OliveTapenade
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User ID: 1729
OliveTapenade
5d ago
I can't actually tell what you asked a bot to do. You asked a bot to 'create a feature'? What the heck is that? A feature of what? At first I assumed you meant a coding task of some kind, but then you described it as writing 'thousands of words of fiction', which sounds like something else entirely. I have no idea what you had a bot do that you thought was so impressive.
At any rate, I think I've explained myself adequately? To repeat myself:
But I think that written verbal acuity is, at best, a very restricted kind of 'intelligence'. In human beings we use it as a reasonable proxy for intelligence and make estimations based off it because, in most cases, written expression does correlate well with other measures of intelligence. But those correlations don't apply with machines, and it seems to me that a common mistake today is for people to just apply them. This is the error of the Turing test, isn't it? In humans, yes, expression seems to correlate with intelligence, at least in broad terms. But we made expression machines and because we are so used to expression meaning intelligence, personality, feeling, etc., we fantasise all those things into being, even when the only thing we have is an expression machine.
Yes, a bot can generate 'thousands of words of fiction'. But I already explained why I don't think that's equivalent to intelligence. Generating English sentences is not intelligence. It is one thing that you can do with intelligence, and in humans it correlates sufficiently well with other signs of intelligence that we often safely make assumptions based on it. But an LLM isn't a human, and its ability to generate sentences in no way implies any other ability that we commonly associate with intelligence, much less any general factor of intelligence.
OliveTapenade
3d ago
Even in this reply you stroke your own dick by waxing poetically about how you magnanimously tolerate the “Joo-posters” (a derisive term you invented to ridicule those who don't share your pro-Israel bias)
Er, in this context I'm pretty sure that he is not talking about people who are critical of Palestine. He is likely talking about the multiple posters on the Motte who are directly and openly anti-semitic, in ways completely unrelated to the state of Israel. Out of respect for Amadan I won't bother with specific links, but I assure you, the Motte has unrepentent neo-Nazi posters.
It's not accusations of anti-semitism being used frivolously to condemn people who criticise Israeli state policy. It is, bluntly, accusations of anti-semitism being made against people who genuinely hate Jews for being Jews.
OliveTapenade
6d ago
Well, I wouldn't use intentionality for bots at all. I think intentionality presupposes consciousness, or that is to say, subjectivity or interiority. Bots have none of those things. I don't think it's possible to get from language manipulation to consciousness.
At any rate, I certainly agree that every ideological person believes untrue things about the world. I'm not sure about the qualification 'for instrumental reasons' - I suspect that's true if you define 'instrumental' broadly enough, but at that point it's becoming trivial. At any rate, if you leave off reasons, I am confident that every person full stop holds some false beliefs.
That doesn't seem like the same thing to me, though. Humans sometimes represent the world falsely to ourselves. That's not what bots do. Bots don't represent the world to themselves at all. We sometimes believe falsely; they don't believe at all. They are not the kinds of things capable of holding beliefs.
OliveTapenade
6d ago
You said it better than I could, and with more relevant expertise.
OliveTapenade
5d ago
I don't buy your appeal to normal people here. I think that most normal people do not think that chatbots are intelligent.
Realistically, I don't think most people can explain why they're not intelligent, because most people don't have definitions of intelligence on-hand. I think for most people it's an I-know-it-when-I-see-it situation. That's why we need to philosophise a bit about it in order to produce more reasonable definitions and criteria for intelligence.
Anyway, I think that intuitions of most normal people would say that bots aren't intelligent, and if we explored that with them, and had a patient, philosophically nuanced conversation about why, we probably would find that most people intuitively think that intelligence involves things like, to quote myself, 'awareness or intentionality'.
OliveTapenade
5d ago
When you find something via Google, do you immediately and unconditionally trust it?
Certainly not. When I research something I look at multiple different sources, make judgements about which ones I find the most trustworthy and credible, and synthesise a judgement.
