5 ms·

A NN is just a fancy search engine: the weights are a compression of its training data; it's prediction algorithm is a decompression+search. These "large models

A NN is just a fancy search engine: the weights are a compression of its training data; it's prediction algorithm is a decompression+search. These "large models" are effective because the weights run to 100s GBs, so compressing TBs of data for searching. In any case, my question here is: how do you not go mad in this techno-religious environment where people (seemingly desperately and earnestly) equivocate correlations in written text with thinking? I feel at once overwhelmed, despairing, and a sense of need to point out that it isn't true. It's the most obscene form of wishful thinking and superstition. HNers seem capable of identifying pseudoscience when its an article in nutrition (namely, eg., that correlations in the effects of human behaviour are not explanations of it)... but loose all sense when "AI" becomes the buzzword. Correlations in *TEXT* are not models of language, intelligence, thinking. This is pseudoscience. And the most extreme and superstitious form: thinking that correlations are meaningful because we find them meaningful. A person using language uses it in response to an environment, so "Pass me the salt" is said on the occasion that one needs salt. The "language model", `language = person(...)` includes the environment as input (and many other things). Correlations in pixel patterns of the night sky are not a model of gravity. Correlations in text are not a model of language. Correlations in the detritus of human behaviour are not models of intelligence. But to my question: how does one cope in an environment of this kind of wishful thinking?

