117
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by Drummyralf@lemmy.world to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

I have many conversations with people about Large Language Models like ChatGPT and Copilot. The idea that "it makes convincing sentences, but it doesn't know what it's talking about" is a difficult concept to convey or wrap your head around. Because the sentences are so convincing.

Any good examples on how to explain this in simple terms?

Edit:some good answers already! I find especially that the emotional barrier is difficult to break. If an AI says something malicious, our brain immediatly jumps to "it has intent". How can we explain this away?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] kromem@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

So there's two different things to what you are asking.

(1) They don't know what (i.e. semantically) they are talking about.

This is probably not the case, and there's very good evidence over the past year in research papers and replicated projects that transformer models do pick up world models from the training data such that they are aware and integrating things at a more conceptual level.

For example, even a small toy GPT model trained only on chess moves builds an internal structure of the whole board and tracks "my pieces" and "opponent pieces."

(2) Why do they say dumb shit that's clearly wrong and don't know.

They aren't knowledge memorizers. They are very advanced pattern extenders.

Where the answer to a question is part of the pattern they can successfully extend, they get the answer correct. But if it isn't, they confabulate an answer in a similar way to stroke patients who don't know that they don't know the answer to something and make it up as they go along. Similar to stroke patients, you can even detect when this is happening with a similar approach (ask 10x and see how consistent the answer is or if it changes each time).

They aren't memorizing the information like a database. They are building ways to extend input into output in ways that match as much information as they can be fed. In this, they are beyond exceptional. But they've been kind of shoehorned into the initial tech demo usecase of "knowledgeable chatbot" which is a less than ideal use. The fact they were even good at information recall was a surprise to most researchers.

[-] Drummyralf@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

Thanks for your thorough answer.

I'll see if I can find that article/paper about the chess moves. That sounds interesting!

Could it be that we ascribe an LLM with conceptual knowledge while in fact it is by chance? We as humans are masters at seeing patterns that aren't there. But then again, like another commenter said, maybe the question is more about conscience itself, and what that actually means. What it means to "understand" something.

[-] kromem@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

So the paper that found that particular bit in Othello was this one: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.07582

Which was building off this earlier paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.13382

And then this was the work replicating it in Chess: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yzGDwpRBx6TEcdeA5/a-chess-gpt-linear-emergent-world-representation

It's not by chance - there's literally interventions where flipping a weight or vector results in the opposite behavior (like acting like a piece is in a different place, or playing well he badly no matter the previous moves).

But it's more that it seems unlikely that there's any actual 'feeling' or 'conscious' sentience/consciousness to understand beyond the model knowing what the abstracted pattern means in relation to the inputs and outputs. It probably is simulating some form of ego and self, but not actively experiencing it if it makes sense.

this post was submitted on 15 May 2024
117 points (100.0% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35655 readers
870 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS