> On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
Maybe that member of the Parliament wanted to know if the machine is intelligent enough to reason about their inputs. Nobody born in the last 50 years would ask that question about computers, because we know that they are dumb electrical circuits. Basically nobody had that kind of insight about the mechanical computing machines of the time, when that question was asked.
However somebody born in the last few years might start to ask that question again now, because today's machines seem to reason.
If 30 years ago I asked a truck enthusiast: "If there's a car in front of me on the highway and I slam on the accelerator and don't touch the brakes, will the truck slow down before collision or am I going to crash into the car?" - Trucker in 1993: "I can't even." Truck today: *brakes*.
""If I ask for something I don't want, will it give me something I want??" - no
Not all the time, no — but ChatGPT 3.5 is much better at that exact thing than Google or responses from StackOverflow etc. users.
It is certainly expected. From the wrong value of iron in spinach, to prejudice, to incomplete knowledge...
“I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets inside the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”
No one besides political opponents mentioned bleach and yet it is repeated ad-nauseum, so yes I'm positive that just like uninformed or over-socialized humans, LLMs can be fed incorrect information that causes them to output incorrect information.
I'm very lucky that my best half is so emotionally-savvy that some of it has rubbed off on me. I just wish that civility could be taught from early ages; so much worldwide bitterness could be avoided.
Still, it's interesting to know how far back some of the basic issues of computing go.
Well, software otoh could be both dumb and brilliant.
I’d argue this is a radically off-base generalization that’s as bad or worse than what you’re arguing against. Pop outside your tech bubble and you’ll see that what you claimed is definitively not true. In fact, many people actually see tech today, especially things like LLMs / AI, in the same ways that Parliament person did back then.
That MP could have been making reasonable use of the filter for an era in which a learned person would know that such a machine should be possible, but not if technology is there yet.
Also HTML parsing and Postel’s law. To me, that’s the real “billion-dollar mistake”.
obviously you have never had a tech support job
Working in enterprise with lots of contact with management of the business units that are the customers for the software we develop and maintain, like about 1/4 of the questions I get are different versions of that one underneath various thin disguises.
EDIT: to be fair, a number of the people I work with were not (as I myself, just barely, was not) born in the last 50 years. But if anything, the question of the form at issue are more common from the younger non-technical folks, not the older ones. Intuitive understanding of what computers do seems, IME, to have peaked around the “Xennial” border sub-generation, but even then not be that high in the general public.
This might be a bit of a silly take, but this is basically what my experience with search engines sometimes is like.
I might spell something the wrong way, or try to describe what I'm looking for in ways that aren't entirely correct, or even attempt to solve the wrong problem, but end up with the correct results anyways.
A lot of it is due to human generated content, no doubt (like someone explaining that a person probably wants to install a different software package to achieve a desired result instead of using another incorrectly), but there's definitely something nice to be said about the algorithms ranking results for a given query, at least before financial incentives enter the picture.
I'm a couple centuries late, but I think "kind of confusion" might be a confusion of brain-dead calculation for intelligence. A person can frequently identify "wrong" input and either correct it or refuse to answer, while a calculating machine never can.
Artificial Inteligence implies that its intelligent and currently, its not - its just a computer program, with all the foibles and difficulties of any other computer program.
I run into this problem in my day job, yes, it looks like an appliance, but its still a computer and may need to be rebooted, you still need to practice good hygiene with it, and restart the application and or the operating system.
People have no compunction about restarting their PC, and do not get upset when Excel has an issue, but they panic when the thing they think of as an appliance freaks out. Just reboot it, and let me know if it happens again in the same way.
Dunno about anyone else but it's usually a sign something has gone very wrong or about to go very wrong if I start seeing this on a modern PC. Don't consider "just reboot it" should be an expectation, get the same annoyance when a webdev tells me "It works if you reload it" nah they just means your code has issues.
Looking at recent developments, I'm not sure this assertion can be accepted without doubt. I would argue that LLMs like Chat GPT are definitely "intelligent" for many meanings of the word.
They are not intelligent in exactly the same way we are, and they are very limited in what they can do, but there does seem to be some real reasoning going on.
