[HN Gopher] ChatGPT as a Calculator for Words
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ChatGPT as a Calculator for Words
Author : stevefink
Score : 67 points
Date : 2023-04-02 16:29 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (simonwillison.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (simonwillison.net)
| booleandilemma wrote:
| It makes me sad that the next time I enjoy a piece of writing,
| I'm going to have to wonder if it was "enhanced" or even written
| wholesale by ChatGPT. I don't feel the same with arithmetic at
| all.
| majormajor wrote:
| Is this a result of the machine-instead-of-human-
| reviewer/editor difference, or because of a sense that the
| writing is less a "pure" output of a singular author?
| mif wrote:
| I think the editorial capabilities of ChatGPT are fantastic, and
| the author provides a good list of examples. On top of that I
| would add that ChatGPT is really good as composing text. The
| meaning making is therefore still what we have to do.
| ftxbro wrote:
| As a long time LLM enjoyer I just want to mention
| https://generative.ink/posts/simulators/ as I think it's by far
| the most insightful take on the GPT LLMs even though it was from
| before ChatGPT. It's better than blurry jpeg and stochastic
| parrot etc.
| skybrian wrote:
| I think that article is misleading, because a simulator has
| rules. An LLM is better thought of as a storyteller, because at
| best it's going to follow whatever implicit rules there are
| very loosely and let you make rule changes of your own, more
| like Calvinball.
|
| Also, whatever loose rules it has are more literary than
| mathematical. Plot twists often work.
| tbalsam wrote:
| I find this to be a better explanation than "it's just
| regurgitating strings of text"
|
| No, it is clearly not, and that is a very easily testable
| hypothesis.
|
| Thank you for sharing.
| skybrian wrote:
| Often it's a hint generator that tells you where to look and what
| you could try.
|
| The hints are not calculated from the input, they're from the
| training set.
| tbalsam wrote:
| I've seen this take a lot, and I find it frustrating as it flies
| in the face of the information theory underpinning how large
| neural networks learn information.
|
| This is more than just a fancy zip file of Markov sequences.
| Someone has got to put a stop to this silly line of reasoning,
| I'm not sure why more people familiar with the math of deep
| learning aren't doing their best to dispel this particular belief
| (which people will then use as the foundation for other
| arguments, and so on, and so on, and this is how misconceptions
| somehow become canon in the larger body of work).
| LelouBil wrote:
| Can you explain more ?
|
| I know the basics of deep learning and I found the article
| accurate.
| SomewhatLikely wrote:
| The author does a good job of pointing out what may be the
| strongest skills of LLMs but the claim they aren't useful as a
| search engine didn't ring particularly true. For many questions I
| have ChatGPT is the best tool to use because I know the topics
| I'm asking about are mentioned hundreds of times in the web, and
| the LLM can distill down at knowledge to the specifics I'm asking
| about. If you treat it as a friend who has a ton of esoteric
| knowledge in many areas but is prone to making stuff up to sound
| like they know what they're talking about you can still get lots
| of use pulling facts and some basic reasoning out of the models.
| skybrian wrote:
| I think it's best used in conjunction in with a search engine.
| For example, you can ask it to recommend a paper to read and
| then search for the paper.
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