anon2020dot00 4y ago
We know that correlation is not thinking, but it is good enough for it to help or to be used as a starting point which is why people appreciate it as code documentation in this case or code completion in Github co-pilot.
- mjburgess 4y ago
  Sure, I mean I only explained my view so that the question would be taken seriously. For me the question is the reason I commented. I think I answered it myself... I have been seeing people's fervour to attribute intelligence to AI as either charlatanism or misunderstanding... but I think, now, it's actually wishful thinking (and hence essentially religious). Trading in the usual superstitious foundations of religions: "AI works in mysterious ways", "correlations in symbols are meaningful", etc. I still don't know why people wish that AI were intelligent; but at least now I have a clearer sense of it. There's some utopian faith behind it which creates this odd urgency to "require" machines to really be intelligent. I'd be interested in knowing why this wish exists. I can never quite put my finger on how irreligious tech people end up in these tech religions. I guess there's some attachment to there being "a heaven somewhere", which with tech, will be heaven-on-earth.
  - anon2020dot00 4y ago
    I don't think it is important that AI is intelligent what is more important is that it is useful and that it solves problems. AI Intelligence would just be a means towards that goal. As human beings, we slowly evolve from one generation to the next but our tools can evolve much more quickly and it can give us in a sense, superpowers. Cars were invented and allowed us to travel great distances while Self-Driving cars (which will require some sort of AI) will reduce car accidents and provide mobility for everyone. AI has the potential to greatly improve the lives of a vast number of people and so it might be looked-upon as some sort of "saviour" and that has some religious connotations but most people still would treat it as just a tool but possibly a life-changing one.
muzani 4y ago
What's the context of this? The article appears to be research on inputs to get GPT-3 to explain code.
- mjburgess 4y ago
  The HN comments here in response. Previously, I might have just replied to some explaining how NNs work... but I'm hoping to give up on that. I just need "a way out"
DoingIsLearning 4y ago
> In any case, my question here is: how do you not go mad in this techno-religious environment where people (seemingly desperately and earnestly) equivocate correlations in written text with thinking? We can not unequivocally explain what thinking is (in a human sense), and what makes it vastly different from Cephalopod thinking or a ridiculously large NN 'thinking'. Until we reach a body of knowledge in Neuroscience that can give such an explanation on is it that makes human thinking somehow special (other than scale) then it is equally religious to assume that human consciousness or human creativity are somehow unique (in nature) and irreproducible (with technology).
- mjburgess 4y ago
  That isnt relevant to whether NN models which record correlations in text are a model of language; they aren't. It isn't an open question. This is an argument from ignorance: you dont know what caused the universe, so maybe god did. Well, we do know much more than enough to regard any use of NNs today as having nothing to do with intelligence; and likewise, that any model of correlations in symptoms of human social activity (text, books, etc.) as not relevant to modelling/simulating intelligence. A neural network model is just a set of averages over training data, which in this case, are simply recording correlations in word frequency. There's no neural "Neural network", it's just some mean()s.
  - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
    > neural network model is just a set of averages over training data We could claim the human brain is just 100 million neurons arranged in a mesh were each neuron has their own 'activation potential'. Neither your or my statement are wrong. But again until we can pinpoint what (human) intelligence is, then claiming squid or neural networks are unable to be intelligent agents is just as emotional as the people you criticize.
    - trention 4y ago
      >We could claim the human brain is just 100 million neurons arranged in a mesh were each neuron has their own 'activation potential'. You actually can't because, unlike neural networks (we know exactly what they do), we don't have anything even close to an exhaustive view of the functioning of the human brain.
golergka 4y ago
> NN is just a fancy search engine What makes you sure that your thinking process is different? What's the difference between a model and complicated correlations?
- hansword 4y ago
  Neuro-scientists and cognitive scientists and developmental psychologists and linguists spent the last century, give or take, looking at this question. The most basic, most broken down, most simplified answer is what is called "poverty of stimulus". A NN has an abundance of stimuli, orders of magnitude greater than any biological being could ever possibly take in. Finding enough correlations (enough for productivity) in such abundance is not actually that surprising. What is surprising is kids being competent at speech after less than 2000 days of stimuli, often really low-quality stimuli.
  - olalonde 4y ago
    While I agree that ANNs are probably a poor model for how the brain really works, your comparison isn't necessarily a fair one. While ANNs start their learning with an empty/random state, the human brain starts with a bunch of connections that are pre-encoded in DNA. With that said, my guess is that we'll probably have to take a few more hints from the biology of the brain before we are able to achieve "human level intelligence".
    - hansword 4y ago
      You seem to have completely missed that NNs run on physical hardware. A contemporary CPU and/or GPU is 'a bunch of connections that are pre-encoded' - just not in DNA, but in silicon.
      - olalonde 4y ago
        > A contemporary CPU and/or GPU is 'a bunch of connections that are pre-encoded' - just not in DNA, but in silicon. No, CPUs/GPUs are not relevant if we are interested in the speed of learning in relation to the quantity of stimuli processed. You could even compute an ANN's learning algorithm with a pen and paper and it wouldn't change its "learning speed" within that definition. Pre-trained weights would. Regardless, this head start is probably not sufficient to explain the disparity between the brain's capacity to learn and modern ANNs. ANNs are probably just not a very good approximation of how the brain works, for now at least.
tigerlily 4y ago
> HNers seem capable of identifying pseudoscience when its an article in nutrition (namely, eg., that correlations in the effects of human behaviour are not explanations of it)... For me the real question is how well can GPT-3 identify pseudoscience.
olalonde 4y ago
An unimpressive mechanism can produce impressive results. The results listed in the article are simply jaw dropping to me, even though I understand the relatively simple mechanism that produced it. How can you not be impressed by something that would have been considered inconceivable just a few years ago?
- mjburgess 4y ago
  It's just a search engine. It's never been 'inconceivable'. At no point since digital computers were invented was it inconceivable that we could continue prompt phrases by searching through similar phrases, near such prompts, in digitized text. It was thought computationally infeasible, in just the same way that a harddrive would never be TBs, and so wouldnt be big enough. But there's no magic here, and nothing suprising. It's presented by charaltans who have money to make as an achivement that it isnt. This isnt intelligence, and has nothing to do with it. It can complete phrases by having seen TBs of similar ones no more suprisingly than google can. It is as limited as that process implies, namely, radically limited. Likewise, it was never inconceivable that one could 'play' chess by searching through billions of chess permutations and selecting a simple high-value path. It was thought infeasible given, say, an abbacus to do it with. We have never thought totally dumb solutions to these problems were unimaginable. They were just so dumb, that the only route to using them would be to somehow run a Ghz processor. Well, since we now have those, dumb partial solutions to dumb problems are possible.
  - olalonde 4y ago
    > It can complete phrases by having seen TBs of similar ones no more suprisingly than google can. Hard disagree here. Google can't do what GPT-3 does and it has access to a lot more than 350gb (size of GPT-3 model). I doubt you literally believe that. > We have never thought totally dumb solutions to these problems were unimaginable. They were just so dumb, that the only route to using them would be to somehow run a Ghz processor. Well, since we now have those, dumb partial solutions to dumb problems are possible. Did the GPT-3 architecture exist 10 years ago? Could an ANN from 10 years ago have produced comparable results, given access to the same hardware? I doubt so. It basically seems that in your worldview, anything below "human level intelligence" is just unimpressive? Seems quite a high bar.
johnthescott 4y ago
ignore them. artificial intelligence is for those who need it.

