Connectionists: LLMs and Chomsky again

[David B]

I wished I was as underpowered as Terry.

 I wonder what would happen if you challenged the application with
creativity as someone suggested.  Ask the question:      please complete
the following sentences:   The greening of my cantaloupe under my spoon
means I am...  (done)
                     it's hot. Can I shoe fall ...    (outside)
                     Mallet heads do poor in ...   (school)
                     A fat sodium moon makes ...   (tides rise)

Regards,
David

On Mon, Mar 13, 2023 at 4:25 AM first last <travelsummer2006 at yahoo.com>
wrote:

> I have just joined the connectionist mailing list after some 10 years or
> so (1), because I realized some people here will push the LLM agenda even
> among people who are knowledgeable about neural networks, or should be.
>
> Here is an example:
>
> His apple example sounded convincing, so I tested GPT on it:
> >
> > Me:  If I hold an apple in my hand and let it go what will happen?
> >
> > GPT:  The apple will fall to the ground due to the force of gravity.
> >
> > Me: What about any such object?
> >
> > GPT: Any object released from a person's hand will fall to the ground due to the
> > force of gravity.
> >
> > Me:  What would happen if there wasn't a force of gravity?
> >
> > GPT:  If there were no force of gravity, objects would not be able to stay on
> > the ground and would float away in all directions
> >
> > Chomsky defined thinking by the correct answers to these questions.
>
> Of course the person who posted this seems slightly
> underpowered intellectually.  (The apple would not fall. How would it get
> to the ground? It needs to be on the ground before it is unable to stay
> there. The system did not follow the conversation, it just popped out a
> new stored item.) I am a former linguist myself. Now a 92 year old man
> understands this better than most others buying into the hype.
>
> It is a fact that we have a system which scraped lots of text from all
> kinds of sources and now reproduces it. This is a text generating (text
> glueing) system, but certainly not a language model of any kind. And I
> would predict it is useless.
>
> I put together a few loose remarks in support of Chomsky, naming real
> issues, on researchgate (2). In general, it seems very clear to me that one
> way to build better AI is to use real neuron based models (3). Other
> approaches may deviate from the brain-based model altogether. LLMs are a
> dead-end, but they were expensive and they will be deployed regardless. I
> can imagine only few legitimate uses for them.
>
>  Gabriele Scheler
>
>
> -------------------------------
> (1) Some of you may know that I had to report Sejnowski to the FBI for
> repeatedly breaking into my house and drugging me. I ended up in hospital.
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365925517_NIPS_NeurIPS_and_Neuroscience_A_personal_historical_perspective Obviously
> he hasn't been convicted yet, I deplore that.
> Chomsky himself, personally, was ready to listen to me, when I told him
> about the military connections of TS and his crimes. Few from the AI
> community have.  And yes, ethics matter in science.
> (2)
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366567941_Topics_for_a_biological_language_model
> (3)
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361118319_Sketch_of_a_novel_approach_to_a_neural_model (This
> paper is getting read: )
> [image: Screenshot 2023-03-12 155903.png]
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Dr. Gabriele Scheler
> Carl Correns Foundation for Mathematical Biology
> 1030 Judson Dr
> Mountain View, Ca. 94040
>
> http://www.theoretical-biology.org
>
>
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