Recently I read a blogpost:
ChatGPT lies about Junk DNA. Well, some answers may be wrong, but it is really nonsense to
say:'ChatGPT lies'! One must have at least a basic understanding of
recent developments in the field of AI to have a well-founded opinion
about the matter. I consider the errors as undesirable side-effects of software that itself is nearly
indistinguishable from human intelligence.
Lying? The dictionary definition of lying is "to make a false statement with the intention to deceive". An AI computerprogram can make factual errors, but cannot have an
intention at all, let alone an intention to deceive. Nor can it
have the intention to spread misinformation [7]. Only humans can lie.
Computersoftware and dogs cannot lie.
Claiming otherwise is anthropomorphism. Of course lying and spreading misinformation is a bad thing. But in a
webinar about ChatGPT a scientist involved in AI language research said that
ChatGPT is not designed to produce truths. So, if it is not designed
to deliver the truth [3], it simply doesn't make sense to expect it produces
true statements all the time. It is absolutely wrong to conclude that ChatGPT is a worthless piece of software.
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picture generated by: 'This person does not exist'.
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The errors ChatGPT makes can be compared with the above image generated by AI
software. This AI software generates beautiful images 99% of the time. It is
not worthless because of an occasional error. To err is human! Another
website shows perfect human faces also generated by AI (https://loremfaces.com/) with even less errors.
ChatGPT is a milestone in the AI field of artificial language processing
and production.
It can read and interpret human questions and it can produce
grammatically correct sentences which are real answers, not just any
text with the words from the question included. And that's no small
feat! Language, the ability to produce grammatically correct sentences,
is considered a unique human capability. What ChatGPT does is a far
greater accomplishment than what search engines are able to do so far.
One can even claim that ChatGPT passes the
Turing test
(1). The Turing Test is a test of a machine's ability to have a natural language conversation and exhibit intelligent behaviour indistinguishable from a human. ChatGPT is precisely doing that. Truth is not part of the definition of
the Turing test. But intelligence is. Recently,
Scientific American published an article:
I Gave ChatGPT an IQ Test. Here’s What I Discovered. What did the author find?
The Verbal IQ of the ChatGPT was 155, superior to 99.9 percent of
the test takers!
Please note this is the same test used for humans! Read the article for the
details [2].
Another revolution in the AI field:
Artificial intelligence powers protein-folding predictions
(Nature). Deep-learning algorithms such as AlphaFold2 and RoseTTAFold
can now predict a protein’s 3D shape from its linear sequence — a huge boon
to structural biologists. "Zhang considers AlphaFold2 to be a striking
demonstration of the power of deep learning."
So, dismissing ChatGPT because it makes errors and fabricates data is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Itself a human error.
Just read the Wikipedia
List of scientific misconduct incidents
where you learn about 75 scientists (!) that have falsified or
fabricated data (intentionally) [4],[6]. Investigations suggest that, in some fields, at least one-quarter of clinical trials might be problematic or even entirely made up [5]. Do we reject science as a whole because
some scientists fabricate data? Pay as much attention to scientific integrity as to ChatGPT. Fortunately, ChatGPT is not allowed to
publish in scientific journals. If you don't like ChatGPT, don't use
it.
Stephen Wolfram very positive about ChatGPT
9-10 April 2023
"I think, is that language is at a fundamental level somehow simpler than
it seems. ... The basic concept of ChatGPT is at some
level rather simple. Start from a huge sample of human-created text from
the web, books, etc. Then train a neural net to generate text that’s “like
this”. And in particular, make it able to start from a “prompt” and then
continue with text that’s “like what it’s been trained with”. ...
But the remarkable—and unexpected—thing is that this process can
produce text that’s successfully “like” what’s out there on the web, in
books, etc. ...
What does it take to produce “meaningful human language”? In the past, we
might have assumed it could be nothing short of a human brain. But now we
know it can be done quite respectably by the neural net of ChatGPT.
...
I think we have to view this as a—potentially surprising—scientific discovery: that somehow in a neural net like ChatGPT’s it’s possible to capture
the essence of what human brains manage to do in generating
language. ...
But it’s amazing how human-like the results are.... this suggests
something that’s at least scientifically very important: that human
language (and the patterns of thinking behind it) are somehow simpler and
more “law like” in their structure than we thought. ChatGPT has implicitly
discovered it. ...
What ChatGPT does in generating text is very impressive."
From: Stephen Wolfram (2023)
What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work?
February 14, 2023 (this is an in depth analysis of ChatGPT).
Wolfram doesn't discuss the fact that ChatGPT also produces grammatically
correct false statements ('hallucinations'). But I think it follows easily
from his analysis. So, ChatGPT has the same difficulty in distinguishing
true and false statements as humans.
(Thank you Bert Morrien for pointing out Wolfram's article.)
Further Reading
- Hong Yang (2023)
How I use ChatGPT responsibly in my teaching, Nature 12 April 2023 Quote: "... because current technology makes
it difficult to detect work written by the model." ('model' is ChatGPT).
That means it passed the Turing Test.
- Gary Marcus (2023) AI Platforms like ChatGPT Are Easy to Use but Also Potentially Dangerous, Scientific American December 19, 2022
- Large language model, is a very useful Wikipedia article which contains a List of large language models (ChatGPT is one of them). Particularly interesting are: Emergent abilities of LLMs. [added 20 April 2023]
- How generative AI is building better antibodies, Nature, 4 May 2023. Language models similar to those behind ChatGPT have been used to improve antibody therapies against COVID-19, Ebola and other viruses. . [added 11 May 2023]
- Elsevier’s chatbot, called Scopus AI: users ask natural-language questions; in response, the bot uses a version of the LLM GPT-3.5 to return a fluent summary paragraph about a research topic, together with cited references. However, they can make up non-existent references. Scopus AI is therefore constrained: it has been prompted to generate its answer only by reference to five or ten research abstracts. (Nature) [added 10 Aug 2023]
Notes
-
It was designed by
Alan Turing
in 1950 (1)
Turing was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical
biologist.
-
Read for background information the Wikipedia articles:
Superintelligence,
ChatGPT
(includes reception, limitations) and
Turing Test. Read also the blog
Introducing ChatGPT
from the developers of ChatGPT section Limitations: "ChatGPT sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical
answers. Fixing this issue is challenging, as: (1) during RL training,
there’s currently no source of truth". Precisely! If the author of the blog "ChatGPT lies..." could point out
where 'the source of truth' can be found, the problem of false statements
is solved for once and for all. [10 Apr 2023]
- Gary Marcus (2023) AI Platforms like ChatGPT Are Easy to Use but Also Potentially Dangerous, Scientific American December 19, 2022: "In technical terms, they are models of sequences of words (that is, how people use language), not models of how the world works. They are often correct because language often mirrors the world, but at
the same time these systems do not actually reason about the world and
how it works"
- The latest fraud: University investigation found prominent spider biologist fabricated, falsified data, Science 11 May 2023.
- Medicine is plagued by untrustworthy clinical trials. How many studies are faked or flawed? Nature 18 Jul 2023
- ‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction imminent for controversial physicist: Nature, 25 Jul 2023. Ranga Dias will have a second paper revoked. A journal’s investigation found apparent data fabrication.
- Nature about ChatGPT: Role play with large language models, 8 Nov 2023. "it makes little sense to speak of an agent’s beliefs or intentions in a
literal sense. So it cannot assert a falsehood in good faith, nor can
it deliberately deceive the user. Neither of these concepts is directly
applicable." 16 Nov 2023
