1 karma · joined February 15, 2023
To be honest I'm sort of in denial too. My actions contradict my beliefs. I'm not searching for occupations and paths that are separate from AI, I'm still programming as if I could do this forever.
Also I capitalize words for emphasis. It doesn't represent emotion. Though I do have emotions and I do have bias, but not on the topics I am describing here.
I don't think this means skynet apocalypse. I think this means most people will be out of a job.
A lot of people on HN take a lot of pride in thinking they have some sort of superior programming skills that places them on the top end of the programming spectrum. ChatGPT represents the possibility that they can be beaten easily. That their skills are entirely useless and generic in a world dominated by AI programmers.
It truly is a realistic possibility that AI can take over programming jobs in the future, no one can deny this. Does one plan for that future? Or do they live in denial? Most people choose to live in denial, because that AI inflection point happened so quickly that we can't adapt to the paradigm shift.
The human brain would rather shape logic and reality to fit an existing habit and lifestyle rather then acknowledge the cold hard truth. We saw it with global warming and oil execs and we're seeing it with programmers and AI.
But I do think it understands what you're saying. And it understand what itself is. The evidence is basically in the way it constructs it's answers. It must have a somewhat realistic model of reality in order to say certain things.
No need to be worried about knocking chatGPT. I have no pride invested in the thing. But I do think that people who view it solely as statistical word generators are biased.
Ok let me make this more clear.
I choose how to view things, yes this is true. But if I choose to treat human beings as jumbles of molecules, most people would consider that viewpoint flawed, inaccurate and slightly insane. Other humans would think that I'm in denial about some really obvious macro effects of configuring molecules in a way such that it forms a human.
I can certainly choose to view things this way, but do you see how such a singular viewpoint is sort of stubborn and unreasonable? This is why solely viewing LLMs as simple statistical word generators is unreasonable. Yes it's technically correct, but it is missing a lot.
There's another aspect to this too. What I'm seeing, to stay inline with the analogy, is people saying that the "human" viewpoint is entirely invalid. They are saying that the jumble of molecules only forms something that looks like a human, a "chinese room" if you will. They are saying the ONLY correct viewpoint is to view the jumble of molecules as a jumble of molecules. Nothing more.
So to bring the analogy back around to chatGPT. MANY people are saying that chatGPT is nothing more then a word generator. It does not have intelligence, it does not understand anything. I am disagreeing with this perspective because OP just linked a scientific paper CLEARLY showing that LLMs are building a realistic model of the information you are feeding it.