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in reply to Aaron Toponce ⚛️:debian:

@Aaron Toponce ⚛️:debian: ... so you prove "someone" lacks all intelligence by challenging their math disability?

It only has a handful of cognitive functions, none of which are good at math. Honestly, it does better than I expected.

in reply to Shiri Bailem

ChatGPT is not a person, and "garbage" is not the opposite of intelligence.
This entry was edited (4 months ago)
in reply to Jobu Tupaki

@Jobu Tupaki that's why someone is in quotes, I've gone from understanding people being frustrated with AI to outright irate at people trying to constantly claim victory over things it's not even designed to do...

It exhibits some cognitive functions, "intelligence" is just a junk term that most people use to mean either "magic" or "just plain human". It's not designed to do math, it doesn't have any of the cognitive abilities to actually process math. The fact that it can actually figure out the correct math functions half the time is hugely impressive, or the fact that it knows when asked to use python that floating point errors are a thing and will affect the operation because it contains a floating point value.

If you're going to complain about issues around artists, I'll leave you alone aside from minor factual statements. But the whole "AI is useless" or "AI is the new NFT" angles are just speaking out your ass. (To be clear, NFTs as we know them are a bastardization of a function in new and awful ways, the underlying function being little better than a thought experiment with little practical application)

For something that straight up has value on a variety of different fields, let alone the effect it has on providing disability accommodation tools (and that's not hypothetical, I've used them for my own accommodations), I'm simple at the point of telling people to go fuck themselves for being high and mighty about it.

in reply to Shiri Bailem

@shiri @RubyTuesdayDONO On that basis, LLMs can't be criticized for their output at all, because the only thing they are "designed to do" is create answers that look like they could have been written by a human.

"Oh, you got severely poisened by chlorine gas while trying to clean your washing machine? Well, shouldn't have done what LLM suggested, it's not designed to give advice for cleaning washing machines!" 👏

in reply to Shiri Bailem

@shiri @RubyTuesdayDONO you've introduced the term "intelligence" to this discussion. The OP not only called it "garbage" but also alluded to this not being an isolated example. You're arguing it shouldn't be judged by this single example and domain - but it isn't. It sucks quite frequently, and often enough in dangerous ways.

You're also (unintentionally, I think) applying some eristic dialectic (search it) here, please be a bit careful what is actually argued.

in reply to Shiri Bailem

@shiri wait sorry are you suggesting it's ableist to expect a literal electronic computer to do half accurate maths?
in reply to Shiri Bailem

We know LLMs are ill-suited to doing maths. The problem is that a good chunk of people don't know so — either believing they can replace their entire workforce with it or that it will lead us to AGI, hence why we are shouting from the rooftops about it. People having tempered expectations about what LLMs can do is fundamentally a good thing.
This entry was edited (4 months ago)
in reply to Shiri Bailem

@shiri @purple But nobody expects notepad to play video. That *is* the entire point here. It's true that people generally don't know what LLMs are, and the ridiculous marketing of them doesn't help, so these examples are great at pointing out their limitations. We need more of this, not less.
in reply to Veronica Olsen 🏳️‍🌈🇳🇴🌻

@Veronica Olsen 🏳️‍🌈🇳🇴🌻 @purple is surprised by the French @Aaron Toponce ⚛️:debian: this @·J Mopp I wouldn't bat an eye if it wasn't under the heading of "AI is garbage", OP is trying to argue that it has no value at all because it can't do this one thing.

If it was "Don't trust what AI tells you" or "AI isn't good at everything" I'd probably be boosting it instead.

in reply to Shiri Bailem

@shiri @veronica @purple @jmopp What makes this evidence of generative AI being garbage is that it can't do maths but confidently gives you incorrect answers anyway, and even doubles down when challenged.

Notepad can't play videos, no, but if you try to make it load a video file anyway it quickly and clearly becomes apparent to the user that it can't play videos.

Generative AI also has a limited scope of things that it can do (e.g. SEO filler content & misinfo bots) but unlike Notepad it will attempt to do everything else too, and confidently serve up nonsense with no easy way for the user to know when this is happening. That's a fundamental difference and make it deserving of the label garbage, IMO.

in reply to Veronica Olsen 🏳️‍🌈🇳🇴🌻

@veronica @shiri …and nobody has ever marketed notepad as the ‘solution’ to video, or really anything for that matter, whereas major companies are spending millions telling us LLMs are the answer to pretty much everything, including making videos and video players, but also government and healthcare
in reply to purple is mysterious

@purple @shiri It's stupid to say that "AI is garbage" and post an image of an LLM getting math wrong. It is functioning pretty well as far as I can tell.
in reply to Shiri Bailem

@shiri Large Language Models are not intelligent, their perceived intelligence is part of the language itself, not of the models. #LLMs don't understand anything, they just memorise patterns and generate synthetic patterns that look similar to the ones they have learned. There is no mind in there, no reasoning.
in reply to Lord Caramac the Clueless, KSC

@shiri If anything, LLMs just show us how much perceived intelligence exists in the structures of human languages.
in reply to Lord Caramac the Clueless, KSC

@Lord Caramac the Clueless, KSC @Aaron Toponce ⚛️:debian: age old argument that boils down to not understanding that intelligence is far fuzzier a concept than you're willing to accept.

When defining intelligence you're either going to exclude a lot of people you would consider intelligent, or you're going to have to accept that we're not the only ones with intelligence.

