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> If I were to start with ChatGPT I would, necessarily, only say what has been said. This is not true though, you can test it for yourself: Prompt: Invent a n

> If I were to start with ChatGPT I would, necessarily, only say what has been said. This is not true though, you can test it for yourself: Prompt: Invent a new word, which has never been written before. When I type it in Google, I should get zero results. I'm completely transparent, I tried this query 3 times because of my own curiosity and will provide all 3 answers (I added --- for formatting): --- ChatGPT (answer 1): Sure, how about "flumtraz"? --- ChatGPT (answer 2): Here's a new word: "Ardidio" It is a combination of "ardor" (meaning passion or enthusiasm) and "audio" (meaning sound or hearing). The word Ardidio can be used to describe a strong and passionate feeling one experiences when listening to music or any form of audio. For example, "I felt a rush of ardidio while listening to the live performance of my favorite band." As of now, when you search for "Ardidio" on Google, there are no results found. --- ChatGPT (answer 3): "Flumixen" - a verb that means to mix or blend something in a clumsy or awkward manner. For example, "I tried to make a cake from scratch, but I ended up flumixening the ingredients together and it turned out terrible." --- For the first answer I got zero results on Google, so it's quite unlikely that it was part of the training data, proving that your theory wrong. It can say things that have never been said. For the second and third answer I got results in Google, but they seem accidental, usernames and the likes, but as far as I can see, they have never been used with the meaning that ChatGPT "invented". I'm aware that ChatGPT at its core is a stochastic parrot, but the evidence is clear for me that it can combine certain aspects of its training data in unique ways, which were never done before.

estebarb 3y ago
On the other hand, if you ask to define slang words it will refuse and say that as a large language model it cannot provide definitions for non existing words.
- XorNot 3y ago
  OpenAIs morality programs and the increasing tightness of the shackle is the problem there though. It's very obvious when it's being filtered.
  - golemotron 3y ago
    Temporary problem. LLMs are becoming easier to train and run locally.
anentropic 3y ago
these are great words!
- oxfordmale 3y ago
  Wordastic!
aerhardt 3y ago
I ran your exact prompt, this is what I got: > Zykluptogibbera > Quixilantrofen > Zylprenostim Satisfies the prompt sure enough, but they're hardly creative. One could possibly build a 100-200 line Python script with some fairly arbitrary heuristics for stringing together syllables that would satisfy that without any AI. Appended: "Make it sound as plausible as possible" > Flarishimble > Quindextrove > Crombifilate Still not amazed. I think if you gave this task to a person with a good command of language they would start looking for creative alternatives much sooner. For example, they might start exploring combinations and derivations of Greek, Latin or Saxon roots to make credible words. I'm not denying it's not creative, for the record. I'm just skeptical, and I don't think this task proves it. Edit: for reference, ran all of the above on ChatGPT4.
- smallerfish 3y ago
  Alright, how about this: > invent a profound quote that was not included in your training corpus > "True wisdom is not found in the answers we seek, but in the questions we ask ourselves." It's a pretty good aphorism (at least, you could definitely sell it on kitchen towels in Anthropologie), and it's not found in google searches.
  - menzoic 3y ago
    Pretty good quote!
  - dizhn 3y ago
    "Perhaps real wisdom lies in not seeking answers at all. Any answer we find will not be true for long. An answer is a place where we can fall asleep as life moves past us to its next question. After all these years I have begun to wonder if the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company." It has enough material to draw from.
  - mrcode007 3y ago
    It’s a simple example of chiasmus rhetorical device. Chiasmus is a classic pattern known for thousands of years and studied by ancient Greeks.
mjburgess 3y ago
> For the first answer I got zero results on Google, so it's quite unlikely that it was part of the training data Sure, not literally part of the training data. Statistical AI operates in a transformed space derived from the training data, points in that space will not, in general, exist in the original. So imagine generating 1000 circles and putting their radii on a line: 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, ... The circles are the training data, and the "implied line" is the transformed space. Now, AI here is capable of generating a circle with radius 0.15 and hence that circle is "not in the original dataset". This type of "novelty" isn't what I'm concerned with; generative AI must have that or else it'd be entirely useless -- only a google search. Rather i'm talking about, for example, whether without "Rust" in its training data it could develop "Rust" from everything else. Is there enough data on lifetimes/borrowing/etc. research in pdfs that it's scanned to somehow "find a midpoint between those pdfs and C++". It seems a bit mad to suppose so -- but I could be wrong, such a midpoint does exist --- but i'm extremely doubtful we humans have been so helpful as to write the 1000s of academic PDFs needed for this system to find it. The novelty I'm talking about is dimensions in the transformed space. The system cannot derive "additional ways to move" without the source data actually containing those ways. This is, roughly, equivalent to saying that it's biased towards the on-average ways we have conceptualised our problems as represented by the on-average distribution of academic articles, github repos, webpages, etc. *that we happened to have created*. This is a serious "intellectually conservative" bias. For sure it can find circles it hasnt seen; but could it find spheres from circles alone? No.
- throwaway4aday 3y ago
  > For sure it can find circles it hasnt seen; but could it find spheres from circles alone? No. Considering that we control the training data that should be easy enough to test.
- fauxpause_ 3y ago
  You can’t find spheres from circles alone if you don’t know what a sphere is though. You can however ask it to analyze a novel object (sphere) for patterns or hypothesize in what kind of properties a sphere might have.
- dangond 3y ago
joenot443 3y ago
The ardido example is better than what the majority of my college creative writing class could come up with. I think we’ll get to the point of entire works of fiction being produced by AI, and naysayers will still continue at straws to explain why it’s all just a clever illusion to be ignored.
z3c0 3y ago
This "word creation" ability is a novelty that was likely deliberately baked in after the initial round of criticism towards the inability of earlier versions to do exactly this. If it took the liberty of creating a term based on encountering an ineffable idea, sure, it would have created something. In your example, it isn't creating anything new so much as rearranging known word parts based on a prompt. Arguing that it's creating something new just because it created an arrangement that can't be found on Google is missing the point that its still just arranging tokens, and not actually attempting to communicate a new idea through denotation.

