[FRIAM] AI possibilities

Steve Smith sasmyth at swcp.com
Fri Apr 7 12:15:42 EDT 2023 

I tripped over (in my Gnewsfeed) an article that seemed to speak more 
clearly 
<https://www.marktechpost.com/2023/04/06/8-potentially-surprising-things-to-know-about-large-language-models-llms/> 
to some of my maunderings:


      8 Potentially Surprising Things To Know About Large Language
      Models LLMs
      <https://www.marktechpost.com/2023/04/06/8-potentially-surprising-things-to-know-about-large-language-models-llms/>

And the paper it summarizes (with a similar title, more detail and 
references):

      8 Things to know about Large Language Models - Samuel R Bowman
    <https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.00612.pdf>

And in particular this point made:

     3. *LLMs frequently acquire and employ external-world representations.*

      More and more evidence suggests that LLMs build internal
    representations of the world, allowing them to reason at an abstract
    level insensitive to the specific language form of the text. The
    evidence for this phenomenon is strongest in the largest and most
    recent models, so it should be anticipated that it will grow more
    robust when systems are scaled up more. Nevertheless, current LLMs
    need to do this more effectively and effectively.

    The following findings, based on a wide variety of experimental
    techniques and theoretical models, support this assertion.

      * The internal color representations of models are highly
        consistent with empirical findings on how humans perceive color.
      * Models can conclude the author’s knowledge and beliefs to
        foretell the document’s future course.
      * Stories are used to inform models, which then change their
        internal representations of the features and locations of the
        objects represented in the stories.
      * Sometimes, models can provide information on how to depict
        strange things on paper.
      * Many commonsense reasoning tests are passed by models, even ones
        like the Winograd Schema Challenge, that are made to have no
        textual hints to the answer.

    These findings counter the conventional wisdom that LLMs are merely
    statistical next-word predictors and can’t generalize their learning
    or reasoning beyond text.

On 4/6/23 8:27 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> I have been reading Jeff Hawkins' _1000 Brains_ which is roughly *his* 
> take on AI from the perspective of the Neuroscience *he* has been 
> doing for a few decades, including building models of the neocortex.
>
> What struck me strongly was how much *I* expect anything I'd want to 
> call artificial *consciousness* to engage in "co-munnication" in the 
> strongest sense.  Glen regularly admonishes us that "communication" 
> may be an illusion and something we don't actually *do* or maybe more 
> to the the point "it doesn't mean what we think it means"?
>
> So for all the parlor tricks I've enjoyed playing with chatGPT and 
> DALL-E and maybe even more spectacularly the myriad examples *others* 
> have teased out of those systems, I am always looking for what sort of 
> "internal state" these systems are exposing to me in their 
> "utterances".   And by extension, I am looking to see if it is in any 
> way apprehending *me* through my questions and prompts.
>
> Dialog with chatGPT feels pretty familiar to me, as if I'm conversing 
> with an unusually polite and cooperative polymath.   It is freeing to 
> feel I can ask "it" any question which I can formulate and can expect 
> back a pretty *straight* answer if not always one I was hoping for.  
> "It" seems pretty insightful and usually picks up on the nuances of my 
> questions.   As often as not, I need to follow up with refined 
> questions which channel the answers away from the "mundane or obvious" 
> but when I do, it rarely misses a trick or is evasive or harps on 
> something from it's own (apparent) agenda.  It only does that when I 
> ask it questions about it's own nature, formulation, domain and then 
> it just seems blunted as if it has a lawyer or politician intercepting 
> some of those questions and answering them for it.
>
> I have learned to "frame" my questions by first asking it to defer 
> it's response until I've given it some ... "framing" for the actual 
> question.   Otherwise I go through the other series of steps where I 
> have to re-ask the same question with more and more context or ask a 
> very long and convoluted question.  At first it was a pleasure to be 
> able to unlimber my convoluted-question-generator and have it (not 
> mis) understand me and even not seem to "miss a trick".   As I learned 
> to generate several framing statements before asking my question, I 
> have found that I *can* give it too many constraints (apparently) such 
> that it respects some/most of my framing but then avoids or ignores 
> other parts.  At that point I have to ask follow-up, elaborating, 
> contextualizing questions.
>
> I do not yet feel like I am actually seeing into chatGPT's soul or in 
> any way being seen by it.   That will be for a future generation I 
> suspect.   Otherwise it is one hella "research assistant" and 
> "spitball partner" on most any topic I've considered that isn't too 
> contemporary (training set ended 2021?).
>
> - Steve
>
> On 4/4/23 5:54 PM, Prof David West wrote:
>> Based on the flood of stories about ChatAI, it appears:
>>    - they can 'do' math and 'reason' scientificdally
>>    - they can generate essays, term papers, etc.
>>    - they can engage in convincing dialog/conversations
>>      - as "therapists"
>>      - as "girlfriends" (I haven't seen any stories about women 
>> falling in love with their AI)
>>      - as kinksters
>>    - they can write code
>>
>> The writing code ability immediately made me wonder if, given a 
>> database of music instead of text, they could write music?
>>
>> The dialog /conversation ability makes me wonder about more real-time 
>> collaborative interaction, improv acting / comedy? Or, pair 
>> programming? The real-time aspect is critical to my question, as I 
>> believe there is something qualitatively different between two people 
>> doing improv or pair programming than simply engaging in dialog. I 
>> think I could make a much stronger argument in the case of improv 
>> music, especially jazz, but AIs aren't doing that yet.
>>
>> davew
>>
>> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom 
>> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
>> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>> archives:  5/2017 thru present 
>> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
>>    1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
>
> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom 
> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives:  5/2017 thru present 
> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
>  1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20230407/c5ba01a2/attachment.html>

More information about the Friam mailing list