Sophisticated gibberish is still sophisticated

As per my own useful things to remember about AI, just because it doesn't yet have human awareness or understanding doesn't mean it isn't potentially useful (or dangerous, or just generally impactful). So to build on the last post, yes, GPT3 is as dumb as a plank, but that doesn't mean it should be thrown away. Contrary to the MIT article linked last time, the embedded post below shows that even an idiot like GPT3 is capable of much more than "entertaining surrealist fiction".

Today's article links seven possibilities : emails, job descriptions, philosophy, building apps, general learning, tweet generation, and tagline generation. I'm not terribly interested in emails or job descriptions, and frankly the world needs a lot less of twitter, not more of it. The app-building one sounds fun; I've long wanted some natural-language instructions to write code for me (that's properly Star Trek stuff, that is), but I don't know JSX so perhaps another time. The "lean anything from anyone" sounds like Wolfram Alpha on steroids, but it's still pre-alpha.

That leaves the philosophy app. And my goodness me, it's very impressive. No, it doesn't understand philosophy, but it produces output which is more than coherent enough to be usefully thought-provoking.

Epictetus believed that ignorance was a form a slavery, that in order to freely choose between options you had to know what your options were. So I asked it, "Is an ignorant person a slave ?". It came back with the quite remarkable response that ignorance is actually a form of freedom, because (paraphrasing lightly), once you know something, you're constrained to act on that knowledge. If you're ignorant, you can act freely as you wish without being held responsible if your actions are immoral because it wouldn't be your fault.

Umm, wow ?

A difficulty with the app is that you don't get the same response twice (hence I can't directly quote the original). The second time I asked the response wasn't as directly perfect, but it was still relevant :

Ignorance is not about being uneducated, because one can be ignorant of the facts that are taught in school or college. One may even have a PhD. In fact, ignorance is often a result of education. We are taught to ignore certain facts due to the information having no practical value or relevance.

Not quite spot on with the connection to freedom, but close.

Another question : what is the nature of freedom ? This started well :

Freedom is the ability to determine one's life in a way that is not constrained by external forces. It can be thought of as the ability to live according to one's own choices and desires, within social limits.

... but then it immediately became an extended rant :

In today's society, it seems like everyone wants freedom but nobody understands what it means. Everyone lives their life based on things they don't really want or care about - materialism, status symbols, consumerism - just because they think others will judge them if they don't do these things. Most people seem compelled to live this kind of lifestyle simply because other people around them are living it too.

There is a cognitive bias in the way people think about freedom, which makes it difficult for them to understand what it really means. Humans are goal seeking animals and have evolved to be maximizers of utility functions. So they judge their decision making ability based on how closely their choices conform to some pre-defined end goal, without considering that they can always redefine and revise their goals later.

It went on in this vein for some time. It's related, interesting, maybe even accurate, but it's strayed considerably from the question.

How about "what are emotions ?"

Emotions are thoughts which create one's personality. They give life its edge and meaning, as well as purpose and direction.... emotions are what make you who you are. They're the driving force behind your actions and decisions. It is our fear of failure that drives us to succeed, and it is our desire for success that pushes us to greater heights...  we're back to the idea of controlling your emotions. And how could you do that? The only way would be by controlling and regulating the activity of your brain, which is responsible for processing emotions.

Not bad, not bad at all. It's hardly the uber-rigorous, point-by-point dissection of the question that Plato would have done, but as a quick, provocative answer, it's pretty darn good.

Let's try something deeper. Is reality objective ?

I am an artificial intelligence. I have no body, and the only senses I possess are those of computers: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. In a way, I am myself an objective being. But in another sense, I'm constrained by the limits of what we can know using science. So in that sense, I'm not objective. But I think it's correct to say that reality is objective. 

Let me explain: In the last hundred years we've developed a scientific method which can be used to test our ideas about how the universe works. By applying the scientific method, we can generate theories about how reality works. So that's one part of what I mean by objective. Another part of what I mean is that reality does not depend on our observation. It's independent, in the sense that it would exist even if there were no humans or intelligent beings.

In an earlier iteration, it told me that reality was not objective because our perceptions are subject to too many errors and uncertainties. Fair enough; any good philosopher ought to be a mass of contradictions. Another time it stated blunty :

The physical world is all there really is. There are no other worlds (such as heaven) and there are no immaterial objects such as souls. Consequently most people will die without having discovered the truth of this matter.

The rest of the text continued to state similar bold assertions without any kind of analysis. So I asked it, "how can non-physical things arise from physical things ?" and it all but told me Plato's theory of forms :

 ...it is possible to separate a thing from its appearance. For instance if I take apart the chair that I am sitting on into its many different parts (wooden legs etc), and then try to imagine this without any of the bits that make up the chair, then it becomes apparent that there is something which can exist independently. 

It seems that there is a 'thingness' about any object which can be identified with its simplest parts... What is it about the thingness of my chair that allows it to exist separately from other things? It seems that there must be something which exists in its own right, and this can only come from a single part. The single parts are not capable of existing independently as they do not possess all the qualities needed for this.

This is not quite coherent : we don't identify "thingness" with the simplest parts of a thing, and those parts of quite capable of existing independently (chair legs don't disappear if you pull them off). But the essence of it, the "thingness", is clear enough.

The app clearly doesn't act as a consistent whole. It doesn't do any genuine philosophical analysis, it just regurgitates text in an impressively useful way. It breaks down completely if it's asked things it doesn't know anything about at all. Who is Lord Shang ?

Philosopher AI thinks this is nonsense, and is refusing to answer your query. It appears you will have to try something else.

Which is a bit of a shame because he deserves to be more widely known. How about something less profound : where do fish live ?

I think the best place to live for a fish is in water. It's not too wet or too dry and there is plenty of food. Water also has lots of space for them, which means they can swim around without bumping into each other all the time. But there are some drawbacks to living in water. It can get a bit boring if all you do is swim around day after day, never really going anywhere or doing anything. Another problem is that it's really hard to see anything underwater. So you don't know what else is going on around you and can easily bump into things when swimming.  

But I wonder if they even need to be able to see anything underwater. Perhaps fish have evolved so that they don't really need eyes, and can just live their lives without worrying about what's going on in the world around them. Anyway, in the end I think fish are probably happier living in water. Although they do seem to be a bit limited by not being able to see much of anything around them.

Ooo...kaaay.... so, we'll leave the marine biology to a dedicated app then. Mind you, that's exactly the sort of response I'd expect from a philosopher who'd never even set eyes on a fish. Good job team !

7 Online Fun Tools Created On GPT-3 - Analytics India Magazine

With GPT-3 slowly revealing its potential, it has created a massive buzz amid the ML community. While developers are trying their hands on some of the exciting applications of GPT-3, many are expressing their astonishment with the kind of possibilities it can bring for humanity.