12/03/2023
Swing and Miss?
See… https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/caricaturing-noam-chomsky?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=888615&post_id=107846385&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
Noam Chomsky the well known American public intellectual, linguist, philosopher, and cognitive scientist, co-wrote a New York Times op-ed earlier this past week. It was an article that criticized the recent developments in Generative AI iLarge Language Models (like ChatGPT) as an sufficient tool to take us to a goal of a fully effective and trustworthy means to achieve Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Many agree, many don’t. Some quite vociferously.
I posted on it earlier here … https://lnkd.in/ezZA42Gw. And here… https://www.linkedin.com/posts/martin-ciupa-76418b17_noam-chomsky-says-ai-is-far-from-true-activity-7039943765477740544-VMeW?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios
It is clear that while many people hold him generally in great respect, many others do not. But as Gary Marcus article below outlined some folk’s criticism is a “swing and miss”, meaning to say unfounded in deeper analysis.
Personally I think he has a point. Generative AI LLMs are, IMO, a fascinating technological achievement. And despite well publicized errors and a tendency for strange confabulations/hallucination-like responses. Are likely to improve IMO and be proven useful in some use-cases. But they aren’t going to be all that is needed to build really useful AGI tools in themselves. They rather might be a component in a extended architecture.
The Israeli-American psychologist and Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman has outlined two systems that in the mind, System 1 and System 2. I think this notion will have a role to play in stuck an architecture:
1/ System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary conscious control. It is a kind of zintuitive process driven by learned experience/data. This is perhaps appropriate for Generative AI LLMs.
System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including rational dianoetic awareness and reflection . The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.
Such System 2 processes are required to be developed and integrated with System 1 approach.
See… https://fs.blog/daniel-kahneman-the-two-systems/
There’s a long journey still to go. I think Chomsky has offered a necessary input to underline this. His input is valuable and should be factored. The criticism from some IMO miss these points.
Four attacks on Chomsky’s recent op-ed, and why their punches don’t quite land
