dslowell

Trying to make things up to cover for a lack of knowledge is something distinctly different, though. This is a a situation where ChatGPT is able to perfectly describe the mistake it made, describe exactly what it needs to do differently, and then keeps making the same mistake, even with simple tasks. That’s because there’s no greater model that the words are being connected to.

The equivalence would be saying to someone, “put this on the red plate, not the blue one.” And they say sure, then put it on the blue one. You tell them they made a mistake and ask them if they know what it was, and they reply “I put it on the blue plate, not the red one. I should have put it on the red one.” Then you ask them to do it again, and they put it on the blue plate again. You tell them no, you made the same mistake, put it on the blue plate, not the red one. They reply with, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have put it on the blue plate again, now I’m going to put it on the red one,” and then they put it on the blue plate yet again.

Do humans make mistakes? Sure. But that kind of performance in a test wouldn’t be considered a normal mistake, but rather a sign of a serious cognitive impairment.

You can see the difference if you know where to poke. For instance, if you start making spatial abstractions ChatGPT will often make mistakes, you can point it out, they can explain why it's a mistake, but it has no internalized model of what these words mean, so it keeps making the same mistakes (see here for a better idea of what I'm talking about[1]). The fact that you are interacting with it through text means that a lot of the missing abstractions are often hidden.

[1] https://twitter.com/LowellSolorzano/status/16444387969250385...

It's interesting how different the rollout of autonomous cars has been from what people were expecting a decade ago. Not just the speed of things, but also the way they're being adopted. So far, we don't seem to be anywhere close to the nationwide mass layoffs of truck and taxi drivers that people were predicting would happen when self-driving cars started to take of.

Instead, current trends seem to be for an additional form of transportation within limited geographic areas. One can imagine a scenario where, for instance, we have a number of cities where self-driving cars are the dominant form of transportation in the center, but traditional cars are still owned and operated by the people who live on the periphery, and most cities don't have self-driving networks at all. Something similar to how the subway functions in Manhattan New York, perhaps.

Or maybe not. But I think this all shows that it's not just difficult to predict which pieces of future technology we will have, but also how a particular piece of technology will actually be implemented and impact society.

Just ask it for a darker (or lighter, or more humorous, or more surprising) ending for the story and it will oblige.

What's really interesting to me is how easy it is to talk to it conversationally and get an appropriate response. Inspired by this post, for instance, I just now tried asking it to explain the joke: "Two men walk into a bar, the third man ducks." It's initial response was nonsense:

> The joke is funny because it relies on a play on words and a surprise ending. The first two lines set up the expectation that something is going to happen to the two men who are walking into the bar, but the punchline subverts that expectation by introducing a third man who ducks, which is a unexpected and humorous twist.

I asked what wordplay was involved, and it told me this:

> The word play in the joke involves the use of the word "walk" in the first two lines and the word "duck" in the punchline. In the first two lines, "walk" is used in the literal sense, as in moving forward on foot. However, in the punchline, "duck" is used in the sense of avoiding or evading something, rather than its literal meaning of a type of bird. This sudden shift in the meaning of the word "duck" is what creates the surprise and humor in the joke.

More nonsense. But then I told it "It's actually the word "bar" that's being used in the wordplay. The word "duck" there just means evading something" and asked it to explain the joke again, and it returned this:

> In the first two lines of the joke, "walk into a bar" is used in the literal sense, as in two men entering a place where drinks are served. However, in the punchline, "bar" is used in the sense of a barrier or obstacle, rather than its literal meaning of a type of establishment. The punchline introduces a third man who "ducks" under the perceived obstacle, which is a unexpected and humorous twist. The joke also relies on the idea that walking into a bar is a common and mundane activity, so the unexpected ending adds a element of absurdity to the joke.

Though the initial response was nonsense, talking to it as if it were a human and giving it a limited hint (telling it the wordplay involved "bar" and not "duck") was enough for it to give the correct answer.

I think this is probably why so many people say they're underwhelmed. A lot of the initial responses to simplistic questions aren't so interesting. But the degree to which it is able to correctly adapt and respond to conversational input is fairly astounding.

Much more important would be giving them (and others) the opportunities to realize their own potential even if they don't go on the exact path early in life. It's not impossible, but it is extremely difficult at the age of 26 to realize that marketing isn't for you and that your true calling is astrophysics. Our society typically sorts people at a young age, and there's no easy path out once you've been sorted (again, not impossible, but very difficult). I've met a number of remarkable people who were stuck in remedial jobs, but really excelled and took off when they finally got their break. They were lucky; many aren't.

I've seen people say things like "I despair at all of the Einsteins out there who are stuck plowing fields." But that sentiment is a bit of a cop out; the issue is made to be distant enough that we can relieve ourselves of a certain amount of responsibility. How about all of the Einsteins in our own society who are still stuck in the patent office?

> mad-libs style patterns of it slightly remixing answers to different questions in basically the same way.

There's an element of that, but I was surprised to see how much of it wasn't simply mad-libs. When I asked it to add an octopus character to a space opera it was writing, it didn't simply say "the heroes come across an octopus," but wrote about a strange creature floating in space with large eyes that they pull on board and discover to be an octopus. When asked to change the genre to western, the octopus used it's tentacles to cling to the back of another character as they road through the desert.

I asked it to generate an SCP archive entry for me multiple times, and they were all quite different. And the quality was such that I had to search to make sure it wasn't just copying an entry that was already there. If these were actual SCP entries, I honestly wouldn't have noticed anything off.

> I am wholly amused how everyone got on that dude from Google that accused the AI of being sentient and Google about not caring, and now you have huge names in the tech industry kinda drooling over this with what I believe to be the same passion.

Is it strange? Someone can be extremely impressed with how a Boston Dynamic robot moves, while also being entirely unconvinced by claims that the lifelike movement is a sign of sentience.

Partly it's a matter of what to ask Chat GPT. When I try to show people, they usually ask straightforward questions that they can already get a quick answer from in Google, which isn't terrible impressive.

But take this, for example[1]. I asked it to write me a story in a particular genre featuring certain animals, and it did. I asked it to switch genres, which it did well. When I asked for a backstory about how different characters met, it provided a fairly plausible one, as well as songs that would accompany the story if it were a musical, and potential titles for a sequel.

When I asked it to write the beginning of a New York Times article titled "Biden Shocks Nation"[2] I got a fairly convincing news story about Biden deciding not to run for office again. If asked to continue the story and include people who might run, it generates further paragraphs talking about who might run to replace him, starting with Kamala Harris, who it claims is a strong contender.

Is any of this writing amazing? No, but very few writing is. It's amazing how well it's able to generate generic human writing, as well as how easy it is to get it to create what you want with very few prompts.

[1] https://twitter.com/LowellSolorzano/status/15997859363671941... [2] https://twitter.com/LowellSolorzano/status/15997883331018752...