fuzzy and chatGPT only seems to add to that fuzz. The best inventions are the ones that add clarity, certainty and precision, IMHO.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 13, @06:13AM (5 children)
A Hubie journal with no comments? Or not many, yet? Such a sad thing, to be falling upon us all.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15, @03:26AM (4 children)
Why was this comment spam modded? It makes no sense.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15, @06:45PM (3 children)
Good isn't it?
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22, @05:17AM (2 children)
Spam modding has killed soylentnews. Look for Ncommanders post later today.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday May 22, @07:19AM
Which you will find when you read it has nothing at all to do with Spam moderations or anything else that you will try to blame.
You haven't read it yet but you are already trying to influence what you think it is going to say. Perhaps you understand what the complaint about misinformation and plain lies has been about for many months. It is not those you accuse, but YOU.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday May 22, @08:38AM
Spam moderation has certainly killed your participation in SoylentNews and it was the very reason for that clause in the ban, along with the measures employed to control your sock puppets. Thank you for confirming another success. If you hate it so much here, why haven't you left? It is simple, you have nowhere else to go. You are resigned to posting in other peoples' journals and crying like a little child about how the world is so unfair to you. You created this situation, and now you do not like what you have created.
How many threats and promises have you made over the last 18 months or so? All have come to nothing. Oh, I forgot, you are Anonymous and I should expect you.
There are no spam moderations on the front page, and very few Troll or Off-Topic comments either.
(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!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by pTamok on Monday May 15, @10:35AM (2 children)
...it was an interesting read.
Knuth makes some good points, which is not entirely unexpected.
My experience of LLM generated text is that is does come across as highly confident and 'believable', so if you are not a domain-expert yourself, you can easily be fooled if you are not naturally critical. The chatbots tend to fall apart when you cross-examine them and dig into their 'thinking', or foce them to show 'proof' (or at least, references) with what can tun out to be entirely 'hallucinated' evidence. The old saw about people's experience with new media applies: you tend to believe them when you know nothing about the events being reported other than the report itself; but when you have personal experience of the event, you realise just how poor news reporting is. It's the same with LLM output. It's sometimes brilliant, but can be complete fiction. The trick is knowing the difference. Teaching AIs to know the difference and to seek out truth could be interesting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16, @01:38AM (1 child)
So some users here are just bots?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16, @05:06AM
All of them, anymore. Khallow being replaced was only the least noticeable.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17, @03:47AM (1 child)
Crap like this is why people like me will no longer frequent SN. The anti-linux tendency is getting stronger, and the pro-Micro$erf stuff has been getting through. Time to just admit that the Whole Site has been compromised, and is now a Shill fest. And that is not even considering runaway and the Ruskies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17, @04:10AM
pangenome, it is important, whatever it is.