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https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-chatbots-emily-m-bender.html>
"Nobody likes an I-told-you-so. But before Microsoft’s Bing started cranking
out creepy love letters; before Meta’s Galactica spewed racist rants; before
ChatGPT began writing such perfectly decent college essays that some professors
said, “Screw it, I’ll just stop grading”; and before tech reporters sprinted to
claw back claims that AI was the future of search, maybe the future of
everything else, too, Emily M. Bender co-wrote the octopus paper.
Bender is a computational linguist at the University of Washington. She
published the paper in 2020 with fellow computational linguist Alexander
Koller. The goal was to illustrate what large language models, or LLMs — the
technology behind chatbots like ChatGPT — can and cannot do. The setup is this:
Say that A and B, both fluent speakers of English, are independently stranded
on two uninhabited islands. They soon discover that previous visitors to these
islands have left behind telegraphs and that they can communicate with each
other via an underwater cable. A and B start happily typing messages to each
other.
Meanwhile, O, a hyperintelligent deep-sea octopus who is unable to visit or
observe the two islands, discovers a way to tap into the underwater cable and
listen in on A and B’s conversations. O knows nothing about English initially
but is very good at detecting statistical patterns. Over time, O learns to
predict with great accuracy how B will respond to each of A’s utterances.
Soon, the octopus enters the conversation and starts impersonating B and
replying to A. This ruse works for a while, and A believes that O communicates
as both she and B do — with meaning and intent. Then one day A calls out: “I’m
being attacked by an angry bear. Help me figure out how to defend myself. I’ve
got some sticks.” The octopus, impersonating B, fails to help. How could it
succeed? The octopus has no referents, no idea what bears or sticks are. No way
to give relevant instructions, like to go grab some coconuts and rope and build
a catapult. A is in trouble and feels duped. The octopus is exposed as a
fraud."
Via Christoph S, who wrote "This is a very great article!"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