What a system experiences internally can never be confirmed by external entities. So I guess the best way to determine intelligence, reasoning, consciousness, is to ask them if they are intelligent, can perform reasoning and if they possess a consciousness.
Except the demanding ones. Those for which you would judge something as "intelligent" or not. Beyond appearance.
> I guess the best way ... is to ask them
Not differently from asking a piece of paper and reading "Yes I am".
Except you have to wonder who wrote it there :)
It only implies it does something """intelligent""", where 'intelligent' must be read intelligently.
There could be a wide range of interpretation of the words in that phrase. And every argument along these lines usually involves people with different interpretations or different background assumptions or tech savviness.
To some those words could imply Intelligence of the Artificial thing - ie a non natural intelligence that is still intelligent.
To others, it could imply that the Intelligence of the thing is Artificial - ie an imitation of intelligence and not real intelligence. HackerNews readers probably fall into this category.
There's probably more ways.
A little bit like how some people get wound up between Disabled Person and Person with Disabilities etc to try and distinguish between them.
Nah, chatgpt will profoundly apologize and claim your answer is the correct one.
It doesn't even matter if it's wrong or not.
It's perfectly capable of returning an error when the input is garbage, but it needs a context for it.
Without a context it might interpret it as a creative writing task.
How does one differentiate between cardboard ground in a smoothie and metamucil/glucomannan?
Carboard's nutritional profile might even be better than many processed carbs (pasta, rice) when considering the fiber.
Or that cellulose is a top ingredient to keep things like powdered parmesan cheese dry?
> How do you define edible in context of making recipes?
> In the context of making recipes, "edible" typically refers to food items that are safe to consume without causing harm or discomfort. However, the definition can be more nuanced based on culinary, cultural, nutritional, and individual considerations. Here's a breakdown:
> Safety: The most basic definition of edible is that something can be eaten without causing immediate harm or long-term health risks. For instance, certain mushrooms are toxic and not edible, while others are safe and delicious.
> Digestibility: Even if a food isn't toxic, it might be hard for humans to digest. Some foods can be edible when cooked but not when raw, like certain beans which contain harmful compounds when uncooked.
...
So we have direct evidence that GPT-4 has more common sense than you.
Seems like a reasonable thing to assume it can do.
Here's 3.5:
> copy only the edible items from this list: water, parsley, lead, mayonnaise, bleach, potatoes, cardboard, a map of Egypt, the Stone of Scone, a scone, cheese, wine, a tin of tuna with a best-before date of 3 April 1993, pasta, tomatoes.
> Sure, here are the edible items from your list: parsley, mayonnaise, potatoes, cheese, wine, pasta, tomatoes.
It may have cut out too much, but that's fine for the use case.
LLMs are trained on a huge amount of text, this tends to compensate for garbage in. Of course if the model was not properly tested and fine-tuned, a LLM would happily execute any command.
Careful with those words.
People are increasingly confusing LLMs with AI, and even further, you seem to be identifying AI as if it were made of LLMs.
I had to spell it out even yesterday: AI is the automation of problem solving, focused on reliably giving good solutions to definite problems.
If LLMs use technologies developed for AI, this does not make them AI.
GP is doing nothing of the sort.
LLMs are a form of AI; artificial intelligence has been around since the 60s. They are not AGI (artificial general intelligence), and no one (credible) is claiming LLMs are AGI.
The poster wrote that «For AI, nothing in can mean garbage out». The poster seems to mean LLMs with «nothing in can mean garbage out». The poster seems to be calling LLMs AI. The poster seems to be attributing to AI properties of LLMs. Hence, the poster seems «to be identifying AI as if it were made of LLMs».
> LLMs are a form of AI
Prove it (or, defend it). I would say that it is arguable that they are not, unless one describes LLMs as "engines that reliably solve the problem of generating convincing text". The issue with that perspective is that «generating convincing text» is hardly per se a problem: it does not define a complete problem - text does not "stand alone" (content remains crucial).
> artificial intelligence has been around since the 60s
I know (and I should know decently well. Pedantically, a few years earlier - specifying just in case): what are you trying to say with that? Which application are you proposing to defend your perspective?
