I sent an email to the editor with this information, and included Hofstadter on it.
Douglas Hofstadter wrote in the Economist recently on whether modern large language models are conscious. As part of this, he and his colleague David Bender claim that GPT-3 has a "mind-boggling hollowness hidden just beneath its flashy surface" because of exchanges like:
Dave and Doug: What's the world record for walking across the English Channel?
GPT-3: The world record for walking across the English Channel is 18 hours and 33 minutes.
Setting aside the fact that a Sudanese Refugee actually did (nearly) walk across the channel in 2015, this is not actually evidence that GPT-3 is incapable of distinguishing sense from nonsense as Hofstadter claims.
With a prompt that clearly indicates that the task includes distinguishing... (read 358 more words →)
I am excited about this and would strongly consider joining.
Donated. Lighthaven is incredible.