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by srslack 1134 days ago
Wow, this is refreshing. To your point - the underpinning technology (regression based function approximation) holds more importance than general and adaptable intelligence. It holds more importance than something that is going to, or is capable of, "escaping the box and killing us all."

"Emergent behavior", when it's not just a mirage or poor word choice of wishful researchers (that it does things previous models did not do, iirc, very poor word choice - https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.15004) and if it even could exist, is only a side effect of the regression based function approximation to generate a structure that encapsulates all substantive chains of words in this case (a model).

I understand, to an extent, why people have lost their minds around this topic. Anthropomorphism is one hell of a drug for humans. But we're getting a bit too detached from fundamentals when we're arguing for regulation and restriction of this important technology.

The result is a model. A specialized intelligence. A non-adaptable intelligence, outside of its corpus. Outside of the data that it "fits." An approximated function, a human language calculator. It can't translate whale song, or an extraterrestrial language, though it may opine on how to do so.

To say nothing of other applications of the underpinning technology, as well.

It's exciting that it exists, but disappointing for potential restrictions of the underlying because of the tendency to anthropomorphize.