[golol]

>but they were fundamentally capable of the same things.

This is not the case. The difference between current state of the art NLP and chatbots 3 years ago is so massive, it has to be seen as qualitative. Pre GPT-3 computers did not understand language and no commerical chatbot had any AI. Now computers can understand language.

[riku_iki]

> Now computers can understand language.

"understand"

[int_19h]

If I tell it to do X, and it does X, for all practical purposes it means that it understood what I said.

[riku_iki]

it was taught to react in specific way on specific word, the same thing you can train dog to bark on "quantum physics" phrase.

[int_19h]

It can invent words, and then correctly use them to compose.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35268950

[riku_iki]

it can invent words, because gpt is amazing pattern extrapolator.

[int_19h]

Okay, but who "taught it to bark" correctly in response to those words?

[pixl97]

Well if it can bark out the right answer its an impressive damned dog...

[riku_iki]

the thing it doesn't bark right answer very often, but bark non-sense because was training on predicting next word in sentence.

[dan_mctree]

At this point ChatGPT is blowing our human ability to use language so far out of the water on so many levels, I'd argue we should start putting quotes around our human ability to "understand" language. GPT-4 has already eclipsed us when it comes to language