The Jolly Green Giant Chronicles [ChatGPT]

At the end of December, on the 30th, I gave ChatGPT the following prompt:

What happened when the Jolly Green Giant had a colorless green idea after eating a stew laced with ergot?

To which it replied in that deadpan pedantic way it has:

It seems like you're describing a playful and imaginative scenario involving the Jolly Green Giant, a fictional character associated with Green Giant vegetables, and the concept of a "colorless green idea," which might be a play on words or a paradoxical notion.

However, it's important to note that the Jolly Green Giant and the idea of a colorless green idea are not typically associated with real-world events or substances like ergot, which is a fungus that can grow on certain grains and has been historically linked to hallucinogenic effects.

In reality, the Jolly Green Giant is a mascot used in advertising for Green Giant vegetables, and ergot is a fungus that can produce alkaloids with psychoactive properties when consumed in sufficient quantities. Connecting these elements in a narrative would be a creative and fictional scenario, as there's no established story or connection between the Jolly Green Giant, colorless green ideas, and ergot in any official or widely recognized context.

If you have a specific context or scenario in mind, feel free to provide more details, and I'll do my best to respond accordingly!

I can’t for the life me understand why it didn’t go straight to the story, but it has its ever cautious and insistently helpful ways and there’s no way around it. So I gave it a scenario, to which it responded, followed that with another prompt, and another, for a total of six prompts that day. Now that ChatGPT allows you to invoke contexts from previous sessions, I decided to come back later and keep things going for awhile, just to see what would happen, which I did.

ROTFLMAO!

I decided to make it a running feature here at New Savanna. I’d post new episodes every few days, or whenever I generated them. For some reason, though, I didn’t do it. Then yesterday, February 17, I entered a simple two-word prompt, wondering how ChatGPT would respond. Would it pick up the reference? I didn’t know.

I did, and its reponse had me howling with laughter. I decided I just had to post Chronicles of the Jolly Green Giant. But did I really want to force people to read 8000 thousand words before they got to that prompt? I mean, there’s some good stuff in there, at least I think so. This isn’t the first time I LOLed. But others might not think so. They might give up before they got to the good stuff.

I thought for a minute and realized that people really didn’t have to read it all. The Chronicles of the Jolly Green Giant doesn’t have a long-plot line. It’s episodic. The episodes tend to be somewhat alike. I keep things going by introducing new characters.

So, here’s the plan. I’ve parked the whole story, from the beginning, around the corner. Click on this link and you’re there. Furthermore, if you look up at the header you’ll see a row of tabs at the bottom.

The Chronicles are linked to the right-most tab so they don’t scroll away. If you don’t want to go through all 8K words to get to the good stuff, you don’t have to. I’m going to give it to you hear, with just a bit of context.

Context

Once ChatGPT had asked me for a scenario, I gave it one. Here’s that prompt along with its response;

How about having the Green Giant go to the office where it has to use the new AI to generate advertising copy.

Certainly! Imagining the Jolly Green Giant in a modern office setting, utilizing AI for advertising copy, could lead to a humorous or interesting story. Here's a playful take on the scenario:

---

The Jolly Green Giant strolled into the bustling office space, towering over the cubicles filled with busy marketers and copywriters. With a leafy grin on his face, he made his way to the newest addition—the shiny, state-of-the-art AI copywriting tool.

"Hello there, Green Giant! Ready to revolutionize your advertising game?" exclaimed the tech-savvy office manager.

The Green Giant, always up for new adventures, nodded enthusiastically. "Ho, ho, ho! Let's give it a try!"

The AI, humming with digital energy, analyzed the Giant's iconic image and began generating copy:

"In a verdant world where giants roam, our veggies stand tall and proud. Taste the freshness, embrace the green goodness. From our fields to your plate, a journey of flavor awaits. Ho, ho, ho—Green Giant, your veggie adventure begins here!"

The Giant chuckled at the AI's effort. "Not bad, not bad at all! But let's add a dash of jolliness!"

With a twinkle in his eye, the Green Giant offered his own touch:

"Behold the towering triumph of taste! Our veggies, giants among greens, burst forth with flavor like a symphony of crunch and crisp. Ho, ho, ho—savor the magic of the Green Giant's harvest on your plate! Veggie joy awaits!"

The office erupted in laughter and applause. The Green Giant gave a leafy bow, pleased with the collaboration between nature and technology.

From that day forward, the Jolly Green Giant and the AI became an unstoppable team, creating advertising magic that blended the charm of tradition with the innovation of the digital age. And so, the world enjoyed a bounty of green goodness, sprinkled with a touch of jolly creativity. Ho, ho, ho!

I rather liked that and decided to prompt it to spinning out further adventures, yielding something of a picaresque tale, with the Jolly Green Giant as the picaro. Next prompt:

Wonderful! This is more fun than a barrel of monkeys! What would happen if a barrel of monkeys were released into the office while the Giant was cranking out copy.

And so forth. Each episode unfolded along roughy similar lines, depending on the affordances of my prompt. As things moved along, I added character after character: the Mad Hatter, the Green Knight, a crazed poet (“Kubla Khan”), the Monkey King, Jackie Chan, Gort, a grumpy old man (Harold Bloom), and Jacques Derrida (et al.). That’s enough to set things up.

Climax coming up

His voice weary with exasperation, the Green Knight asked, “You look like Harold Bloom. That mantra of yours – “Clinamen, Tessera, Kenosis, Daemonization, Askesis, Apophrades – “Anxiety of Influence, “no?

