Is A.I. more than the sum of its parts?

[javisot]

What I often notice is a certain lack of humility when debating this. Chatgpt handles more information, both in quantity and quality, than any of us, and its capacity to manage that information is superior to any of ours.

But its operation remains an automated process predetermined by us: you provide an input, and it generates an output. The way to generate the output is also predetermined by us, even if we talk about generating new ways to solve something; that's still predetermined by us.

Is intelligence required to create a machine capable of solving problems at a human level? Yes, obviously, but the intelligence doesn't reside in the machine; we give it to it.

"I've learned to solve problems with these two stones, therefore, these two stones are intelligent..."—this, in short, is what people who attribute intelligence to AI are doing.

 

[PeterDonis]

Chatgpt handles more information, both in quantity and quality, than any of us

I'm not sure this is true. The only information Chatgpt has is its training data, which is just a huge corpus of text. Humans have information coming in from multiple channels, with much, much richer semantic connections to the rest of the world.

and its capacity to manage that information is superior to any of ours.

I'm not sure this is true either. The only way Chatgpt has of "managing" the information it has is to extract patterns from it according to the rules humans gave it. Humans have many more ways of managing information--including thinking up the idea of something like Chatgpt in the first place.

 

[javisot]

I'm not sure this is true. The only information Chatgpt has is its training data, which is just a huge corpus of text. Humans have information coming in from multiple channels, with much, much richer semantic connections to the rest of the world.


I'm not sure this is true either. The only way Chatgpt has of "managing" the information it has is to extract patterns from it according to the rules humans gave it. Humans have many more ways of managing information--including thinking up the idea of something like Chatgpt in the first place.

Imagine a quiz show. It's a contest with many questions on a wide variety of topics. The winner is the one who answers the most questions correctly.

Does anyone really think they could beat chatgpt?

I certainly don't...

 

[PeterDonis]

Imagine a quiz show. It's a contest with many questions on a wide variety of topics. The winner is the one who answers the most questions correctly.

Does anyone really think they could beat chatgpt?

This is just processing text in a corpus of training data. As long as chatgpt's training data has at least the same text in it as the training data the humans have taken in, of course it's going to be better able to process it, since its hardware runs roughly 8 to 9 orders of magnitude faster.

But chatgpt has no concept at all that there are things in the actual world that the quiz show questions refer to. It doesn't even have the concept of "the actual world" separate from its training data. The humans do. That's a simple example of information the humans have that chatgpt doesn't, and a way of processing information--comparing information in text form with world knowledge--that chatgpt doesn't have.

 

[russ_watters]

Imagine a quiz show. It's a contest with many questions on a wide variety of topics. The winner is the one who answers the most questions correctly.

Does anyone really think they could beat chatgpt?

I certainly don't...

Do I have access to the internet/google and a large time handicap? If so, then I like my odds. But that wouldn't prove I'm very intelligent either.

 

[FactChecker]

Do I have access to the internet/google and a large time handicap? If so, then I like my odds. But that wouldn't prove I'm very intelligent either.

A lot of people who get their information from the internet are less informed than chatgpt. I don't think they are really smart, but they do have some intelligence.

 

[javisot]

This is just processing text in a corpus of training data. As long as chatgpt's training data has at least the same text in it as the training data the humans have taken in, of course it's going to be better able to process it, since its hardware runs roughly 8 to 9 orders of magnitude faster.

But chatgpt has no concept at all that there are things in the actual world that the quiz show questions refer to. It doesn't even have the concept of "the actual world" separate from its training data. The humans do. That's a simple example of information the humans have that chatgpt doesn't, and a way of processing information--comparing information in text form with world knowledge--that chatgpt doesn't have.

Do I have access to the internet/google and a large time handicap? If so, then I like my odds. But that wouldn't prove I'm very intelligent either.

I agree with the point you're making. Chatgpt would beat us in a general quiz, but that doesn't mean he's intelligent, curiously. We assume that chatgpt doesn't "really understand" any of the responses it generates, however simple they may be.

 

[PeroK]

This is just processing text in a corpus of training data. As long as chatgpt's training data has at least the same text in it as the training data the humans have taken in, of course it's going to be better able to process it, since its hardware runs roughly 8 to 9 orders of magnitude faster.

But chatgpt has no concept at all that there are things in the actual world that the quiz show questions refer to. It doesn't even have the concept of "the actual world" separate from its training data. The humans do. That's a simple example of information the humans have that chatgpt doesn't, and a way of processing information--comparing information in text form with world knowledge--that chatgpt doesn't have.

Not everyone in the AI field agrees with this assertion. It's not clear the extent to which an LLM understands things. Clearly not as well as an educated human understands things. But, it may have in practical terms an emergent understanding.

That's the serious debate we should be having on PF.