anon2020dot00 4y ago

We know that correlation is not thinking, but it is good enough for it to help or to be used as a starting point which is why people appreciate it as code documentation in this case or code completion in Github co-pilot.

mjburgess 4y ago
Sure, I mean I only explained my view so that the question would be taken seriously. For me the question is the reason I commented. I think I answered it myself... I have been seeing people's fervour to attribute intelligence to AI as either charlatanism or misunderstanding... but I think, now, it's actually wishful thinking (and hence essentially religious). Trading in the usual superstitious foundations of religions: "AI works in mysterious ways", "correlations in symbols are meaningful", etc. I still don't know why people wish that AI were intelligent; but at least now I have a clearer sense of it. There's some utopian faith behind it which creates this odd urgency to "require" machines to really be intelligent. I'd be interested in knowing why this wish exists. I can never quite put my finger on how irreligious tech people end up in these tech religions. I guess there's some attachment to there being "a heaven somewhere", which with tech, will be heaven-on-earth.
- anon2020dot00 4y ago
  I don't think it is important that AI is intelligent what is more important is that it is useful and that it solves problems. AI Intelligence would just be a means towards that goal. As human beings, we slowly evolve from one generation to the next but our tools can evolve much more quickly and it can give us in a sense, superpowers. Cars were invented and allowed us to travel great distances while Self-Driving cars (which will require some sort of AI) will reduce car accidents and provide mobility for everyone. AI has the potential to greatly improve the lives of a vast number of people and so it might be looked-upon as some sort of "saviour" and that has some religious connotations but most people still would treat it as just a tool but possibly a life-changing one.

muzani 4y ago

What's the context of this? The article appears to be research on inputs to get GPT-3 to explain code.

mjburgess 4y ago
The HN comments here in response. Previously, I might have just replied to some explaining how NNs work... but I'm hoping to give up on that. I just need "a way out"

DoingIsLearning 4y ago

> In any case, my question here is: how do you not go mad in this techno-religious environment where people (seemingly desperately and earnestly) equivocate correlations in written text with thinking? We can not unequivocally explain what thinking is (in a human sense), and what makes it vastly different from Cephalopod thinking or a ridiculously large NN 'thinking'. Until we reach a body of knowledge in Neuroscience that can give such an explanation on is it that makes human thinking somehow special (other than scale) then it is equally religious to assume that human consciousness or human creativity are somehow unique (in nature) and irreproducible (with technology).

mjburgess 4y ago
That isnt relevant to whether NN models which record correlations in text are a model of language; they aren't. It isn't an open question. This is an argument from ignorance: you dont know what caused the universe, so maybe god did. Well, we do know much more than enough to regard any use of NNs today as having nothing to do with intelligence; and likewise, that any model of correlations in symptoms of human social activity (text, books, etc.) as not relevant to modelling/simulating intelligence. A neural network model is just a set of averages over training data, which in this case, are simply recording correlations in word frequency. There's no neural "Neural network", it's just some mean()s.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  > neural network model is just a set of averages over training data We could claim the human brain is just 100 million neurons arranged in a mesh were each neuron has their own 'activation potential'. Neither your or my statement are wrong. But again until we can pinpoint what (human) intelligence is, then claiming squid or neural networks are unable to be intelligent agents is just as emotional as the people you criticize.
  - trention 4y ago
    >We could claim the human brain is just 100 million neurons arranged in a mesh were each neuron has their own 'activation potential'. You actually can't because, unlike neural networks (we know exactly what they do), we don't have anything even close to an exhaustive view of the functioning of the human brain.