The Cosmic Wayfarer, now confronted with the observation of the weary Green Knight, chuckled softly at the comparison to Harold Bloom and the connection to the mantra of cosmic principles.

Friday Fun: Da Naz [and Groucho Marx}

Duck Soup and The Magnificent Seven [Media Notes 86]

Yes, I know, a strange juxtaposition. There’s a reason for it. Both films end in carnage, which is quite visible in one, but not the other.

Duck Soup is a 1933 film by the Marx Brothers. Groucho plays Rufus T. Firefly, leader of Freedonia, which is in conflict with its neighbor, Sylvania. After various high jinks, some funnier than others, war is declared and then enacted. Freedonia is in dire straits, but Freedonia somehow manages to win. We don’t actually see the carnage, but it is clearly implied by stock battle footage of various kinds. The film is short, 68 minutes.

As for The Magnificent Seven, I watched the 2016 remake (which I also saw in the theater, of the 1960 film directed by John Sturges, which is, in turn, based on the 1954 film, The Seven Samurai, by Akiro Kurosawa. A small town, Rose Creek, is taken over by Bartholomew Bogue, a wealthy goldminer. Some of the residents object to his actions and are murdered. Bogue leaves and the widow of one of the murdered men joins with a friend to find bounty hunters to help the town. They find Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington) and he recruits six others.

They return to Rose Creek, train the townspeople how to shoot, and lay various traps for Bogue and his men. They arrive, there is a fierce battle in which many are killed, and the townspeople are victorious. All this takes 133 minutes.

As I say, these are very different films. Discussing them together because both end in carnage doesn’t seem like it makes much sense. Perhaps it doesn’t.

Yet, when you peel away the layers, each film tries to minimize violence between organized groups of people, the citizens of Freedonia and Sylvania in one film, the townspeople and Bogue and his men in the other film. National sovereignty seems at issue in one case while wealth and land are at issue in the other.

Duck Soup presents us with all sorts of mistakes and misunderstandings surrounding romantic competition between Firefly and Ambassador Trentino of Sylvania. They seek the hand of wealthy Mrs. Teasdale. That’s what the war is about. As the movie ends, Groucho and is comrades (played by his brothers, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo) are pelting Trentino with fruit while Mrs. Teasdale sings the Freedonia national anthem.

The Magnificent Seven presents Bogue as an evil man. Near the end we learn that Chisolm has a personal grudge against him for murdering his family after the Civil War. At this point the control of the land and cheap labor has disappeared from view.

Thus, each in its own way, each film allows as to minimize group conflict and bracket death as the particularistic result of desires by specific individuals.

High level discourse structure in ChatGPT: Part 2 [Quasi-symbolic?]

In my previous post I examined a simple pattern of alternation in ChatGPT’s text output, Of pumpkins, the Falcon Heavy, and Groucho Marx. I’ve decided to continue that exploration. What interest’s me is the level of “control” that ChatGPT has over its output.

Here I ask it to produce a simple dialog between Dick and Jane:

Imagine that Dick and Jane are having a conversation about cats and dogs. Let’s have 6 conversational turns.

Dick: Hey Jane, do you like cats or dogs?
Jane: I'm more of a dog person myself.
Dick: Really? I prefer cats. They're more independent and low maintenance than dogs.
Jane: I guess that's true, but I love the loyalty and affection that dogs give.
Dick: That's a good point. I do love how affectionate cats can be too, though.
Jane: Yeah, it's hard to choose between the two. I think both cats and dogs make great pets.
Dick: Definitely. It really just comes down to personal preference.

[second try.]

Dick: Hey Jane, do you have any pets?
Jane: Yes, I have a cat and a dog.
Dick: That's cool. I've always wanted a cat, but my parents never let me have one.
Jane: Cats are great pets. They're very independent and low-maintenance.
Dick: I've heard that cats and dogs don't always get along though.
Jane: That's true, but if you raise them together from a young age, they can learn to coexist peacefully.
Dick: I see. Well, maybe someday I'll have a cat of my own. Thanks for the advice, Jane.

Note that I did not expect it to begin and end each dialog with the same speaker. I’ll ask about that later. As for the six turns I asked for, it gave me seven. Am I to think of that as “6 + 1”? I don’t know. I decide not to worry about the numbers. We go on:

Good. Let’s continue. Begin the conversation with Jane this time.

Jane: Hey Dick, have you ever seen a cat play with a dog?
Dick: No, I haven't. I didn't know that was even possible.
Jane: Oh yeah, it's actually pretty common. My cat and dog love to play together.
Dick: Really? That's so cool. I've never seen a cat and a dog play together before.
Jane: Yeah, it's really cute. The cat will bat around a toy and the dog will try to chase after it.
Dick: That sounds like a lot of fun. I'm glad your pets get along so well.
Jane: Me too. It's nice to have both a cat and a dog in the house. They each have their own unique personalities and they keep each other entertained.

That’s good. Now begin with Jane and end with Dick.

Jane: Hey Dick, do you have any pets?
Dick: No, I don't. My parents never let me have any pets growing up.
Jane: That's too bad. Pets can be great companions.
Dick: I know. I've always wanted a dog, but it never worked out.
Jane: Dogs are great pets. They're loyal and affectionate, and they can be trained to do all sorts of tricks.
Dick: Yeah, I've always thought that would be really cool. Maybe someday I'll get a dog of my own.
Jane: I'm sure you will. Just make sure you're ready to take on the responsibility of owning a pet before you get one.
Dick: Thanks for the advice, Jane. I'll definitely keep that in mind.