I'm willing to accept that we're not the only ones, and the definition I accept is "possesses cognitive abilities", with my prime example being the cognitive ability that it is better at than me: Executive Function.

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

@Aaron Toponce ⚛️:debian: @Lord Caramac the Clueless, KSC Just for reference: I'm ADHD and that means my executive function is severely impaired, someone without impairment is probably better at it than the LLM, but in this case it's exhibiting a cognitive function that exceeds the capacities of some human beings.

It's one of the popular assistive uses of LLMs, see goblin.tools/ for that purpose.

reshared this

in reply to Shiri Bailem

@shiri I know, I myself am struggling with the very same thing, as you could easily tell if you saw me now sitting next to a huge pile of dirty laundry that should have been washed two weeks ago and a whole lot of unfinished projects, some of which haven't been worked on in years.
in reply to Shiri Bailem

@shiri @LordCaramac

"When defining intelligence you're either going to exclude a lot of people you would consider intelligent, or you're going to have to accept that we're not the only ones with intelligence."

While what you say is true, it does in no way follow that LLMs can not not be intelligent.

LLMs are not intelligent, because they by design predict the next token in a deterministic manner.

It doesn't meet *ANY* sensible definition of intelligence, not even your own.

in reply to Shiri Bailem

@shiri Chatbots aren't people, but when people go around confidently spouting stuff that's this wrong they are fair game to be mocked. An actual person with a disability who isn't able to answer these questions would just say "I don't know"
in reply to Shiri Bailem

the point is: it doesn't have *any* cognitive functions.
This entry was edited (4 months ago)
in reply to Shiri Bailem

I don’t agree with this mindset.

If you sell a product designed for specific functions (computation in this case) and it does not do that specific function, then it needs more work.

Especially math where it’s very rigid with how problems are solved.

This entry was edited (4 months ago)
in reply to Shiri Bailem

@shiri McDonald's fired their drive through AI because it kept screwing up orders. It's about as useless as a fart in a blizzard. There's nothing to defend.
in reply to Shiri Bailem

@shiri The argument in favor of AI is now "computers aren't good at math" gotcha
in reply to Shiri Bailem

@shiri it mimics a handful of cognitive functions? Which is very useful in some cases. It becomes less useful as it becomes less trustworthy in its output, but if the stakes are low you can probably rely on it to make life easier in lots of little ways.
in reply to Shiri Bailem

@shiri "See this computer? We made it bad at arithmetic. Please be nice to it" Can you hear yourself?
in reply to Shiri Bailem

@shiri a mathematically impaired human might say "I don't know" or "I'm not sure"
in reply to Aaron Toponce ⚛️:debian:

This is actually a tokenization error. 9.11 looks larger than 9.9 because 11 tokenizes as a single unit and 11 is usually larger than 9.
in reply to Xe :verified:

@Xe :verified: @Aaron Toponce ⚛️:debian: I'm really curious about this because frankly I'm surprised it was even conceptually close

dibi58 reshared this.

in reply to Shiri Bailem

@shiri You're thinking about numbers the way humans do. Imagine if this was how you conceptualized numbers:
in reply to Xe :verified:

@Xe :verified: @Aaron Toponce ⚛️:debian: yeah, but as far as I know it doesn't really have any capacity for computation, just association and linguistic understanding. And it sounded like you had insight on how it reached the conclusion of 0.21
in reply to Xe :verified:

@cadey In other words, despite all efforts to make math work better with LLMs, like adding Python support, it's still bad at it. Also it inherited the overconfidence from the dataset, which should include Reddit.
in reply to Aaron Toponce ⚛️:debian:

wow you are either faking it or a really bad prompt engineer: chatgpt.com/share/15cf4411-f27…
in reply to Ryan Dormanesh

@Hexa there's always one promptfondler in the thread that doesn't understand that you can't get fully repeatable answers from the confabulation engine, and that any answer to that question is a valid answer within the llm paradigm, no matter if it's incorrect or not.

(there's also another promptfondler who thinks that the problem is just in one particular llm, not in the way llm works)

@atoponce

Grrrr, Darth Moose Shark reshared this.

in reply to flere-imsaho

fair point. I apologize. Also “promptfondler” 😆 I’ve never heard that one.
This entry was edited (4 months ago)
in reply to Aaron Toponce ⚛️:debian:

I wonder: you know how virtual assistants are given feminine names and voices (Siri, Alexa)? And you know how there is a persistant false belief that women are somehow worse at math than men?

I have to wonder whether that combination of biases has any influence on the programmers who create these LLMs? I mean on top of all of the other biases and misunderstandings they already have about neuroscience and language? Are they creating their own stereotype of a ditzy secretary?

in reply to Noah Cook

@UncivilServant this has nothing to do with biases; llms don't produce correct answers, they produce statistically-probable text completion. @atoponce

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in reply to Aaron Toponce ⚛️:debian:

For the example - ChatGPT botching arithmetic - it actually passed the Turing test. Once in a store, I ordered 2.2 lb of some deli item, and the scale registered 2.02. The guy behind the counter called 2.20 "two point twenty" and 2.02 "two point two". The scale always showed two digits past the decimal point. This guy basically made the same mistake as ChatGPT.
in reply to Erik Jonker

@ErikJonker the authors, apparently, and it is being sold to the public as an universal answering and search engine. @atoponce
in reply to flere-imsaho

@mawhrin by using ChatGPT-4 a lot, you quickly find out what it's good for and what not, in my experience, it's limited but does have added value.