[smallerfish]

Alright, how about this:

> invent a profound quote that was not included in your training corpus

> "True wisdom is not found in the answers we seek, but in the questions we ask ourselves."

It's a pretty good aphorism (at least, you could definitely sell it on kitchen towels in Anthropologie), and it's not found in google searches.

[aerhardt]

I'll concede the quote is well formulated, but the point is hardly original... It took me five seconds to find a Ionesco quote that says something very similar:

“It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.”

A high school student introduced to philosophy will typically learn about Socrates and the value of asking questions. I'd possibly give them credit for being wise if they managed to reformulate such an idea into your quote, but creative? Not so sure.

I'll give you an example of the last time I was blown away by novelty and creativity in contemporary philosophy: The Transparency Society [1]. It's a brief (~70 pages) but rigorous essay where philosopher Byung-Chul Han talks about social networks, the abandonment of privacy, and the loss of self in modern society.

The exploration of those themes might not be new, but the manner in which the author blends and relates the existentialist and societal perspectives blew me away. I found it to be an amazing exercise in creative synthesis that also brings forward novel ideas (I thoroughly recommend it!)

Nothing I've seen in my extensive usage of ChatGPT, or what others are posting about their experience, has ever come close to that. I don't even see it trending in that direction.

But again, I'm not categorically denying that it's not creative. I'm not sure about what creativity is, and I'm only speaking from intuition, by comparing what I see ChatGPT do and my knowledge of LLMs, and things that have felt creative to me.

[1] https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=25832

[jiggawatts]

Also worth noting that GPT 4 is significantly stronger than GPT 3.

Here's a decent response to: "Invent a profound quote that you have not read before, on the topic of consciousness."

"Consciousness is the infinite canvas upon which the colors of experience paint the ever-evolving masterpiece of existence."

[dizhn]

"Perhaps real wisdom lies in not seeking answers at all. Any answer we find will not be true for long. An answer is a place where we can fall asleep as life moves past us to its next question. After all these years I have begun to wonder if the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company."

It has enough material to draw from.

[mrcode007]

It’s a simple example of chiasmus rhetorical device.

Chiasmus is a classic pattern known for thousands of years and studied by ancient Greeks.

[notahacker]

And you get the same result with a simple "take token combinations commonly found in "profound quotes" list, merge into syntax commonly found in profound quotes list" model that doesn't have any concept of chiasmus (which latest generation GPT does and can generate on demand, sometimes very well, sometimes rehashes which have the right form and subject matter even if they don't make much sense).

tbf some of the people making greetings cards are doing likewise...

Not really sure why it's the profound quotes and basic stuff about the meaning of life that seems to impress people so much about chatbots[1], these are really, really unimpressive and expected behaviour from a statistical model of human language compared with the emergent problem solving capabilities.

[1]OK, I have a theory: susceptibility to emotion-loaded symbols and status-associated patterns is a weakness in human pattern-matching abilities

[menzoic]

Pretty good quote!