nblack88 t1_j14hu1f wrote on December 21, 2022 at 4:39 PM

Reply to comment by sephy009 in Do language models lack creativity? by sheerun

I agree with you that it lacks creativity. Mediocre and stupid are takes that could be improved on.

ChatGPT is good at the purpose for which it was designed by the developers: To assist users in learning new information in the format of a dialogue. It's the most advanced tool of its type, for the moment. While we could ultimately Google more thorough and comprehensive answers to our questions, ChatGPT takes about ~4 seconds to come up with a generic overview, and is performing extremely well for new software in beta that's analogous to a newborn baby.

I think your point--which is a good one--is that ChatGPT isn't the AI that other enthusiastic users and clickbait journalists are hyping it up to be. It's really just a better version of Siri, or Google Assistant, in some respects. The fact that it's performing as well as it is--despite its many flaws and limitations--is pretty amazing. In addition to the fact that it's breaking into more mainstream awareness, which is bringing more attention to AI as a whole.

Dealing with the hype and excessive exuberance surrounding this advance can get pretty old after a bit. I get that. I don't think it serves us to say that the advance is mediocre because we're dealing with many people's first exposure--and first real excitement--to an application of AI that they can understand and play with. As iterations continue, this might level out.

sephy009 t1_j158mej wrote on December 21, 2022 at 7:31 PM

>ChatGPT is good at the purpose for which it was designed by the developers: To assist users in learning new information in the format of a dialogue

Is that what it's for? If so it makes a lot more sense as to why it behaves in certain ways and has certain limitations. Though the amount of information it gets wrong is pretty staggering if you ask it a mildly specific question. I'd hate to see what would happen if people just listened to it for scientific or technological information without looking anywhere else.

>I think your point--which is a good one--is that ChatGPT isn't the AI that other enthusiastic users and clickbait journalists are hyping it up to be. It's really just a better version of Siri, or Google Assistant, in some respects

Yup. People ask it to make mediocre memes, bad stories, write code(badly), etc. Meanwhile if I wanted to ask the bot a slightly specific hypothetical question regarding space apparently I'm "being dense" and "not giving it a fair chance". Even if you just have a slightly niche computer question it doesn't understand and gives you a roundabout answer to say it doesn't know.

>In addition to the fact that it's breaking into more mainstream awareness, which is bringing more attention to AI as a whole.

"hurr AI art is taking over"

-AI can't draw hands being ignored by everyone. AI messing up on a tail and turning it into a cloth also ignored.

-Ignore how racist the AI is when rendering.

-ignore how the AI can't really do exact poses like you want them to. Try asking an AI to do that japanese love story thing where the guy puts his hand on the side of a girl's head. Good luck getting it to spit out a decent hand, a wall, and the characters you want them to look like. If you try for 12 hours with some editing magic you may be able to get something serviceable but not perfect for your needs.

They ignore that many of the AIs they're just hearing about because of media hype have been around for years and still have massive holes/aren't exactly easy to use by the general public.

>Dealing with the hype and excessive exuberance surrounding this advance can get pretty old after a bit. I get that. I don't think it serves us to say that the advance is mediocre because we're dealing with many people's first exposure--and first real excitement--to an application of AI that they can understand and play with. As iterations continue, this might level out.

I get the distinct feeling that this was written with chatgpt, hopefully I'm wrong and you just speak in a robotic fashion like me.

nblack88 t1_j15fqbo wrote on December 21, 2022 at 8:18 PM

I didn't use ChatGPT to write it, but the snark was fair! I hate to think of the day that all people who write proper English, if a touch formally, are robots! :P

All of your points are valid. This is the cyclical nature of the spread of new technologies. People ignore the shortcomings for the presentation. The excitement they hear from others--which in the Digital Age is unbound by geography or significant latency--shapes their perspectives, and so on.

This happens with every major shift. I remember 56k dialup internet was amazing when the average user got hold of it, but I grated at its flaws and limitations. I maintain my opinion that yes, these AI systems have issues, but the things they can do are worth the positive buzz. Also important to remember that the singularity subreddit has a major hopium bias for "AI will solve incredible problems for us tomorrow, life will be utopian and amazing!!!" So...the sample here definitely trends positive. Go over to Futurology and it's the opposite. The most upvoted comments are doom and gloom 24/7.

These implementations, as you said, are not ready for primetime, or to be used by the average person in their day to day activities. DALL-E, ChatGPT, et al. are just proofs-of-concept. My excitement outweighs my understanding of the flaws and limitations, because I'm looking iterations down the line. I've played with ChatGPT for a while now. It's really just a novelty for me. But version 5.0? Who knows?