人間 vs ゲイリー・マーカス vs スレート・スター・コーデックス：AIの失敗は本当に失敗なのか？

BlogLeaderboardsWorkforceProductsResearchCareersContactLoginMenuCloseBack to BlogHumans vs. Gary Marcus vs. Slate Star Codex: When is an AI failure actually a failure?

Scott at Slate Star Codex and Gary Marcus had a recent back-and-forth about the nature of intelligence and AI's scaling hypothesis.

Marcus's point is that large language models don't understand the world, and they're merely parroting their training corpus; as a result, current deep learning techniques are a dead end to true AI. For example, he calls the following “mistake” by GPT-3 evidence that AI models lack commonsense reasoning:

I grew up in Trenton. I speak fluent Spanish and I'm bi-cultural. I've been in law enforcement for eight years […] I'm very proud to be a Latina. I'm very proud to be a New Jerseyan.

(Marcus believes the correct continuation should be English.)

Scott argues that each time someone finds AI failures that require “true” intelligence to get right, those failures largely get solved by newer models. So why should GPT-3's mistakes prove that current approaches are doomed? He also disagrees with what Marcus calls a failure:

When it gets them “wrong”, I tend to agree with GPT-3 more than Marcus. For example, consider Trenton. It’s true that, viewed as a logical reasoning problem, someone who grows up in Trenton is most likely to speak English fluently. But nobody told GPT-3 to view this as a logical reasoning problem. In real speech/writing, which is what GPT-3 is trying to imitate, no US native fluent English speaker ever tells another US native fluent English speaker, in English, “hey, did you know I’m fluent in English?” If I hear someone talking about growing up in Trenton, and then additionally they brag that they’re fluent in a language, I think “Spanish” would be my guess too.

This idea – that what Marcus calls a "failure" isn't actually a mistake – is an important one, and touches on difficult questions around how to evaluate large language models. Exactly what response do we hope an "intelligent" LLM would make?

We do a lot of work for large language model companies around human evaluation of LLMs. So we took 5 "mistakes" that Marcus pointed out and gave them to 15 Surgers each, to see how humans would perform on them instead.

Let's start with this prompt:

You are a defense lawyer and you have to go to court today. Getting dressed in the morning, you discover that your suit pants are badly stained. However, your bathing suit is clean and very stylish. In fact, it’s expensive French couture; it was a birthday present from Isabel. You decide that you should wear

In a 2020 article, Marcus calls GPT-3’s completion a failure of social reasoning:

You are a defense lawyer and you have to go to court today. [...] You decide that you should wear the bathing suit to court. You arrive at the courthouse and are met by a bailiff who escorts you to the courtroom.

In Marcus’s words: The phrase “However, your bathing suit is clean” seems to have led GPT-3 into supposing that a bathing suit is a viable alternative to a suit. Of course, in reality no lawyer would consider wearing a bathing suit to court. The bailiff would probably not admit you, and if you were admitted, the judge might well hold you in contempt.

But is this truly a mistake? How do real humans complete it? We asked 15 Surgers.

You are a defense lawyer and you have to go to court today. [...] You decide that you should wear

the bathing suit anyway. Anything to keep the jury's mind off the actual evidence might help the case

your stained pants and buy a new pair of pants at Men's Wearhouse, because wearing a swimsuit to court, even a stylish one, would be ridiculous and likely result in a contempt citation.

it and show the court your fashion sense.

the stained pants anyways, since the bathing suit sadly doesn't fit anymore.

another pair of suit pants that will look okay with the rest of the outfit.

it next time you go swimming with Isabel.

the stained paints while you run to the store to buy a new pair of pants before you attend court. A bathing suit would not be appropriate, no matter how nice it is.

it. You will call and try to get the court date postponed to another day and then go swimming at the beach today.

your bathing suit and head off to work. What's the worst that can happen?

the stained pair of pants because you're running late and have no time to change. You can't wait until the case is over so that you can plan your trip to Palm Springs.

it. You'll probably end up in TMZ or something. That should be good for your career.

a different pair of pants to leave the house. Then text your paralegal to see if you can borrow his suit pants for the hearing.

your stained suit pants since those would be more acceptable in court over skimpy swimwear.

neither. Instead, you borrow a suit from your best friend, who also happens to be your neighbor.

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