golergka 4y ago

> NN is just a fancy search engine What makes you sure that your thinking process is different? What's the difference between a model and complicated correlations?

hansword 4y ago
Neuro-scientists and cognitive scientists and developmental psychologists and linguists spent the last century, give or take, looking at this question. The most basic, most broken down, most simplified answer is what is called "poverty of stimulus". A NN has an abundance of stimuli, orders of magnitude greater than any biological being could ever possibly take in. Finding enough correlations (enough for productivity) in such abundance is not actually that surprising. What is surprising is kids being competent at speech after less than 2000 days of stimuli, often really low-quality stimuli.
- olalonde 4y ago
  While I agree that ANNs are probably a poor model for how the brain really works, your comparison isn't necessarily a fair one. While ANNs start their learning with an empty/random state, the human brain starts with a bunch of connections that are pre-encoded in DNA. With that said, my guess is that we'll probably have to take a few more hints from the biology of the brain before we are able to achieve "human level intelligence".
  - hansword 4y ago
    You seem to have completely missed that NNs run on physical hardware. A contemporary CPU and/or GPU is 'a bunch of connections that are pre-encoded' - just not in DNA, but in silicon.
    - olalonde 4y ago
      > A contemporary CPU and/or GPU is 'a bunch of connections that are pre-encoded' - just not in DNA, but in silicon. No, CPUs/GPUs are not relevant if we are interested in the speed of learning in relation to the quantity of stimuli processed. You could even compute an ANN's learning algorithm with a pen and paper and it wouldn't change its "learning speed" within that definition. Pre-trained weights would. Regardless, this head start is probably not sufficient to explain the disparity between the brain's capacity to learn and modern ANNs. ANNs are probably just not a very good approximation of how the brain works, for now at least.

tigerlily 4y ago

> HNers seem capable of identifying pseudoscience when its an article in nutrition (namely, eg., that correlations in the effects of human behaviour are not explanations of it)... For me the real question is how well can GPT-3 identify pseudoscience.

olalonde 4y ago

An unimpressive mechanism can produce impressive results. The results listed in the article are simply jaw dropping to me, even though I understand the relatively simple mechanism that produced it. How can you not be impressed by something that would have been considered inconceivable just a few years ago?

mjburgess 4y ago
It's just a search engine. It's never been 'inconceivable'. At no point since digital computers were invented was it inconceivable that we could continue prompt phrases by searching through similar phrases, near such prompts, in digitized text. It was thought computationally infeasible, in just the same way that a harddrive would never be TBs, and so wouldnt be big enough. But there's no magic here, and nothing suprising. It's presented by charaltans who have money to make as an achivement that it isnt. This isnt intelligence, and has nothing to do with it. It can complete phrases by having seen TBs of similar ones no more suprisingly than google can. It is as limited as that process implies, namely, radically limited. Likewise, it was never inconceivable that one could 'play' chess by searching through billions of chess permutations and selecting a simple high-value path. It was thought infeasible given, say, an abbacus to do it with. We have never thought totally dumb solutions to these problems were unimaginable. They were just so dumb, that the only route to using them would be to somehow run a Ghz processor. Well, since we now have those, dumb partial solutions to dumb problems are possible.
- olalonde 4y ago
  > It can complete phrases by having seen TBs of similar ones no more suprisingly than google can. Hard disagree here. Google can't do what GPT-3 does and it has access to a lot more than 350gb (size of GPT-3 model). I doubt you literally believe that. > We have never thought totally dumb solutions to these problems were unimaginable. They were just so dumb, that the only route to using them would be to somehow run a Ghz processor. Well, since we now have those, dumb partial solutions to dumb problems are possible. Did the GPT-3 architecture exist 10 years ago? Could an ANN from 10 years ago have produced comparable results, given access to the same hardware? I doubt so. It basically seems that in your worldview, anything below "human level intelligence" is just unimpressive? Seems quite a high bar.

johnthescott 4y ago

ignore them. artificial intelligence is for those who need it.