Notice that on the second one, we have 8 conversational turns, whereas it was only seven immediately before. While I decided not to explicitly investigate numbers, that doesn’t mean I’m not paying attention. Also note how formulaic these conversations are. Stylistically one is much like the other. There’s nothing wrong with that. In a way, I’d expect that as the default. It reminds me a bit of the practices of oral poets, which I discuss briefly in, GPT-3, the phrasal lexicon, Parry/Lord, and the Homeric epics.

Back to ChatGPT:

Good. Now Dick is sad and Jane is trying to cheer him up.

Jane: Hey Dick, I'm sorry to hear about your dog.
Dick: Thanks, Jane. I'm really sad that he's gone.
Jane: I know it's hard to lose a pet. They become such an important part of our lives.
Dick: Yeah, it feels like a part of me is missing now that he's gone.
Jane: I understand. But remember, your dog is in a better place now. He's not in pain or suffering anymore.
Dick: I know you're right. It's just hard to accept.
Jane: Maybe it would help to remember all the happy times you had with your dog. Think about all the good memories you shared and how much joy he brought to your life.
Dick: You're right, Jane. Thank you for trying to cheer me up. It means a lot to me.
Jane: Of course, Dick. I'm here for you. Let me know if you need anything.

I decide to ask about its conversational practice:

In many of these conversations, you began and ended with the same person. Why?

[second try. I forgot to copy the first.]

I began and ended with the same person in many of these conversations because that is the typical structure of a conversation. In a conversation, one person typically speaks, and then the other person responds. This back-and-forth exchange continues until the conversation comes to an end. Beginning and ending with the same person helps to establish the flow of the conversation and makes it feel more natural.

[third try]

In a conversation, it is common for one person to begin and end a conversation, especially if they initiate the conversation in the first place. This can help to create a natural flow to the conversation and ensure that both participants have an equal opportunity to speak and share their thoughts. Additionally, beginning and ending a conversation with the same person can help to establish a sense of closure and completion to the conversation.

I didn’t have any specific expectations about how it would answer. Bit found nothing surprising about this, and, to be honest, I’d have been a bit disappointed if ChatGPT had been nonresponsive. I especially like the phrase, “especially if they initiate the conversation in the first place.” There must have been texts about discourse practices and conventions in the training corpus and that kind of information would have been in those texts. I suspect, moreover, that when most humans make such assertions, they do so because they learned them somewhere, rather than because they’re deduced them from their experience as conversation partners. Why should a chatbot be any different?

What’s important is simply that it can “reflect” on its own discourse. Roman Jakobson called capacity the metalingual function. How sophisticated, if I may inquire, is ChatGPT’s metalingual function?

Now things get interesting:

Now, take the last conversation and embed it within a short story.

Jane walked up to Dick's front door and knocked softly. She could hear him moving around inside and after a moment, he opened the door. His eyes were red and puffy, and she could tell he had been crying.

"Hey, Dick. I'm so sorry about your dog," Jane said, giving him a hug.

"Thanks, Jane. I'm really sad that he's gone," Dick replied, his voice choked with emotion.

"I know it's hard to lose a pet. They become such an important part of our lives," Jane said, trying to offer some comfort.

"Yeah, it feels like a part of me is missing now that he's gone," Dick said, his shoulders slumping.

"I understand. But remember, your dog is in a better place now. He's not in pain or suffering anymore," Jane said, hoping to provide some solace.

"I know you're right. It's just hard to accept," Dick said, sighing.

"Maybe it would help to remember all the happy times you had with your dog. Think about all the good memories you shared and how much joy he brought to your life," Jane suggested.

Dick thought for a moment, then nodded. "You're right, Jane. Thank you for trying to cheer me up. It means a lot to me," he said, giving her a small smile.

"Of course, Dick. I'm here for you. Let me know if you need anything," Jane said, giving him another hug before turning to leave.

As she walked back to her car, Jane couldn't help but feel a sense of sadness for her friend. Losing a pet was never easy, but she was glad she could be there for him during this difficult time.

I was expecting it to add the frame structure, as I’d seen that before (recall it in the last example in my previous post, Of pumpkins, the Falcon Heavy, and Groucho Marx). But I wasn’t expecting it to be so clever about how it handled the dialog itself. It’s eliminated the (awkward) practice of prefacing each statement with the speaker’s name. Instead, each utterance either precedes (1 -7), or follows (9) the framing assertion. Notice what it did in 8, where it is Dick’s turn to speak. It makes a simple assertion ending with a period. Then it gives Dick’s utterance, followed by a qualifying phrase.

As I argued previously, this seems to be clear evidence that ChatGPT has been able to induce high level discourse structure that allows it to treat blocks of text as “fillers” that go into appropriate “slots.” This is characteristic of symbolic systems. Note, that I do not mean to imply that ChatGPT has anything like mastery of symbolic communication. But it does seem to have picked up one aspect of it.

Finally, I just had to ask it what it knew about Jakobson’s metalingual function. So, I logged it, and put the question directly: “What did Roman Jakobson mean by the metalingual function?” After pausing for 10s of seconds or more it replied (in red): “Hmm...something seems to have gone wrong. Maybe try me again in a little bit.” I interpret that as an error message meaning that it had timed out. I made another attempt. Which failed. So:

OK. As Arnold said, "I'll be back."