If I ask an LLM about anything, I need to do the research that I would have done even if I had not asked the LLM. The LLM adds no value. It does not shorten the research process, nor improve what I find by showing me any hints about where to look.
OliveTapenade
5d ago
I'm not sure how that helps, since any given LLM's output is based on traditional sources like Google or the open internet. It would be quicker and easier for me to just Google the thing directly. Why waste my time asking an LLM and then Googling the LLM's results to confirm?
OliveTapenade
6d ago
I think translating code is probably a sensible thing to use a bot for - though I'm not sure it's fundamentally different in kind to, say, Google Translate. I grant that the bots have impressive ability to general syntactically correct text, and I'm sure that applies to code as much as it does natural language. In fact I suspect it applies even more, since code is easier than natural language.
I am less sure about its value for looking up scientific information. It is really faster or more reliable than checking Wikipedia? I am not sure. I know that I, at least, make a habit of automatically ignoring or skipping past any AI-generated text in answer to a question, even on scientific matters, because I judge that the time I spend checking whether or not the bot is right is likely equal or greater than the amount of time I spend just looking it up for myself.
OliveTapenade
6d ago
My experience with AI bots has generally been that they are extremely articulate when it comes to producing correct English text, but they have no awareness or intentionality and therefore no sense of relationship to fact, and no sense of context or meaning. What they do very well is string together words in response to prompts, and despite heroic efforts to get their output to be more fact-sensitive, the fundamental issue has never really been overcome.
I call them nonsense because I think that sense requires some sort of relationship to both fact and context. To be sensible is to be aware of your surroundings. That's not the case with bots.
I would add, at least, that this:
Deepseek, however, with a bit of prompting can be completely insane yet rational and easily smarter than most people you see if you go to any place outside of a professional context.
seems to depend on definitions of rationality or intelligence that I don't think I share. I think bots are very efficient at producing English text, even quite complex text. It's trivial enough to show that a bot can produce a better written letter or better poem or what have you than the average man or woman on the street.
But I think that written verbal acuity is, at best, a very restricted kind of 'intelligence'. In human beings we use it as a reasonable proxy for intelligence and make estimations based off it because, in most cases, written expression does correlate well with other measures of intelligence. But those correlations don't apply with machines, and it seems to me that a common mistake today is for people to just apply them. This is the error of the Turing test, isn't it? In humans, yes, expression seems to correlate with intelligence, at least in broad terms. But we made expression machines and because we are so used to expression meaning intelligence, personality, feeling, etc., we fantasise all those things into being, even when the only thing we have is an expression machine.
Bots and LLMs can produce statements that look very polished, and which purport to describe the world. In many cases, those descriptions are even accurate. But they are still, it seems to me, generating nonsense.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
Wait, doesn't everyone know that Who Wants To Live Forever was written specifically for Highlander? It and Princes of the Universe are movie themes.
It's like hearing that somebody thought that Flash was written independently of Flash Gordon - of course it wasn't! Queen just scored some films, for commercial reasons! The songs became popular because Queen were/are damn good musicians, and sometimes that's enough. Good art doesn't need a sob story.
OliveTapenade
6d ago
I continue to be baffled that anybody takes these bots seriously, or sees Grok or xAI or their competitors as anything other than nonsense generators. A slight change to the flavour of the nonsense doesn't really change my opinion any. Perhaps it moves me in the direction of thinking that Musk is childish and temperamental, but I already thought that, so it doesn't make much difference.
Late to the party, but that is indeed the thing that frustrates me most. They hint, but when you ask them plain, explicit questions, their responses are usually some variant on 1) evasive non-answer, 2) accuse you of bad faith for asking the question in the first place, or 3) just vanish entirely.
I'm glad when people do give serious answers on provocative topics and I try to appreciate that, even when the answer itself is one that I find pretty unpleasant. But the ones who just refuse to actually say what they think? I think it's pretty cowardly, and probably indicative of an overall lack of intellectual or political seriousness.
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