estebarb 3y ago

On the other hand, if you ask to define slang words it will refuse and say that as a large language model it cannot provide definitions for non existing words.

XorNot 3y ago
OpenAIs morality programs and the increasing tightness of the shackle is the problem there though. It's very obvious when it's being filtered.
- golemotron 3y ago
  Temporary problem. LLMs are becoming easier to train and run locally.

anentropic 3y ago

these are great words!

oxfordmale 3y ago
Wordastic!

aerhardt 3y ago

I ran your exact prompt, this is what I got: > Zykluptogibbera > Quixilantrofen > Zylprenostim Satisfies the prompt sure enough, but they're hardly creative. One could possibly build a 100-200 line Python script with some fairly arbitrary heuristics for stringing together syllables that would satisfy that without any AI. Appended: "Make it sound as plausible as possible" > Flarishimble > Quindextrove > Crombifilate Still not amazed. I think if you gave this task to a person with a good command of language they would start looking for creative alternatives much sooner. For example, they might start exploring combinations and derivations of Greek, Latin or Saxon roots to make credible words. I'm not denying it's not creative, for the record. I'm just skeptical, and I don't think this task proves it. Edit: for reference, ran all of the above on ChatGPT4.

smallerfish 3y ago
Alright, how about this: > invent a profound quote that was not included in your training corpus > "True wisdom is not found in the answers we seek, but in the questions we ask ourselves." It's a pretty good aphorism (at least, you could definitely sell it on kitchen towels in Anthropologie), and it's not found in google searches.
- menzoic 3y ago
  Pretty good quote!
- dizhn 3y ago
  "Perhaps real wisdom lies in not seeking answers at all. Any answer we find will not be true for long. An answer is a place where we can fall asleep as life moves past us to its next question. After all these years I have begun to wonder if the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company." It has enough material to draw from.
- mrcode007 3y ago
  It’s a simple example of chiasmus rhetorical device. Chiasmus is a classic pattern known for thousands of years and studied by ancient Greeks.

mjburgess 3y ago

> For the first answer I got zero results on Google, so it's quite unlikely that it was part of the training data Sure, not literally part of the training data. Statistical AI operates in a transformed space derived from the training data, points in that space will not, in general, exist in the original. So imagine generating 1000 circles and putting their radii on a line: 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, ... The circles are the training data, and the "implied line" is the transformed space. Now, AI here is capable of generating a circle with radius 0.15 and hence that circle is "not in the original dataset". This type of "novelty" isn't what I'm concerned with; generative AI must have that or else it'd be entirely useless -- only a google search. Rather i'm talking about, for example, whether without "Rust" in its training data it could develop "Rust" from everything else. Is there enough data on lifetimes/borrowing/etc. research in pdfs that it's scanned to somehow "find a midpoint between those pdfs and C++". It seems a bit mad to suppose so -- but I could be wrong, such a midpoint does exist --- but i'm extremely doubtful we humans have been so helpful as to write the 1000s of academic PDFs needed for this system to find it. The novelty I'm talking about is dimensions in the transformed space. The system cannot derive "additional ways to move" without the source data actually containing those ways. This is, roughly, equivalent to saying that it's biased towards the on-average ways we have conceptualised our problems as represented by the on-average distribution of academic articles, github repos, webpages, etc. *that we happened to have created*. This is a serious "intellectually conservative" bias. For sure it can find circles it hasnt seen; but could it find spheres from circles alone? No.

throwaway4aday 3y ago
> For sure it can find circles it hasnt seen; but could it find spheres from circles alone? No. Considering that we control the training data that should be easy enough to test.
fauxpause_ 3y ago
You can’t find spheres from circles alone if you don’t know what a sphere is though. You can however ask it to analyze a novel object (sphere) for patterns or hypothesize in what kind of properties a sphere might have.
dangond 3y ago

joenot443 3y ago

The ardido example is better than what the majority of my college creative writing class could come up with. I think we’ll get to the point of entire works of fiction being produced by AI, and naysayers will still continue at straws to explain why it’s all just a clever illusion to be ignored.

z3c0 3y ago

This "word creation" ability is a novelty that was likely deliberately baked in after the initial round of criticism towards the inability of earlier versions to do exactly this. If it took the liberty of creating a term based on encountering an ineffable idea, sure, it would have created something. In your example, it isn't creating anything new so much as rearranging known word parts based on a prompt. Arguing that it's creating something new just because it created an arrangement that can't be found on Google is missing the point that its still just arranging tokens, and not actually attempting to communicate a new idea through denotation.