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   James Gleick (gleick@mas.to)'s status on Sunday, 01-Sep-2024 07:37:45 JST James Gleick

   When he’s not busy being one of our best fiction writers, Ted Chiang has become our best critic of generative AI:

   “The programmer Simon Willison has described the training for large language models as ‘money laundering for copyrighted data,’ which I find a useful way to think about the appeal of generative-A.I. programs: they let you engage in something like plagiarism, but there’s no guilt associated with it because it’s not clear even to you that you’re copying.”

   https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/why-ai-isnt-going-to-make-art

   • Embed this notice
     LabSpokane (labspokane@mas.to)'s status on Sunday, 01-Sep-2024 16:37:41 JST LabSpokane

     in reply to

     @gleick “Emission” is the perfect description of a LLM’s output.

   • Embed this notice
     James Gleick (gleick@mas.to)'s status on Sunday, 01-Sep-2024 16:37:42 JST James Gleick

     in reply to

     “It is very easy to get ChatGPT to emit a series of words such as ‘I am happy to see you.’ There are many things we don’t understand about how large language models work, but one thing we can be sure of is that ChatGPT is not happy to see you. A dog can communicate that it is happy to see you, and so can a prelinguistic child, even though both lack the capability to use words. ChatGPT feels nothing and desires nothing, and this lack of intention is why ChatGPT is not actually using language.”

     Aral Balkan repeated this.