What Does ChatGPT Understand?
Alistair Edwards
@ADNEdwards
What Does ChatGPT Understand?
Alistair Edwards
Honorary Fellow, University of York
@ADNEdwards
What does ChatGPT understand?
Nothing
The End
Questions?
No, seriously
We will look at artificial intelligence (AI)
How it developed leading to things like ChatGPT
Question ‘understanding’ and AI
But first…
A bit of background
Dr Alistair D N Edwards
Education
Dr Alistair D N Edwards
Career
Career – all in universities
But also ‘real-world’ experience through consultancies
Honorary Fellow
Retired in 2018
An active retirement
‘Lecturer’
Teaching
…and research
Teaching
Algorithms and data structures
Human aspects of Computer Science
Web design
Advanced topics in interactive technologies
Crash course on C programming
IT as an enabling technology
Lexical and syntax analysis of programming languages
…
Research
Human-computer interaction
speech
non-speech sounds
tactile interaction
What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?
AI
To me:
Getting a computer to do something that previously could only be done by a person
?
Getting a computer to do something that previously could only be done by a person
A moving target
1950s
Compilers
Translate ‘high-level’ code to machine code
Programming
Do you write programs?
What languages do you use?
‘High-level’ languages
Compilers
function main(void)
{
printf(“Hello world!\n”);
}
1950s
LOAD 100
ADD 101
STORE 103
01000 1100100
01011 1100101
01101 1100111
1950s
ADD | 01011 | STORE | 01101 |
JUMP | 10100 | SUB | 01110 |
LOAD | 01000 | TEQ | 10010 |
STOP | 00000 | TEST | 10001 |
1950s
Manchester Mark 1
1950s
Compilers
AI?
AI has experienced highs and lows
1950s
AI is born
Alan Turing
“This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be. We have to have some experience with the machine before we really know its capabilities. It may take years before we settle down to the new possibilities, but I do not see why it should not enter any one of the fields normally covered by the human intellect, and eventually compete on equal terms.”
“This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be. We have to have some experience with the machine before we really know its capabilities. It may take years before we settle down to the new possibilities, but I do not see why it should not enter any one of the fields normally covered by the human intellect, and eventually compete on equal terms.”
1950s
AI is born
Alan Turing
1950s
The ‘AI winter’
1960s
1970s
Japanese Fifth Generation Project
UK Alvey Programme
A high?
1980s
ChatGPT etc
2000s
2010s
2020s
ChatGPT is an LLM
Large language model
How does that work?
Predictive text
‘The boy hits the ball’
The boy hits the ball
How does predictive text work?
Statistics on how words are used
LLMs are much the same
Based on millions of examples of text on the internet
The Chinese Room
A thought experiment
John Searle
1980
Chinese Room
Chinese Room
Searle understands nothing
But to external observers the room appears to understand
1950s
ADD | 01011 | STORE | 01101 |
JUMP | 10100 | SUB | 01110 |
LOAD | 01000 | TEQ | 10010 |
STOP | 00000 | TEST | 10001 |
Chinese Room
Searle understands nothing
But to external observers the room appears to understand
ChatGPT is like the Chinese room
It takes inputs and generates outputs
Its ‘book’ is the whole Internet
It understands nothing
Google Translate
Also understands nothing
It works like ChatGPT
It understands nothing
Does it matter?
Statistical AIs are good
…but they cannot explain their reasoning
Other AI technologies can give explanations
Is that important?
What about a medical AI?
AI diagnoses condition A
Why did it not diagnose similar condition B?
If a medical AI can explain its reasoning does it understand medicine?
Conclusions
ChatGPT understands nothing
Will computers ever understand anything?
Does it matter if they do?
Question
Question
What does it mean ‘to understand’?
Questions and discussion
AI
or anything else I can help with
Careers
Careers of some of our graduates
Careers
Principal Engineer in the Customer Products Team at the FT
Alice Bartlett
Careers
Co-founder of Ethereum and creator of Polkadot and Kusama - cryptocurrencies
Gavin Wood
Careers
Vice-President for security at Google Cloud
Phil Venables
Careers
alistair.edwards@york.ac.uk
@ADNEdwards