{"id":7134,"date":"2023-03-17T10:30:27","date_gmt":"2023-03-17T15:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=7134"},"modified":"2023-03-22T07:57:57","modified_gmt":"2023-03-22T12:57:57","slug":"on-overexcitable-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=7134","title":{"rendered":"On overexcitable children"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Update (March 21): <\/mark><\/strong>After ChatGPT got “only” a D on economist Bryan Caplan’s midterm exam, Bryan bet against any AI getting A’s on his exams before 2029. A mere three months later, GPT-4 has earned an A on the same exam (having been trained on data that ended before the exam was made public). Though not yet conceding the bet on a technicality, Bryan has publicly admitted that he was wrong<\/a>, breaking a string of dozens of successful predictions on his part. As Bryan admirably writes: “when the answers change, I change my mind.” Or as he put it on Twitter<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

AI enthusiasts have cried wolf for decades. GPT-4 is the wolf. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And now for my own prediction: this<\/em> is how the adoption of post-GPT AI is going to go, one user at a time having the “holy shit” reaction about an AI’s performance on a task that they personally designed and care about—leaving, in the end, only a tiny core of hardened ideologues to explain to the rest of us why it’s all just a parrot trick and none of it counts or matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another Update (March 22):<\/mark><\/strong> Here\u2019s Bill Gates<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

In September, when I met with [OpenAI] again, I watched in awe as they asked GPT, their AI model, 60 multiple-choice questions from the AP Bio exam\u2014and it got 59 of them right. Then it wrote outstanding answers to six open-ended questions from the exam. We had an outside expert score the test, and GPT got a 5\u2014the highest possible score, and the equivalent to\u00a0getting an A or A+<\/a>\u00a0in a college-level biology course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once it had aced the test, we asked it a non-scientific question: \u201cWhat do you say to a father with a sick child?\u201d It wrote a thoughtful answer that was probably better than most of us in the room would have given. The whole experience was stunning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew I had just seen the most important advance in technology since the graphical user interface.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Just another rube who\u2019s been duped by Clever Hans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Wilbur and Orville are circumnavigating the Ohio cornfield in their Flyer. Children from the nearby farms have run over to watch, point, and gawk. But their parents know better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An amusing toy, nothing more. Any talk of these small, brittle, crash-prone devices ferrying passengers across continents is obvious moonshine. One doesn\u2019t know whether to laugh or cry that anyone could be so gullible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or if they were<\/em> useful, then mostly for espionage and dropping bombs. They\u2019re a negative contribution to the world, made by autistic nerds heedless of the dangers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, one shouldn\u2019t even say that the toy flies: only that it seems-to-fly, or \u201cflies.\u201d The toy hasn\u2019t even scratched the true mystery of how the birds do it, so much more gracefully and with less energy. It sidesteps the mystery. It\u2019s a scientific dead-end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wilbur and Orville haven\u2019t even released the details of the toy, for reasons of supposed \u201ccommercial secrecy.\u201d Until they do, how could one possibly know what to make of it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wilbur and Orville are greedy, seeking only profit and acclaim. If these toys were<\/em> to be created \u2014 and no one particularly asked for them! \u2014 then all of society should have had a stake in the endeavor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only the rich will have access to the toy. It will worsen inequality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hot-air balloons have existed for more than a century. Even if we restrict to heavier-than-air machines, Langley, Whitehead, and others built perfectly serviceable ones years ago. Or if they didn\u2019t, they clearly could have. There\u2019s nothing genuinely new here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, the reasons for doubt are many, varied, and subtle. But the bottom line is that, if the children only understood what their parents did, they wouldn\u2019t be running out to the cornfield to gawk like idiots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Update (March 21): After ChatGPT got “only” a D on economist Bryan Caplan’s midterm exam, Bryan bet against any AI getting A’s on his exams before 2029. A mere three months later, GPT-4 has earned an A on the same exam (having been trained on data that ended before the exam was made public). Though […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nerd-interest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7134"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7142,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7134\/revisions\/7142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}