Those Who Regurgitate Thoughts Are More Akin To Chatbots Than Noble Thinkers
What is thinking? Using a brain to produce motion (e-motion, electric potential, jumping in the air…). That means cockroaches are thinking. Yes, they are. Cockroaches think, thus they are, as Descartes pointed out. Once a cockroach thought he had tamed me, so it wouldn’t flee when I appeared (that was revealed as a mistake in the fullness of time)..
Some “thinkers” believe that the quality of knowledge coming from Artificial Intelligence “Chatbots” is fundamentally flawed. Ironically, they exhibit what they pretend to censor. “ChatGPT and its brethren are constitutionally unable to balance creativity with constraint. They either overgenerate (producing both truths and falsehoods, endorsing ethical and unethical decisions alike) or undergenerate (exhibiting noncommitment to any decisions and indifference to consequences). Given the amorality, faux science and linguistic incompetence of these systems, we can only laugh or cry at their popularity.” (Noam Chomsky: The False Promise of ChatGPT, New York Times,March 8, 2023.) [1]
Chomsky then gives an example which is beyond strange. I quote it in full, and in context in the appendix [2]. Fundamentally Chomsky confuses knowledge and the most advanced creative thinking.
To claim, as Chomsky does, that: “ “The apple would not have fallen but for the force of gravity.” That is thinking.” is a very strange assertion. The notion of force pertaining to motion (force as the time derivative of momentum) was discerned only around 1350 CE by Buridan in Paris. Previously, Aristotle did not have the notion of momentum, or the correct notion of force. Let alone the modern notion of gravity.
Gravity was described as an inverse square of the distance, proportional to mass, by Bullialdus (Ismaël Boulliau) also in Paris in 1645 CE. Does that mean that people could not “think” about falling apples before 1645?
The authors claim that: “The apple falls.” That is a description. A prediction might have been the statement “The apple will fall if I open my hand.” Both are valuable, and both can be correct. But an explanation is something more: It includes not only descriptions and predictions but also counterfactual conjectures like “Any such object would fall,” plus the additional clause “because of the force of gravity” or “because of the curvature of space-time” or whatever. That is a causal explanation.”
Do they view “whatever” as an “explanation”?
Sorry but that opinion describes science as only a fraction of science. Kepler’s laws are highly non obvious (equal areas swept in equal times, planets follow ellipses with sun as focus, and a non linear relation between period and radius). However, they are just descriptions, curve fitting of what is observed: science starts with observation.
A baby observes, 24/7. Even when the baby dreams, the baby observes (inside the baby’s brain). Then the baby tries to re-create….
Tellingly enough, Chomsky quotes a minor author, Conan Doyle as the creator of the thought: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” So doing Chomsky exhibits QUOTATION MISATTRIBUTION, a basic problem with Chatbots (which steal content right and left, up and down on the Internet…) The thought is actually an idea written down, and widely advertised by Émilie de Breteuil Marquise du Châtelet… a major philosopher and physicist who discovered the concept of energy in the 1730s (Newton had confused momentum and energy; Émilie, arguably more important than say Einstein or Maxwell, or roughly any other physicist is not well known, on account of her gender… which caused her demise…).
AI Machines are like most people: they regurgitate what they picked up in a subset of the information space. As AI steals bits and pieces of data all over, that will include pieces of logic, whether flawed or not flawed.
The banality of evil: plagiarism and apathy and obviation is something attached to culture, and will vary as cultures vary. For example, to ask for someone’s race is viewed as moral in the USA, whereas in most societies the notion of race is itself viewed as racist, and asking for someone’s race even more so (and is historically tied to genocide). So a US trained AI will automatically be racist… If it sticks to US convention. However if the AI reads somewhere a critique of the notion of race, it may hit on a moral ground higher than US convention…
The meta message Chomsky always gives is the same: only he knows how to speak, or even what is language. Better: only he and his ilk from MIT and other top universities can think. The loud message is: you don’t know, but me, and thus, implicitly, my plutocratic sponsors from the establishment, know how to think.
The saddest part is that regurgitator Chomsky has achieved cult status among many progressives. And what of the Chatbots? They just lift stuff from the Internet and regurgitate. They are extremely advanced dictionaries… right now full of errors but potentially they may enlighten by helping listeners to get out of their information boxes.
But chatbots can be more. Can chabots be innovative? Yes, by gluing together with fantastic logical connections disparate pieces of information. I am actually afraid that a Chatbot will (pretend to) fall on my Dark Matter theory…. And claim authorship…
Patrice Ayme
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[1] Chomsky, a MIT prof, is famous for the universal grammar (UG): a 50 year old theory in linguistics that claims that the ability to learn grammar is built into the human brain from birth regardless of language. In the 1960s, linguists became interested in a new theory about grammar, or the laws of language. UG is obviously completely false, as some languages have no grammar (Mandarin Chinese). Petit Negre.. French spoken long ago by African without French grammar whatsoever, but sill perfectly understandable, I speak it myself, ha ha ha…. When one speaks or has studied a dozen languages or more, as yours truly, one knows there is no universal grammar: grammars can be very different in languages which have lots of words in common… And this is why machine translation is still often imperfect, eighty years after its beginning… Chomsky is an error. Can Chatbots quote me, please?
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[2] Here is Chomsky in full about his crazy apple example: “Indeed, such programs are stuck in a prehuman or nonhuman phase of cognitive evolution. Their deepest flaw is the absence of the most critical capacity of any intelligence: to say not only what is the case, what was the case and what will be the case — that’s description and prediction — but also what is not the case and what could and could not be the case. Those are the ingredients of explanation, the mark of true intelligence.
Here’s an example. Suppose you are holding an apple in your hand. Now you let the apple go. You observe the result and say, “The apple falls.” That is a description. A prediction might have been the statement “The apple will fall if I open my hand.” Both are valuable, and both can be correct. But an explanation is something more: It includes not only descriptions and predictions but also counterfactual conjectures like “Any such object would fall,” plus the additional clause “because of the force of gravity” or “because of the curvature of space-time” or whatever. That is a causal explanation: “The apple would not have fallen but for the force of gravity.” That is thinking.”
Musk Bot… Early director of “Open AI” a “non profit” which then evolved into Chat GPT…
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 