Even if you convince it to say "I don't know", which isn't that hard, it doesn't actually "know" that it "doesn't know". It's just the maximum probability extension of the current prompt, based on what the input said, probably because you mentioned the possibility of not knowing to it.
It in fact never knows. It is always guessing and BSing. It is also very good at it, better than any human, so the BS is quite frequently correct. But it doesn't know.
Which of course always prompts a lot of psuedo-intellectual chin stroking about "well, what is knowing anyhow?" I don't have to answer that question to point out that what we want and what GPT provides aren't the same thing, nor is what GPT provides and what we think we're getting. That is sufficient for there to be a problem.
I believe AIs will have a satisfactory concept of "knowing" someday. Some may even exist today. But such AIs will have to incorporate language models as a part of the system, not have language models be the system. Language models can't do the thing we really want, nor the thing we think we're getting.
It in fact never knows. It is always guessing and BSing. It is also very good at it, better than any human, so the BS is quite frequently correct. But it doesn't know.
Which of course always prompts a lot of psuedo-intellectual chin stroking about "well, what is knowing anyhow?" I don't have to answer that question to point out that what we want and what GPT provides aren't the same thing, nor is what GPT provides and what we think we're getting. That is sufficient for there to be a problem.
I believe AIs will have a satisfactory concept of "knowing" someday. Some may even exist today. But such AIs will have to incorporate language models as a part of the system, not have language models be the system. Language models can't do the thing we really want, nor the thing we think we're getting.