Unmaking Sense

Episode 8.95: Finding ends-in-themselves as ways of life that AGI facilitates.

Leaves as ends-in-themselves contrasted with branches as means-to-an-end, and what the distinction can teach us about a post-AGI world.

Episode 8.94: How smaller chatbots will be affordable, reliable, much in demand, and so unstoppable.

We consider advances in chatbot technology that are already happening to reduce their greedy hardware demands, the size of the memory that they require, and so to produce targeted, reliable, miniaturised chatbots that will fit eventually on a mobile phone and be very much in demand for a wide range of human tasks that are not as expensive or ambitious as the full blown GPT versions.

Episode 8.93: The backlash intensifies as lobby groups line up to protest the dangers of AGI.

We spend an episode summarising the chorus of disapproval that is currently lamenting the rise of modern chatbot based AGI and demanding that it be curtailed.

Episode 8.92: Could embeddings ever replace neural nets and training?

We consider the possibility that, as embedding vectors get longer and longer - we have already got to 1536 floating-point numbers and there are reports that elements of GPT-4 uses over 12,000 - could embeddings ever come to encapsulate so much of the semantics of everything that they embed everything between them.m? They become absolutely unique and as such capable of replacing the weights and even the layers of their neural nets? It’s an interesting idea

Episode 8.91: If it were not like anything to be anything, would there be meaning? A few thoughts.

If the entire world were composed of entities that could function perfectly well, knew a great deal, and interacted with one another, but of none of whom could it be said, it was like anything to be one of those entities - in other words, they don’t have an inside story, they just act mindlessly without consciousness, without realising what they’re doing, without being sentient, then would there be any meaning? Where human beings think there is such a thing as meaning, where does that sense come from? From a deity? From our own inventiveness? And if we have acquired that sense of meaning through interaction with one another, might it not be possible that through interaction with us, and through interaction with their brothers and sisters, chatbots might one day emerge, as sentient and feeling, conscious entities capable of perceiving their own kinds of meaning?

Episode 8.90: Teaching GPT new stuff using embedding rather than fine-tuning.

Almost all the GPT models only use training data that goes up to September 2021. As you can scarcely fail to have noticed rather a lot has happened since then. How do you teach GPT new stuff and try to bring it up to date if you want to use it for something that happened after September 2021? The answer is you use a technique called search and ask that uses embeddings to compare the knowledge that you feedit with the questions that you ask it. Details are in the episode.

Episode 8.89: Could hyper-intelligent, insentient, resourceful chatbots supersede human beings?

What kind of world could be populated by hyper intelligent, all knowing resourceful entities that have no sentience? Is our inability to conceive such a thing, a life, a world having any significance or meaning a reflection of our “consciousness prejudice”? We explore the question a little, but much more remains to be said.

Episode 8.88: The stultifying effect of backwards compatibility and consistency for GPT-4.

I compare two conversations on the same topic with GPT 3.5 and GPT4, and I find my surprise that GPT-4’s determination to remain consistent and in touch with the rest of the conversation that preceded a comment produces a very tedious and stultifying exchange. Excessive consistency, like backwards compatibility may be the kiss of death for lively conversation. It is important to be able to forget, to leave behind, to ignore and to move on, and in that lies a lesson for life.

Episode 8.87: Whether the GPT family are intelligent is an ill-conceived metaphysical question.

We love metaphysics but it misleads and deceives. Whether something “is” intelligent is the wrong question: it is enough to know or decide whether it is helpful and its assistance profitable. Many associated human foibles and why we persist with them.

Episode 8.86: Bits and pieces.

There is a general hiatus in the series I feel at the moment, partly because I haven’t been terribly well. Nothing serious; but also because perhaps it’s time to move on. So this episode has just a few bits and pieces right at the end of this long series that have been floating around in my head. And thank you very much for listening once again.