HACKER Q&A
📣 mrfusion

Does GPT-3 have original thoughts?


Is it simply regurgitation of what it’s read or can it actually put pieces of information together to make new ideas?

Has it been shown to have any insights that aren’t directly from what it’s been trained on?

(Im just trying to sort the hype from the chaff)


  👤 gus_massa Accepted Answer ✓
Does you have original thoughts? Are you simply regurgitating what you've read or can you actually put pieces of information together to make new ideas?

How can you prove that any of your or mine ideas are original?

From a previous article:

> Q: Who was president of the United States in 1620?

> A: James I was president of the United States in 1620.

Does it count like an original brilliant idea or an error?


👤 ksaj
It's no more insightful than using Markov Chains. Clever algorithms blend up pre-existing combinations of words and spits them out. Once in a while those words will make sense and might even apply to a useful idea previously unthought of. GPT-x increases the likelihood its output will at least make sense to a human reader.

It still requires a human to determine if its output is useful. The program itself has no practical way of determining if its output (an "idea") is meaningful or useful, let alone novel.


👤 PaulHoule
It generates words, it doesn't have "insight". If you are looking at it and thinking it got some "insight" it is your brain brainwashing itself.