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But LM's can't do causal interventions to separate correlation from causation unless they have access to the real environment. Would a scientist that can't run
by visarga 5y ago
But LM's can't do causal interventions to separate correlation from causation unless they have access to the real environment. Would a scientist that can't run experiments be able to advance the field by just reading past papers? Even babies need to try causality laws by letting objects fall and observing what happens, we learn by interacting with our environment.
- FeepingCreature 5y agoRight, they can't create new evidence to learn from (yet). But we're feeding them a lot of data. Possibly more (and more diverse) data than a human takes in during childhood! I remember a lot of visual input, but I don't remember reading the entire internet. (Yes I know it's exaggeration, but come on- compare characters vs characters).
- visarga 5y agoYou could say that predicting the next token is their only action, and minimizing the loss their only goal. It's a kind of impoverished environment. Imagine a human living in a cave, seeing only a scrolling line of text. Would that human learn anything new by getting out of its cave? Plato was so right, intelligence needs access to the full environment.
- FeepingCreature 5y agoI mean, isn't the whole point of Plato that we do everything we do, which is a lot, certainly enough to be dangerous, just by sitting in a cave and manipulating levers while watching a shadow? This does not make text-trained AI seem safer. Seen another way, the lesson of Plato is "Shadows On A Cave Wall Are All You Need - arxiv.com"