gwern

A podcast interview (posted 2023-06-29) with noted AI researcher Douglas Hofstadter discusses his career and current views on AI (via Edward Kmett), and amplified to David Brooks. Hofstadter has previously energetically criticized GPT-2/3 models (and deep learning and compute-heavy GOFAI). These criticisms were widely circulated & cited, and apparently many people found Hofstadter a convincing & trustworthy authority when he was negative on deep learning capabilities & prospects, and so I found his most-recent comments (which amplify things he has been saying in private since at least 2014) of considerable interest. This interview (EDIT: and earlier material, it turns out), appears to have gone under the radar, perhaps because it's a video, so below I excerpt from the second half where he discusses DL progress & AI risk: > * * Q: ...Which ideas from GEB are most relevant today? > > * Douglas Hofstadter: ...In my book, I Am a Strange Loop, I tried to set forth what it is that really makes a self or a soul. I like to use the word "soul", not in the religious sense, but as a synonym for "I", a human "I", capital letter "I." So, what is it that makes a human being able to validly say "I"? What justifies the use of that word? When can a computer say "I" and we feel that there is a genuine "I" behind the scenes? > > I don't mean like when you call up the drugstore and the chatbot, or whatever you want to call it, on the phone says, "Tell me what you want. I know you want to talk to a human being, but first, in a few words, tell me what you want. I can understand full sentences." And then you say something and it says, "Do you want to refill a prescription?" And then when I say yes, it says, "Gotcha", meaning "I got you." So it acts as if there is an "I" there, but I don't have any sense whatsoever that there is an "I" there. It doesn't feel like an "I" to me, it feels like a very mechanical process. > > But in the case of more advanced thi