James Hendler discusses the capabilities and limitations of AI systems like ChatGPT, which utilize complex models to generate coherent text based on learned sequences. He emphasizes the importance of understanding what AI can and cannot do, advocating for a balanced view that reduces hype and encourages collaboration between humans and machines. The document highlights challenges posed by emerging technologies and the need for proper integration into society.

1. Knowing What AI Systems Don't Know and Why It
Matters
James Hendler
Director, Future of Computing Institute
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

2. Bio
• James Hendler is the Tetherless World Professor of Computer, Web, and
Cognitive Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a Director of
both the Rensselaer AI & Reasoning Lab and the Web Science Research
Center. He is also the Chief Scientist of the Solid Project at MIT. James is
a world-renowned researcher in artificial intelligence and distributed
computing, with a particular focus on the Semantic Web, linked data, and
applications of AI and Web technologies to areas such as healthcare and
national security.
He is a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence,
the Association for Computing Machinery, and the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers.
NOT TRUE
NOT TRUE Thanks, but …
These are true, but leave out some important ones: BCS, AAAS, and US Natl Academy of
Public Administration.
This was renamed,
but it’s a common error

3. • The primary published paper by the OpenAI team: (arXiv)
• Radford, A., Wu, J., Child, R., Luan, D., Amodei, D. and Sutskever, I., 2019.
Language models are unsupervised multitask learners. OpenAI blog, 1(8), p.9.
• That paper won’t explain anything useful
• Lots of simple videos, that give the basic idea – for example
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQguO9IeQWE
ChatGPT – getting a lot of media “attention”

4. chatGPT in the news: lots of variance

5. “the stochastic parrot”
“Transformer” models learn sequences of connected words, encode them, and decode them. This basic model was
referred to, pejoratively, as a stochastic parrot. GPT2 (and thus chatGPT) are basically extensions of this model

6. Why “stochastic” parrot
+

7. What can follow what
• “Good”
• Good day, good night, good times, good will, good movie …
• But less so: Good elephant, Good yoyo
• System assigns “probabilities” to each one
• Essentially throws a (many sided die) to decide which one
• Then continue with what can follow the phrase
• Good night moon, Good day ma’am, Good will is important, Good movie is
<name>
• And maybe fix a bit “<name> is a good movie”
• Note, your cell phone has been doing this for you for a long time
• Autocomplete, auto-suggest
• But chatGPT was trained on over 4billion documents
• And…

8. … human intervention:
Details – see: https://mindmatters.ai/2023/01/found-chatgpts-humans-in-the-loop/

9. … it’s a moving target
Free version
Paid (improved?)
version

10. What it’s good at
• Generating unusual content
Prompt: Write a short poem for a black cat that used to be feral but has now been adopted
I was scared and alone
in an alley all day
But now I'm safe and warm
I'll never have to stray
A kind human took me in
My life has changed for the better
I'm so glad I'm not alone
Living in a loving home forever

11. What it’s (pretty) good at
• Generating seemingly meaningful, connected text that is convincing
• Leicester is a city in the East Midlands of England. It is the county
town of Leicestershire and is located on the River Soar and close to
the eastern end of the National Forest. It is the tenth largest city in
England and the largest in the East Midlands. Leicester has a rich and
varied history and is renowned for its cultural diversity. It is a vibrant
city with a wide range of shopping and leisure activities, a lively
nightlife and a thriving cultural scene. Leicester is also home to two
universities and is the birthplace of the famous playwright, William
Shakespeare.

12. What it’s (pretty) good at
• Generating seemingly meaningful, connected text that is convincing
• Leicester is a city in the East Midlands of England. It is the county town of
Leicestershire and is located on the River Soar and close to the eastern end
of the National Forest. It is the tenth largest city in England and the largest
in the East Midlands. Leicester has a rich and varied history and is
renowned for its cultural diversity. It is a vibrant city with a wide range of
shopping and leisure activities, a lively nightlife and a thriving cultural
scene. Leicester is also home to two universities and is the birthplace of the
famous playwright, William Shakespeare. [error may be caused by
Shakespeare statue in Leicester Square Gardens, London]

13. What it’s not so bad at – easily available choices
• Aldrin: Doctor Science, not ugrad
• Annan: MS
• Feynman: ugrad
• Chomsky: no MIT degree
• Bose: BS and PhD
Improvement: New 4/5 (old was 2/5)

14. What it’s not so good at – less obvious choices
• Kennedy: Harvard
• Poehler: yes
• Hasselbeck: yes
• O’Donnell: no degree
• Bose: yes
Improvement: New 3/5 (old was 1/5)

15. What OpenAI says about chatGPT

16. But we are trying to do better than that…
CROWDSOURCING ERRORS
https://researchrabbit.typeform.com/llmerrors

17. The future holds challenges
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9ImnP2EIy4
Story book picture AI “nightmare” version

18. Deep fakes … in real time?
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPU0WNUzsBo
• America’s got talent
Imposed singer’s actions/words w/Simon Cowell’s
face and voice (was a finalist in season 2022)

19. So what is the challenge overall?
• When new technologies emerge, a combination of hype and panic often
result
• Kids had to learn to tell TV news from fictional shows
• Calculators banned from schools (now required on tests)
• Wikipedia banned from classroom (now style sheets on how to cite)
• For the new AI technologies, we need to
• Learn what they can and cannot do well
• Reduce the hype and focus on the reality
• Learn to live with it
• Humans plus machines continually outperform each, we need to learn how best to put
them together
• Understanding machine intelligence better
• Understanding HUMAN intelligence better

20. Questions?
Dall-e: The word “questions” in 3-d style