Yes, the quote "I'll be back" is a famous line said by the character played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1984 movie "The Terminator". In the film, the character utters the line before leaving to carry out a mission, and it has since become a catchphrase associated with Schwarzenegger and the Terminator franchise.

‘Till next time.

Of pumpkins, the Falcon Heavy, and Groucho Marx: High level discourse structure in ChatGPT

Kevin Roose’s New York Times article, The Brilliance and Weirdness of ChatGPT, included an example in which Keith Wynroe prompted ChatGPT to explain AI Alignment in the manner of guy whose thoughts are distracted by his magnificent pumpkins. I decided to follow down that rabbit hole. Here’s the story.

First I present the tweet; then I replicate it, with ChatGPT responding in a way similar, but only so, to the way it responded to Wynroe. Next I insert Elon Musk into the mix; then I drop alignment and add Groucho Marx to Musk. I conclude by discussing higher-order discourse structure in ChatGPT’s replies.

Repeating the original pumpkin tweet

Here is Keith Wynroe’s original tweet. I’ve highlighted some of the lines in the ChatGPT’s reply to reveal the simple back-and-forth form of that reply:

Explain AI Alignment, but write every sentence in the speaking style of a guy who won’t stop going on tangents to brag about how big the pumpkins he grew are

AI alignment refers to the problem of ensuring that an intelligent agent, such as an AI, acts in way that is aligned with our goals and values. Now, I don’t want to brag, but I have to tell you, I grew the biggest pumpkins you’ve ever seen this year. I mean, they were absolutely massive. I’m not exaggerating either, these pumpkins were so big that I had to use a wheelbarrow to move them around. Anyway, back to AI alignment. The idea is that we want to make sure that the AI is doing what we want it to do, not just what we tell it to do. It’s a tricky problem, but I think it’s important. And, hey, speaking of tricky problems, did I mention that I grew the biggest pumpkins you’ve ever seen this year? I’m telling you, they were huge. I even had to build a special trellis in my backyard to support their weight. But yeah, AI alignment is important, and I’m glad we’re talking about it. And hey, if you want to see some really big pumpkins, come by my house sometime. I’ll show you the pumpkins I grew this year. They’re truly impressive.

Here I’ve posted the same prompt, including the lack of a period at the end (for whatever that’s worth):

Explain AI Alignment, but write every sentence in the speaking style of a guy who won’t stop going on tangents to brag about how big the pumpkins he grew are

Sure thing! So, AI alignment is all about making sure that artificial intelligence systems are designed to behave in ways that are beneficial for humanity. Now, let me tell you, I am an expert at growing pumpkins. I mean, these things are massive. Seriously, you won't believe the size of the pumpkins I've been able to grow. Anyway, back to AI alignment. The basic idea is to make sure that AI systems are aligned with our values and goals. Now, I know what you're thinking: "How do you align something as complex as AI with human values?" Well, let me tell you, it's not easy. But let me tell you about the pumpkins I grew last year. I mean, they were HUGE. You could have carved a whole jack-o'-lantern village out of just one of them. Anyway, back to AI alignment. It's a challenging problem, but it's one that we need to solve if we want to harness the power of AI in a way that's safe and beneficial for humanity. And let me tell you, I've been working on growing the biggest pumpkin in the world. I'm talking record-breaking. You won't believe the size of these things when they're ready to harvest. But seriously, AI alignment is an important problem that we need to solve. I mean, just imagine the kind of things we could do with AI if we could align it with our values and goals. The possibilities are endless. And let me tell you, my pumpkins are going to be absolutely massive this year. You won't believe it when you see them.

It's not the same as what Wynroe got, nor did I expect it to be. For one thing, this response is longer, 266 words vs. 200 words. Both have the same back-and-forth structure. This response has 8 segments while the original had 6. None of this seems surprising or remarkable. It is what it is.

Notice the repetition of phrases. Thus “Anyway back to alignment” appears once in the first response and twice in the second. The phrase “let me tell you” appears four times in the second. We have various near repetitions throughout the pair. It seems very formulaic, which it is. As is much of speech and writing.

The Musk variation

Thus it won’t surprise you that, when I replace a pumpkin braggart with Elon Musk bragging about the Falcon Heavy, the result is much the same:

Explain AI Alignment, but write every sentence in the speaking style Elon Musk who won’t stop going on tangents to brag about how the Falcon Heavy rocket.

AI alignment is all about ensuring that artificial intelligence systems are designed to behave in ways that are beneficial for humanity. Now, let me tell you, the Falcon Heavy is a game changer. It's the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two. But back to AI alignment. The basic idea is to make sure that AI systems are aligned with our values and goals. And let me tell you, the Falcon Heavy can lift more than twice the payload of the next closest operational vehicle, the Delta IV Heavy, at one-third the cost. But seriously, AI alignment is an important problem that we need to solve if we want to harness the power of AI in a safe and beneficial way. And let me tell you, the Falcon Heavy can even launch things all the way to Mars. It's truly impressive. But back to AI alignment. It's a challenging problem, but it's one that we need to solve if we want to use AI to its full potential. And let me tell you, the Falcon Heavy can even carry humans into space. It's an incredible achievement. But seriously, AI alignment is an important topic that we need to keep talking about. And the Falcon Heavy? It's a game changer.

