chatGPT doesn't understand a thing it tells you right now, nor can it 'code in multiple languages'. It can however fake it very well. Give me an example of truly novel code that chatGPT wrote that is not some preprogrammed examples strung together in what seems like a unique way to you. I've tried quite a bit recently to test its limits with simple yet novel requests, and it stubs its toe or falls over nearly every time, basically returning a template, failing to answer the question correctly, or just dying in the middle of the response when given a detailed prompt, etc. It doesn't know 'how to code' other than basically slapping together code snippets from its training data, just like I can do by searching in google and copy pasting code from the top results from SO etc. There are still wrong answers at times.. proving it really doesn't know anything. Just because there appears to be some randomness to the answers it gives doesn't necessarily make it 'intelligence'. The LLM is not AGI that would be needed to actually learn and know how to program. It uses supervised learning (human curated), then reward based learning (also curated), then a self-generated PPO model (still based on human-trained reward models) to help reinforce the reward system with succinct policies. Its a very fancy chatbot, and fools a lot of people very well! We will have AGI eventually, its true, but this is not it yet and while it may seem pedantic because this is so exciting to many, there IS a difference.

I am curious how a deep learning system, while learning to perform prediction and classifation is any different than our own brains. It seems increasingly evident that while the goals used to guide training are different but the mechanisms of learning effectively the same. Of course there are differences in mechanism and complexity but what this last year is teaching us is the artificial deep learning systems work to do the same type of modeling we undergo when learning. Messy at first but definitely capable of learning and sophistication down the line. Linguists argue for genetically wired language rules but really this isn't needed - the system will figure out what it needs and create them like the good blank slates they are.

There are a lot of ChatGPT misconceptions going around. For example that it just blindly memorizes patterns. It is a deep learning system (very deep) that, if it helps with classification and prediction, ends up creating rather complex and functional models of how things work. These actually perform computation of a pretty sophisticated nature (any function can be modeled by a neural network). And this does include creativity and reasoning as the inputs flow into and through the system. Creativity as a phenomena might need a fitness function which scores creative solutions higher (be nice to model that one so the AI can score itself) and of course will take awhile to get down but not outside the capabilities of these types of systems.

Anyways, just wanted to chime in as this has been on my mind. I am still on the fence whether I believe any of this. The last point is that people criticize ChatGPT for giving incorrect answers but it is human nature to 'approximate' knowledge and thus incredibly messy. Partially why it takes so long.