[alienicecream]

A child may not be able to count, because they don't yet understand the concept, but may be able to reason at a more basic level, yes. But GPT has ingested most of the books in the world and the entire internet. So if it hasn't learned to count, or what counting is by now, what is going to change? A child can learn the concept, GPT cannot. It doesn't understand concepts at all, it only seems like it does because the output is so close to what beings that do understand concepts generate themselves, and it's mimicking that.

[travisjungroth]

There are adults who can't count as well as ChatGPT.

[alienicecream]

Ok, but how does that change the argument?

[travisjungroth]

Inability to count does not prove inability to reason.

[alienicecream]

It can't count because it doesn't know what counting is. Otherwise it would be able to count like a computer can. After ingesting all the literature in the world, why can't it count yet?

[travisjungroth]

It can, just not very well. Often the issue is people have it count letters and words but those aren’t the abstractions or deals with. It would be like if I told you to pick up the ball primarily reflecting 450nm light and called you colorblind if you couldn’t do it.

GPT is built on a computer. It is not a computer itself. I am made of cells, but I am not able to perform mitosis.

It’s also very capable of offloading counting tasks, since computers are so good at that. Just suggest it format things in code and evaluate it.

Here’s an example of it counting. I’m pretty confident it’s never seen this exact problem before.

How many fruits are in this list? banana, hammer, wrench, watermelon, screwdriver, pineapple, peach

There are 4 fruits in the list you provided: banana, watermelon, pineapple, and peach. The other items are tools, not fruits.

[alienicecream]

It's not counting, it's just outputting something that is likely to sound right. The reason it can't count is that it doesn't know that it should run a counting algorithm when you ask it to count, or what a counting algorithm is. There is no reason why an AI should not be able to run an algorithm. Coming up with appropriate algorithms and running them is one definition of AIs. This is not an AI. It is an algorithm itself but it cannot create or run algorithms, though it can output things that look like them. The "algorithms" it outputs are not even wrong, correctness and truth is orthogonal to it's output and without that you don't have real intelligence.