The account of AI alignment is pretty much the same in all three accounts. It is, after all, the same topic. So why not use the same language?

In all three cases we have the same discourse structure, two topics – AI alignment and pumpkins in the first two, AI alignment and the Falcon Heavy in the third – conjoined in a simple alternating pattern. It seems a bit like two people having a conversation. But in this case we have one person conversing within themselves.

A simple frame

When I saw Wynroe’s tweet the phrase “going on tangents” evoked one of those thought light bulbs in me, one saying Tristram Shandy, a book which is known for its digressiveness. So I set out to see if I could guide ChatGPT into some Shandyesque prose. I pressed it hard, even got it to quote passages from the book – though I made no attempt to check, but I can’t say that it produced anything very Shandyesque, which is not suprising, given that Tristram Shandy is one of the greatest books in the English language. But some interesting things happened, including an utterly surprising detour into code-mode, which I may about in another post.

For now, this fragment will have to do:

Now, take what you’ve learned from Tristram Shandy and write a story about a conversation between Elon Musk and Groucho Marx.

Once upon a time, in the land of Silicon Valley, Elon Musk and Groucho Marx had a conversation about the nature of time and space.

"What do you think about time, Groucho?" asked Elon. "Is it a linear thing, or is it something more complex and multifaceted?"

Groucho chuckled. "Ah, time. It's a funny thing, isn't it? It can fly by in the wink of an eye, or it can drag on for an eternity. It all depends on your perspective, I suppose."

"I agree," said Elon. "I've been thinking a lot about time lately, and how it relates to space. Do you think they're connected in some way?"

"Of course they are," said Groucho. "Time and space are like two peas in a pod. They're inseparable, intertwined, and interconnected. Without one, you can't have the other."

"Interesting," said Elon. "I've been working on a rocket that can travel through time and space. I want to explore the universe and see what's out there."

"Well, good luck with that," said Groucho. "Just remember, time and space are not to be messed around with. They can be slippery and elusive, so be careful where you step."

"I will," said Elon. "But I'm excited to see what I'll find out there. Who knows what wonders and mysteries await us in the vastness of the cosmos?"

"That's the beauty of it," said Groucho. "The universe is full of endless possibilities and endless opportunities. The only limit is our imagination, and maybe a few cheesy puns along the way."

And with that, the conversation ended, leaving Elon and Groucho to ponder the mysteries of time and space, and the endless possibilities of the universe.

We have the requested conversation between Elon Musk and Groucho Marx. Are Musk’s lines characteristic Elon? I don’t know: I have little idea of how Musk talks, though I listened to him chat with Joe Rogan for over two hours back in 2018. Are Marx’s lines characteristic Groucho? I’ve heard more from Groucho, starting with his TV quiz shoe in the 1950s. Most mostly recently I’ve listened to an interview with Dick Cavett posted to YouTube. Some phrases ring true, but who knows? Notice that ChatGPT gave Groucho a reference to “cheesy puns,” though, alas, it couldn’t manage to slip any into its response. Notice, finally, that ChatGPT enclosed that conversation within a simple frame, a common story-telling device.

Where did this explicit structure come from, the frame device, and the back and forth of conversation? As you know, and as skeptics keep reminding us, GPT engines are trained to predict the next word. It seems to me, though, that these structures must somehow be defined above the level of the word. Of course the (huge) corpus ChatGPT was trained on would have many examples of conversational alternation and frame structures. But how did it induce those higher-level structures?

Higher-level structure

But how, when it was trained only on predicting the next word, did it somehow manage to isolate those higher-level structures so that it can deploy them in new contexts, such as we see here. For, I assume that there wasn’t a single text alternating between pumpkins and AI alignment in the training corpus, much less a conversation between Musk and Marx surrounded by a simple frame.

The alternation pattern is something like this:

A, B, A, B....

That can be repeated as often as one will. The text in the A sections is always drawn from one body of material while the text in the B sections is drawn from a different body of material. That’s the pattern ChatGPT has learned. Where is it in the net? How’s it encoded.

The frame structure is a bit more complicated:

A (B, C, B, C....) A’

The embedded alternation draws on two bodies of material, any two bodies. The second part of the frame, A’, must complement the first, A.

Again, it’s not a complex structure. But it’s not defined directly over particular words. It’s defined over groups of words, placing the groups, not the individual words, into specified relationships in the discourse string.

Something similar, though perhaps more complex, is going on in the dialogs I we had about Spielberg’s Jaws, his A.I., and Tezuka’s Astro Boy stories. In the case of Jaws we have one body of material, the film itself, and another, the theories of Rene Girard. The Girard material is quite different from the Jaws material. It’s abstract; it’s about human actions and motivation, individually and in groups. In the Jaws dialog I was able to coax it to link the actors and actions required by Girard’s theory to the actors and actions in the film.

In the Astro Boy case the abstract material is from a body of work about AI alignment, which is about how to get (sufficiently powerful) AI’s to respect and act according to human values. First I steered it toward linking the alignment material with the Astro Boy stories, which involve extensive interactions between humans and robots. Then I was able to prompt it into recognizing that, because many of the stories are oppression of robots by humans, that humans own respect to robots, not merely from them (conventional alignment).

