Wendy Grossman on AI and ChatGPT

“What we currently call ‘AI’ is basically data and statistics.  In providing a response, for example, ChatGPT looks for statistical correlations between the data in its corpus and the prompt you have written.  Its answer doesn’t focus on whiat’s statistically likely to be true, but on using words that are statistically likely to appear near the ones you’ve used.  It is profoundly, catastrophically stupid.”  Wendy Grossman, “The Skeptic: Beyond the Hype” in The Philosophers’ Magazine 99