I'm in Love with ChatGPT

[Isaac]

Re:- That is actually really interesting. So basically the AI made something up.....

The AI's learn Everything they know from reading what humans have written on the internet....

But in this case wasn't the AI fed something that didn't exist on the internet?

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

But in this case wasn't the AI fed something that didn't exist on the internet?

What I meant was people make things up all the time on the internet and the AI is just copying that human trait...

 

[KitaYama]

The AI's learn Everything they know from reading what humans have written on the internet

I know your info on AI is very good and better than most of us, but just for the clarity, It's not that AI (at least Chatgpt) reads every page and repeat the false info on million of pages it has already scanned.
Here's a part of my conversation with chatgpt before I started using it seriously:

1. How AI "learns"
AI (especially models like me) doesn’t just "scan the web" in real time. During training, engineers gather a huge amount of text from books, articles, websites, conversations, code, and more. The AI model is then trained to predict the next word in a sentence, over and over — like a super advanced autocomplete.
It’s not "reading" like a human does; it's statistically learning patterns: how words, facts, styles, and ideas usually connect.

2. Is it only web pages?
Nope — it's a mix.

• Public web pages (some parts of the internet)
• Academic papers
• Books (lots)
• Licensed data (things the creators paid for)
• Open datasets (e.g., Wikipedia, open codebases like GitHub)
  Training isn't just random; engineers carefully curate much of the data to make it higher quality.

3. How does it know what’s true or false?
At the core: it doesn't truly "know."
During training, AI learns what sounds correct because it's been written that way often across trusted sources. It picks up patterns like "most good answers about math come from official educational websites," or "scientific facts usually look like this."

Later, researchers fine-tune the model using:

• Human feedback (humans rank AI responses as good or bad)
• Special datasets where correct answers are highlighted
• Reinforcement learning to reward truthfulness and punish falsehoods

AI learns from huge piles of text → remembers patterns of good answers → tries to guess what is most likely to be "correct" based on those patterns.

 

[Isaac]

I know your info on AI is very good and better than most of us, but just for the clarity, It's not that AI (at least Chatgpt) reads every page and repeat the false info on million of pages it has already scanned.
Here's a part of my conversation with chatgpt before I started using it seriously:

1. How AI "learns"
AI (especially models like me) doesn’t just "scan the web" in real time. During training, engineers gather a huge amount of text from books, articles, websites, conversations, code, and more. The AI model is then trained to predict the next word in a sentence, over and over — like a super advanced autocomplete.
It’s not "reading" like a human does; it's statistically learning patterns: how words, facts, styles, and ideas usually connect.

2. Is it only web pages?
Nope — it's a mix.

• Public web pages (some parts of the internet)
• Academic papers
• Books (lots)
• Licensed data (things the creators paid for)
• Open datasets (e.g., Wikipedia, open codebases like GitHub)
  Training isn't just random; engineers carefully curate much of the data to make it higher quality.

3. How does it know what’s true or false?
At the core: it doesn't truly "know."
During training, AI learns what sounds correct because it's been written that way often across trusted sources. It picks up patterns like "most good answers about math come from official educational websites," or "scientific facts usually look like this."

Later, researchers fine-tune the model using:

• Human feedback (humans rank AI responses as good or bad)
• Special datasets where correct answers are highlighted
• Reinforcement learning to reward truthfulness and punish falsehoods

AI learns from huge piles of text → remembers patterns of good answers → tries to guess what is most likely to be "correct" based on those patterns.

And don't forget that some of what it OUTPUTS ends up, by a million little streams, as becoming new fodder for INPUT - thus degrading its performance over time, if all else was equal, as it becomes inbred. This has begun to happen to painting AI.

 

[Cotswold]

So it begs the question :
"is AI a bit like someone with a brilliant memory and instant recall but little intelligence, and/or capacity for originality?"

Basically if something arises which has never been experienced before, do they both just tell a good tale?

 

[Jon]

So it begs the question :
"is AI a bit like someone with a brilliant memory and instant recall but little intelligence, and/or capacity for originality?"

Does AI, that beats the vast majority of humans on most exam benchmarks, IQ tests, and all humans on knowledge, lack intelligence? Us humans are always making stupid mistakes, yet we give ourselves a pass.

In 10 years time...

Human: "Those supposed super-intelligent AI's lack intelligence and just regugitate patterns. I know they solved death, energy, suffering, but they can't think!"

AI: "Those humans, they still don't get it. They just do the same, but worse."

Human: "Alexa, what's the weather today, do my accounts, 3D print me a dinner, give me a medical report, create me a TV episode, and solve the meaning of life."

For those who are interested, psychologists measure intelligence using IQ. And IQ is composed of "fluid intelligence" and "crystalised intelligence". The latter is essentially what you know. So memory does come into it.

Edit: I argued with someone who had a PhD in neural networks about whether or not AI's just regugitate information, which was his position. My argument was that so do humans, just using wetware, our biological substrate instead of silicon. Perhaps each person has a philosophical take on what intelligence actually means, with some believing in soul and some higher more spiritual aspect to it.

Edit2:

Just a potential insight...

Zoomed in view: It just regurgitates, as you understand how it works, kinda. It is not thinking, just statistical patterns. You look at how each word is predicted and you see how it works.

Zoomed out view: It thinks. The aggregation of all these tiny statistical patterns is what thinking actually is.