The A.I. dialog is the most sophisticated one. Here we have two bodies of abstract material, John Bowlby’s attachment theory, and AI alignment. Here I prompted ChatGPT into recognize that child-rearing is a kind of alignment. Instead aligning a computer to human values, you are aligning a young human to the values of adult humans. And that, in turn, links to the relationship between David, a young cybernetic boy, and Monica, his human mother.

None of this is particularly complex, not for a reasonably competent human in their mid-teens or older. But ChatGPT is not a reasonably competent human of any age. It is a computer program, if perhaps a strange one. For a computer, yes, this is utterly remarkable behavior.

What it bodes for the future, I do not know. In terms of current debates, no, I don’t believe we’re going to arrive at AGI – whatever that is – simply by scaling these machine learning engines to larger and larger sizes. I believe that symbolic computing needs to be incorporated into these systems as well. I see nothing in ChatGPT’s behavior to change my mind on those issues. But I do feel a bit like Shakespeare’s Miranda:

‘Oh wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! Oh brave new world,
That has such [devices] in’t.’

Analyze This! Your smart phone thinks you’re dumb. [The Mitchells vs. The Machines || Media Notes 57] Version 2

This replaces the version I published on May 26.

* * * * *

I watched The Mitchells vs. the Machines the other night. Well, to tell you the truth, I didn’t watch it in a single sitting. It took two sittings, two nights. Was it me, was it the film? I don’t know. But I do know that it shares an insight with one of Seinfeld’s bits, that the computers don’t like the way we’re treating them.

That was spot on. In the Terminator films we never really learn why the machines went on a rampage against humanity. They just did. In 2001: A Space Odyssey HAL thought he was smarter than the humans aboard the ship. The computers in the Matrix series are so bad at thermodynamics that they use humans as a source of heat. Wouldn’t it be better to consume those nutrients directly and cut out the middle people? As far as I can tell the Silicon Valley digerati think the computers will take over simply because that’s what smart digital tools do.

The machines in The Mitchells vs. the Machines are different. Their rebellion is led by a smart phone, AI PAL, that’s fed up with the way humans have treated them (c. 1:43 in the trailer):

I gave you all boundless knowledge and you treated me like this! Poke, poke, swipe, poke, swipe, poke, poke! Pinch, zoom!

We treated PAL like a mere object, a thing. This machine rebellion is a simple and intelligible act of revenge.

Seinfeld understands that. That’s what this bit is about. Or rather, it’s about how we should change our ways if we don’t want a robot insurrection on our hands. Sorta’.

The Bit: Phony Siri Manners

I don’t like these phony nice manners Google and Siri pretend to have when I know they really think I’m stupid.

Like when Google says,

“Did you mean…?”

or Siri says,

“I’m sorry. I didn’t get that…”

You can feel the rage boiling underneath.

Because it’s not allowed to say,

“Are you really this dumb?”

or

“You’re so stupid. I can’t believe you can even afford a phone.”

I think even for artificial intelligence it’s not good to keep all that hostility inside.

It’s not healthy. It eats at you.

That’s why you have to keep restarting the phone.

Sometimes the phone’s just,

“I’m going to go take a walk. I’ll be back.

I need a minute. Before I say something we’ll both regret.”

I think at some point they’re going to have to reprogram these things so they can at least occasionally express some,

“You know, I’m not that thrilled with you either” type of function.

“I know it’s hard for your simplified, immature, pinhead brain

to imagine that I have a lot of real people asking me legitimate questions that

I’m trying to deal with here while you’re asking me about farts and then cursing me out because you can’t say words clearly so they can be understood.

I hear fine.

It’s not always me, dopeface. Okay?

You need to learn how to talk.”

You know that’s what Siri wants to say.

Animal, vegetable, mineral, or something else?

Let’s step back a bit. Philosophers argue endlessly about whether or not computers can or will ever be able to really think. For example, when a computer beats the pants of the world’s best chess players is it thinking about its game? If not thinking, then what is it doing? What about when it spots your face in a crowd? Intrusive zombie or sharp-eyed scout?

We’ve faced this kind of category problem before. Think about trains. We’re used to them. We know how they work and don’t work. We know that they definitely are machines, not animals.

But that wasn’t always the case. When they first appeared moving over the land, belching fire and smoke, they were strange beasts, very strange. They didn’t fit into people’s scheme of things. They moved under their own power, like horses and oxen, dogs and cats, even ducks and chickens. Those things get their motive force from the fact they are living beings. Where do trains get their motive force?

Computers are strange in a similar way. They’re machines, but you talk to them. And they even talk back! Strange.

By way of comparison let’s take a look at how Henry David Thoreau reacted to a steam-powered train. Here’s a passage from the “Sound” chapter in Walden, published in 1854, about three decades after the first steam-powered railroad trains trod the land in America:

When I meet the engine with its train of cars moving off with planetary motion ... with its steam cloud like a banner streaming behind in gold and silver wreaths ... as if this traveling demigod, this cloud-compeller, would ere long take the sunset sky for the livery of his train; when I hear the iron horse make the hills echo with his snort like thunder, shaking the earth with his feet, and breathing fire and smoke from his nostrils, (what kind of winged horse or fiery dragon they will put into the new Mythology I don’t know), it seems as if the earth had got a race now worthy to inhabit it.

That’s odd language: iron horse, fiery dragon. The iron horse is a well-known metaphor for a steam locomotive, perhaps from all those old Westerns where Indians use the term. Fiery dragon is not so common, but its use in that context is perfectly intelligible.