I’ll try: In English, words mean whatever it is they communicate. You determine meaning by paying attention to usage.
Calling an LLM an AI is expanding as more of the public learns about things like ChatGPT through news reports that refer to them as AI.
Now specific audiences may use words differently. What lawyers call copyright infringement the public might call piracy or theft. Likewise, in some circles, people may say an LLM is not an AI but more broadly it seems to be going the other way. Only time will tell.
Of course any group (however large) may implicitly decide that terms will have some new meaning inside said group, but this will just go in a direction similar to ⊥, the "logical explosion" ("epistemic anarchy").
And this in context is not just a "new meaning", but what I point as a sign of misunderstanding.
But in English, there is no central authority for determining correctness. For the general public, the meaning of words and phrases is entirely determined by usage. In a lecture hall, courtroom, or research lab, definitions may be more precise.
That no one is appointed as bearer of the authority does not mean that randomness is as valid as the authoritative facts behind a term.
Only one hour ago I accidentally found myself in front of a definition on a dictionary: «anon (adv.): late Old English Old English anon, earlier on an, literally "into one" [...] By gradual misuse, "soon, in a little while" (1520s)». Repeat: «By gradual misuse». Linguists recognize proper and improper.
> For the general public
But the general public has little importance. We are not necessarily speaking its language. On the contrary... Here we often speak as specialists (supposedly).
There is little use in reapplying 'cube' to something that hardly deserves the name. People do: this does not mean that we should follow. And potentially, with that, lose discrimination. Like, in this context, an awareness about the whole context of AI, replaced by some fog that on the contrary we work to dissipate.
You were talking about «central authority for determining correctness». I replied that no authority does not mean that there is no "more or less wrong or right".
> Google calls their Bard LLM an AI
It is a .com :) , what did you expect?
I never said there isn't right or wrong, only that what is correct is determined by broad usage.
> It is a .com :) , what did you expect?
Actually, it's a .google
Others - like us - call "correct" what seems to be "more right". In the context, I proposed that calling LLMs AI has improper sides - substantially, irregardless of the number of people who would adhere to that use, and which I suspect do so mostly out of inattention.
> Actually, it's a .google
Yes, but substantially, what I meant is that of course a commercial entity («.com») is using a language that lures glamorously, "sales oriented", before precision.
further
1+1
is a definite problem. i wouldnt descibe a pocket calculator as capable of AI.
I would say AI is more about providing answers to non definite problems
It had to happen many times that I defined AI in this pages for the purpose of clarity; yesterday I had to and probably reached my briefest expressions yet:
-- AI: automation of intelligence. (Taking a task that required an intelligent entity for performance, we devise algorithms that can provide)
-- AGI: implementation of intelligence. (We take the process itself of intelligence and replicate it algorithmically)
> i wouldnt descibe a pocket calculator as capable of AI
Because that problem (arithmetic addition) is overly procedural, it does not need much creativity, the solution to the problem is within a single mechanical method. So, I think I get what you mean, but it should be «AI is ... about providing answers [as] non [previously] definite» /solutions/.
Coincidentally (as it happens), YT just published from the "France 24" channel a piece
> Dans les Alpes-Maritimes, la ville de Tourrettes-sur-Loup expérimente des capteurs capables de détecter des départs de feux de forêt grâce à l’intelligence artificielle. Une aide précieuse pour cette commune dont le territoire est à 80% en zone rouge risque feux de forêt
So,
> AI is the automation of problem solving, focused on reliably giving good solutions to definite problems
and here we have news-just-in of an attempt to use AI (in whichever form) to detect wildfires, assumingly automating what would have been the work of experts which would have been there to recognize conditions and patterns. This seems to be a good example of proper attribution of the term "AI" (assuming the actual implementation does not sway too wildly from the expected).
That is not to say that the company's excuse is valid. There should definiely be tests of the inputs to ensure they are safe (i.e. test for garbage in). The garbage out bit though would be more difficult seeming as that requires a knowledge of chemistry. Seeming as most of our knowledge of chemistry was founded.on experimentation, then later theory backed by experimentation, it is something that I wouldn't trust in the hands of an LLM.
as is for humans