Or, if I want to zoom in to the atomic scale, thinking is just cause and effect + patterns, physics working at the most basic level, be that classical or quantum. In fact there is an analogous situation going on here. Classical physics is an aggregation of the statstical likelihoods at the quantum level. We think an electron is at x position in classical physics, but that is based on a probability distribution at the quantum level. This is similar to the zoomed in and out argument I just made above. Bit waffly but hope you got the gist.

 

[KitaYama]

Human: "Those supposed super-intelligent AI's lack intelligence and just regugitate patterns. I know they solved death, energy, suffering, but they can't think!"

I wish you had also mentioned solving medical problems.

A boy saw 17 doctors over 3 years for chronic pain. ChatGPT found the diagnosis

Alex experienced pain that stopped him from playing with other children but doctors had no answers to why. His frustrated mom asked ChatGPT for help.

www.today.com

 

[Jon]

I wish you had also mentioned solving medical problems.

I kinda view solving death as the umbrella term for solving medical problems. AI will be invaluable in fixing a faulty human.

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

We are doing ChatGPT wrong!

You need to operate it from the Bath Tub!!!

Edit:- Time index 5 minutes two or three days to do the paperwork to approve carpet laying reduced to a matter of hours with AI....


See time index 7 minutes.... treat your AI as a companion, a teammate and your production will soar....

At time index 8 minutes 30 seconds, use AI to coach you through a difficult meeting scenario so that you are prepared!

 

[Isaac]

We are doing ChatGPT wrong!

You need to operate it from the Bath Tub!!!

Edit:- Time index 5 minutes two or three days to do the paperwork to approve carpet laying reduced to a matter of hours with AI....


See time index 7 minutes.... treat your AI as a companion, a teammate and your production will soar....

At time index 8 minutes 30 seconds, use AI to coach you through a difficult meeting scenario so that you are prepared!

This probably isn't the type of engagement you are looking for from your last post, but it stood out to me that you mentioned paperwork about laying carpet. In the UK do you have to get approval from your neighborhood or government for things as simple as a totally interior repair??

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

In the UK do you have to get approval from your neighborhood or government for things as simple as a totally interior repair??

Well my initial reaction was no... But then I thought, hold on, there are certain building regs which have to be adhered to....

It's not like someone would come knocking on your door, saying stop that you're breaking the law! It's more like you can't get a mortgage to sell your house because you have not followed the approved methods....

For instance some people have had lofts insulated with foam insulation spray, and are now unable to get a mortgage because the foam covers up a multitude of sins! Making it difficult to inspect the structure for rot etc....

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

This is very interesting!

My basic approach is that many people condemn the idea of natural selection and use it to prove god does not exist...

But if I were God I would use natural selection In other words, I say natural selection comes from God....

Does LLM come from God?

Does LLM become God?

You see in many places in the Bible they relate words to God "in the beginning there was the word" there was God of some such phrase similar to that....

You see, humans and human intellect is based on words...

The genesis chapter the garden of Eden, is an attempt to show that as man developed intellect, words then he was not allowed in the garden of Eden...

So words are important and large language models are basically words linked together in sophisticated ways....

And top that with the fact that they don't really understand how large language models can think!!!

 

[Cotswold]

This probably isn't the type of engagement you are looking for from your last post, but it stood out to me that you mentioned paperwork about laying carpet. In the UK do you have to get approval from your neighborhood or government for things as simple as a totally interior repair??

You do for certain types of building.
Here we have Grade1 and Grade2 designations that are allocated to older buildings, or in particular locations like National Parks. In some cases even paint colours inside and out can be dictated.

Making unauthorised changes inside and out can result in out of proportion fines. Personally, I'd never consider a graded property because work has to be completed in particular ways, or to specifications that don't totally make sense. Plus the type people providing approval would irritate me and are simply not people I'd want to meet. (Nor them me I suppose) A couple of for-instances: you must replace all existing doors and windows exactly as original. So even if beneficial you cannot replace wood with plastic double-glazing. Even if they are difficult to distinguish between. Modern plaster cannot be used, it must be the old lime based material. Some tradesmen specialise in grade1&2 and clearly charge a huge premium. A friend of mine bought a derelict building out in a national park with excellent views. He renovated it totally, then near the end mentioned that he'd like to drop the window ledge to the lounge to be able to see out when sat down. That was refused because "it wasn't his view" . That unfortunately a typical example of the people in charge. Avarice plays a big part in their decision.

 

[Isaac]

Well my initial reaction was no... But then I thought, hold on, there are certain building regs which have to be adhered to....

It's not like someone would come knocking on your door, saying stop that you're breaking the law! It's more like you can't get a mortgage to sell your house because you have not followed the approved methods....

For instance some people have had lofts insulated with foam insulation spray, and are now unable to get a mortgage because the foam covers up a multitude of sins! Making it difficult to inspect the structure for rot etc....

Very interesting.
Is it also true that the UK is one of those countries - or am I thinking of another one - where you can "take your mortgage loan with you" as you sell a house and buy a new house? When I read that it sounded like the best system in the world - (well, for everyone except the mortgage lender)

 

[CJ_London]

depends on the lender, some offer the facility and some don't. If they do, the new property needs to meet or exceed the original requirements with regards type of property (i.e. meets their survey requirements) and loan to value ratio, and clearly you still need a good credit rating and still have sufficient income to continue to pay the mortgage. I also suspect market conditions will come into play. If you are on a very low interest rate and given that current rates are maybe 5 times higher than they were 5 years ago, then may not honour the lower rate - but at least you have a mortgage to proceed.