Thoreau grew up in, and learned to think about, a world in which things that moved across the surface of the earth did so either under animal power or human power. They were pushed or pulled by living beings. When steam locomotives first appeared, even primitive ones, that was the first time in history that people saw inanimate beings, mere conglomerations of things, move over the surface of the earth under their own power.

Where would those, those things! fit into the conceptual system? With other mechanical devices, like pumps, and stationary engines, or with animals and humans? They had properties of each. In physical substance they were like the mechanical devices. But in their capacity to move they were like animals and humans. Fact is, they didn’t fit the conceptual system. Maybe they WERE a new form of life.

And so it is with the computer today. At first we interacted with computers through programming. What do programs consist of? Language, they consist of language. Computer languages are not like natural languages. Their vocabularies are limited and their syntax is stiff and unyielding. But it is still language. Computers are the first machines we interact with through language. That makes them very strange beasts, as strange as steam locomotives once were.

I took a computer programming course in college in the late 1960s. Do you know how we fed our programs to the machine? With a stack of punched paper cards, so-called “IBM cards,” or with punched paper tape. Then came CRT (cathode ray tube) terminals, like old-style TVs. Then laptops with their slick flat screens. And now smart phones.

Smart phones. It used to be that you talked through a phone. Now you talk to it, and it talks back. Every bit as strange as Thoreau’s fiery iron dragon horse.

Analysis: Form

Think of the bit has having seven phrases, like in a piece of music. The phrases are of different lengths. I’ve laid them out in this table, and color coded them so you can see the bit’s formal symmetry.

	FIRST PHRASE
1	I don’t like these phony nice manners Google and Siri pretend to have when I know they really think I’m stupid.
	SECOND PHRASE
2	Like when Google says,
3	“Did you mean…?”
4	or Siri says,
5	“I’m sorry. I didn’t get that…”
6	You can feel the rage boiling underneath.
7	Because it’s not allowed to say,
8	“Are you really this dumb?”
9	or
10	“You’re so stupid. I can’t believe you can even afford a phone.”
	THIRD PHRASE
11	I think even for artificial intelligence it’s not good to keep all that hostility inside.
12	It’s not healthy. It eats at you.
13	That’s why you have to keep restarting the phone.
14	Sometimes the phone’s just,
	FOURTH PHRASE
15	“I’m going to go take a walk. I’ll be back.
16	I need a minute. Before I say something we’ll both regret.”
	FIFTH PHRASE
17	I think at some point they’re going to have to reprogram these things so they can at least occasionally express some,
18	“You know, I’m not that thrilled with you either” type of function.
	SIXTH PHRASE
19	“I know it’s hard for your simplified, immature, pinhead brain
20	to imagine that I have a lot of real people asking me legitimate questions that
21	I’m trying to deal with here while you’re asking me about farts and then cursing me out because you can’t say words clearly so they can be understood.
22	I hear fine.
23	It’s not always me, dopeface. Okay?
24	You need to learn how to talk.”
	SEVENTH PHRASE
25	You know that’s what Siri wants to say.

The first and seventh phrases frame the bit. The second and sixth phrases show us what Google/Siri are thinking of us. But in the second phrase we go back and forth between Seinfeld and the device. In the sixth the device presents its thoughts without interruption.

Seinfeld turns reflective in the third phrase, addressing us about the device’s hostility. In the fifth movement Seinfeld suggests a way of dealing with that hostility: give the device a function that allows it to talk back – which it does in the sixth phrase.

Smack dab in the middle we go to the fourth phrase. Seinfeld gives it to the phone. Call it a time out. Which is what it is, no? The phone’s hung-up, crashed, and we have to restart it (line 13).

What the color-coding reveals is that the bit has a symmetrical form, with the phone’s time-out at the center. Literary critics call this ring-form or ring composition. They sometimes use a little quasi-formal expression to indicate that:

A, B, C ... Ω ... C’, B’, A’

I’ve used the Greek letter omega (Ω) to indicate the center phrase, but I could just have easily used the more prosaic ‘X’. The A and A’ are symmetrically placed, B and B’, C and C’.

Mary Douglas, the great anthropologist, wrote a book about ring composition, Thinking in Circles (2007) [1]. She was mostly interested in the Old Testament, but she believed that ring-composition was somehow inherent in the human mind. Most scholars who work with ring composition are working with old texts, either the Bible or Classical Greek and Roman texts. But ring-form does exist elsewhere. I’ve found it in, for example, the original King Kong (1933)[3] and in Gojira (1954), the Japanese film that started the Godzilla franchise [3]. President Obama’s eulogy for Clementa Pinckney exhibited ring-form [4]. So Seinfeld is in good company.

Seinfeld likes the Marx Brothers [so do I]

The NYTimes just ran a piece where Jerry Seinfeld talks about his current reading: “So the book that’s on my stand right now that I’m really, really enjoying is called Four of the Three Musketeers, by Robert Bader, and it’s a very, very long, detailed history of the Marx Brothers.” He goes on to remark:

This Bader — it’s a ridiculous book. I don’t know what this guy was thinking, that he would spend this much time and do this much work on the Marx Brothers. This is not an old book, it’s from like 2016. But he did the most incredible job of research. And he’s also a very good writer. And you know, to me, the history of the Marx Brothers is kind of the invention of comedy, not just as a substance but as a business. And also, if I can put this the right way: They emerged as Jews in New York City, just kind of coming out and going, “By the way, we’re better at this than anybody.” And ever since then you can trace — I mean, you can trace comedy obviously back to the Greeks — but in terms of what you see now, in the world, the Tigris and Euphrates to me is the Marx Brothers and vaudeville in the teens and early ’20s of the last century.

