Anecdotally I have also noticed this—when I tell people what I do, the thing they are frequently surprised by is that we don’t know how these things work.
As you implied, if you don’t understand how NN’s work, your natural closest analogue to ChatGPT is conventional software, which is at least understood by its programmers. This isn’t even people being dumb about it, it’s just a lack of knowledge about a specific piece of technology, and a lack of knowledge that there is something to know—that NN’s are in fact qualitatively different from other programs.
As you implied, if you don’t understand how NN’s work, your natural closest analogue to ChatGPT is conventional software, which is at least understood by its programmers.
It’s worth noting that conventional software is also often not fully understood. The ranking algorithms of the major tech companies are complex enough that there might be no human that fully understands them.
Anecdotally I have also noticed this—when I tell people what I do, the thing they are frequently surprised by is that we don’t know how these things work.
As you implied, if you don’t understand how NN’s work, your natural closest analogue to ChatGPT is conventional software, which is at least understood by its programmers. This isn’t even people being dumb about it, it’s just a lack of knowledge about a specific piece of technology, and a lack of knowledge that there is something to know—that NN’s are in fact qualitatively different from other programs.
It’s worth noting that conventional software is also often not fully understood. The ranking algorithms of the major tech companies are complex enough that there might be no human that fully understands them.