This is the equivalent of someone Googling something back in 2000 and saying "wow this is just a joke because I searched for 'cat' and got a few dog pics. It'll never be useful".
I've had ChatGPT debug my router config, teach me esoteric C++ libraries with examples, set up config files for various things (e.g. CMake, Kubernetes) and be able to explain to me what it's doing when I ask it, and even help me learn a foreign language (hint: "I want to have a conversation in $LANGUAGE that I'm learning, so please respond to my queries using very simple words and phrases in $LANGUAGE", and yes, it'll do it).
Sure, you can have all kinds of "fun" asking it "are you a robot herp derp", but it does incredibly useful things right now.
No, it isn’t like that at all. People are claiming that ChatGPT is either intelligent or proto-intelligent (we’re on the precipice!). Which means being way, way more capable than a search engine.
I've been using it to explain minified code I come across and unusual code patterns I don't understand. It's similar to a coworker in that it's not always right but can generally point me in the right direction if not. But one that responds within seconds and not with a random delay of 5 minutes to 3 days. It also means that I'm interrupting my real coworkers less.
I used to be the "C++ wizard" who everyone in my team would bug when they'd come across some weird behavior, but now I just say "ask ChatGPT about $footgun in C++". It actually explains it super well!
But when an interview with the creator Joseph Weizenbaum is shown starting at 01hr:22min, he never says that. He relates how his secretary took to it, and even though she knew it was a primitive computer program, she wanted some privacy while she used it. Weizenbaum was puzzled by that, but then the secretary (or possibly another woman) says Eliza doesn't judge me and it doesn't try to have sex with me.
What jumped out at me was that Weizenbaum's secretary was using Eliza as a thinking tool to clarify her thoughts. Most high school graduates in America don't learn critical thinking skills as far as I can tell. Eliza is a useful tool because it encourages critical thinking and second order thinking by asking questions and reflecting back answers and asking questions in another way. The secretary didn't want to use Eliza because she was a narcissist, she wanted to talk through some sensitive issues with what she knew was a dumb program so she could try and resolve them.
That's how I feel about ChatGPT so far. It's a great thinking tool. Someone to bounce ideas around with. Of course, I know it's a dumb computer program and it makes mistakes, but it's still a cool new tool to have in the toolbox.
HyperNormalisation by Adam Curtis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS_c2qqA-6Y
Eliza
If you haven't already seen this post, it echoes a lot of what you're describing: https://every.to/chain-of-thought/gpt-3-is-the-best-journal-...
This is especially true because I'm a senior citizen and have noticed a decline in my memory.
Thinking you can classify whole groups of people as if they were insects is a horrible mental handicap.
I've watched just about everything he's made and honestly, he starts to sound like a moralizing preacher after awhile. We are selfish, self-centered, infantile, wanting computers to watch over us so we our worst impulses don't destroy us and so on. Things a preacher might say.
But his documentaries prompt me to think in different ways with other ideas, so I appreciate them for that
It's hard to perceive clearly what you're looking at when a new thing comes along precisely because it's new. I think GPT3 fits that.
It's Netscape. A messy buggy rapidly evolving piece of software that's opening up new ideas faster than it itself is iterating.
Anyway, what else you gonna work on? Yet another lightweight typescript framework for making web apps? Heh.
I particularly dislike the endorsement of Gary Marcus as an authority on ML/AI when he has only spread skepticism and FUD.
The word "just" is doing a lot of lifting here, however
* we regurgitate bullshit we heard
* we aren’t very smart
* we are a threat to democracy by spreading misinformation
It’s kind of true too. All of us take what we’ve learned (our input) and synthesize new things from it (our output). That’s autocomplete