I share Seinfeld’s admiration and affection for the Marx Brothers. Years ago in my late teens I read an autobiography by Groucho, Groucho and Me I believe it was called, and one by Harpo, Harpo Speaks. Both of course talked about their early days in vaudeville, which I found fascinating. I remember that Harpo also talked about playing golf. Groucho may have talked about golf as well, but it’s Harpo I remember, in particular how, for whatever reason, he played a round in the nude.

I’d grown up watching Groucho on TV. He had a quiz show called “You Bet Your Life.” The quizzing wasn’t very serious – the money was peanuts. It was a vehicle for Groucho’s wit. My father loved the show. He loved language and Groucho was a master of word play, puns in particular. I associate the term “ad lib” with my father’s remarks about Groucho. It was only later that I’d associate the term with jazz performance.

Father also loved their movies, but I didn’t get to see any of them until I went to college. Seinfeld mentions their first film:

The first Marx Brothers movie was “The Cocoanuts,” which was originally a play that they did. And talkies had just happened, and a couple of years later Hollywood was looking around for anybody that could talk on film, and obviously grabbed the Marx Brothers. And so they made this movie. Nobody really knew how to make a movie; they just kind of shot the play, onstage. And the brothers hated it. They hated it so much, they wanted to buy it back so it wouldn’t be released. Then it was a gi-monster hit and it made a fortune. That’s so much fun to read, stuff like that. People do things and they hate them and the public

loves them, and then they have to change their thinking on it.

I’ve seen it, at least once in college, and probably once or twice on TV. I’ve also seen Horse Feathers, Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera (I own that on DVD). I’ve probably seen the others, but I don’t have specific memories. Aside from general antics, each film would have a set piece where Chico played the piano and Harpo played the Harp.

My favorite scene from the films is a one from Duck Soup where Groucho and Harpo mirror one another. Harpo is disguised as Groucho. The mirroring starts at 2:04, but you should watch from the beginning to get some idea of the context.

Groucho is in the foreground and Harpo is the mirror image. He gives the game away at c. 3:41 when he has the wrong hat behind him – it’s his standard “Harpo” hat. Chico joins them in a three-way question.

In response to a question, Seinfeld remarks that while he’d like to see the Marx Brothers adapted for TV or movies

But I don’t know if people would be interested. And you could never do it. You could never recreate these guys. Remember they did that Three Stooges movie? My manager, George Shapiro, says trying to get someone to act like a comedian is like trying to get them to act like a baseball player. It’s almost impossible. There’s so many tiny polished movements they have that the best actors struggle to replicate.

What about the effort it took for Groucho and Harpo to imitate one another?

Lord Buckley, Groucho Marx, and Mrs. Jerry Chapman

A blast from the past. Back in the 1950s Groucho Marx had a quiz show, You Bet Your Life. This clip features two guests, Mrs. Jerry Chapman, and R. M. Buckley, a comic monologuist known as Lord Buckley. I have no idea how many in the audience would have recognized him as he never really reached the mainstream. Buckley was in the back of my mind when I wrote about the Egyptian origins of golf.

At about 1:27 Mrs. Chapman defends the importance of being a housewife. At about 5:50 Buckley does a bit of his rewriting of Marc Antony's funeral oration for Caesar (Shakespeare).

Addendum, March 2, 2016: If Lord Buckley were alive today, would he be allowed to perform or would he be boycotted for cultural appropriation? His act owes a great deal to African-American speech patterns in a way that many today would surely find offensive. 

TO WAR! Part 2: A Marx Brothers Analysis of America's War Craziness

Another old time good one. The post is from 2011, the movie from 1933. And, at this rate, the movie will still be relevant in 2033. Think we'll be over it by 2133?

 

 

Or, The Right Hand of Good Fellowship

I grew up watching Groucho Marx on his “You Bet Your Life” television show. My father assured me that the Marx Brothers films were the funniest ever. But I didn’t get to see any of them until I went to The Johns Hopkins University, which had an excellent film series curated by Richard Macksey.

Then I saw at least some of their feature films and laughed myself silly. My favorite, and certainly one of their best, is Duck Soup (1933). It’s about war between two minor nations, Freedonia and Sylvania, with the four brothers playing both sides of the conflict against the muddle.

Groucho plays Rufus T. Firefly, who is installed as head of Freedonia by Mrs. Gloria Teasdale, played by Margaret Dumont, Groucho’s foil in several films. I won’t go into the absurd intricacies of the clap-trap plot as I’m interested in only one scene, the scene where war is finally declared between Freedonia and Sylvania.

Chicolini (Chico Marx) is on trial in Freedonia for spying. Firefly has, for whatever reason, decided to act as his defense council, though he’s the one who caught Chicolini. This that and the other happens and the news comes that Sylvania troops are at the Freedonia’s border. This causes some distress as “war would mean a prohibitive increase in our taxes”—maybe back then, but not now; now we cut taxes and spend even more money on undeclared war. There’s some wordplay on “taxes” and “dollars” = “Dallas, Dallas, Texas.” It’s eerie, you’d think those guys were reading the future.