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>This is different from pattern matching tokens But is it different in essential ways? This is not so clear. Humans developed the capacity to learn, think, and

>This is different from pattern matching tokens But is it different in essential ways? This is not so clear. Humans developed the capacity to learn, think, and communicate in service to optimizing an objective function, namely fitness in various environments. But there is an analogous process going on with LLMs; they are constructed such that they maximize an objective function, namely predict the next token. But it is plausible that "understanding" and/or "intelligence" is within the solution-space of such an optimization routine. After all, it's not like "intelligence" was explicitly trained for in the case of humans. Nature has already demonstrated emergent function as a side-effect of an unrelated optimizer.

goatlover 4y ago
In that case, humans and LLMs are optimizing for different things. One would be environmental fitness, with language as a strategy to use in that environment, so language is about the environment, including humans themselves. Whereas the other is a model of the language humans have used. The model is being optimized for the language, whereas humans are being optimized to use the language in an environment alongside other strategies. The fundamental difference is that the LLM is not about the environment the language(s) were created for, but rather just the language use itself.
- hackinthebochs 4y ago
  Yes, there are differences. You can spend the rest of your life listing differences between the two systems. The hard part is to demonstrate that some difference is relevant to the particular kinds of properties we're interested in. Just pointing out the difference doesn't do the job.
roflyear 4y ago
Yes, LM often get into loops that can't be terminated b/c of issues like this. I feel like you have not used them much and are only basing your opinion on what others have done with them. LM can't "think" and it is really obvious that this is the case after you interact with them. My cat has more personality ...

goatlover 4y ago

In that case, humans and LLMs are optimizing for different things. One would be environmental fitness, with language as a strategy to use in that environment, so language is about the environment, including humans themselves. Whereas the other is a model of the language humans have used. The model is being optimized for the language, whereas humans are being optimized to use the language in an environment alongside other strategies. The fundamental difference is that the LLM is not about the environment the language(s) were created for, but rather just the language use itself.

hackinthebochs 4y ago
Yes, there are differences. You can spend the rest of your life listing differences between the two systems. The hard part is to demonstrate that some difference is relevant to the particular kinds of properties we're interested in. Just pointing out the difference doesn't do the job.

roflyear 4y ago

Yes, LM often get into loops that can't be terminated b/c of issues like this. I feel like you have not used them much and are only basing your opinion on what others have done with them. LM can't "think" and it is really obvious that this is the case after you interact with them. My cat has more personality ...