6 ms·

I'm still midway through the paper, but I gotta say, I'm a little surprised at the contrast between the contents of the paper and how people have described it o

I'm still midway through the paper, but I gotta say, I'm a little surprised at the contrast between the contents of the paper and how people have described it on HN. I don't agree with everything that is said, but there are some interesting points made about the data used to train the models, such as it capturing bias (I would certainly question the methodology of using reddit as a large source of training data), and that bias being amplified by filtering algorithms that produce the even larger datasets used for modern LLMs. The section about environmental impact might not hit home for everyone, but it is valid to raise issues around the compute usage involved in training these models. First, because it limits this training to companies who can spend millions of dollars on compute, and second because if we want to scale up models, efficiency is probably a top goal. What really confuses me here is how this paper is somehow outside the realm of valid academic discourse. Yes, it is steeped in activist, social justice language. Yes, it has a different perspective than most CS papers. But is that wrong? Is that enough of a sin to warrant such a response that this paper has received? I'll need to finish the paper to fully judge, but I'm leaning towards no, it is not enough of a sin.

AbrahamParangi 4y ago
I guess if one aspires to academic discourse about Truth rather than about Activism or about Power then this will seem somewhat like motivated reasoning.
- wizzwizz4 4y ago
  If you want academic discourse about truth, become a philosopher. Activism and power are just as real as trees and language models. Discussing them is discussing the world. Your concern about motivated reasoning is a valid one – but motivated reasoning is different to persuasive language. If anything, persuasive language highlights the places you should be looking for motivated reasoning (but it also makes it harder to spot, for some people; I don't recommend using persuasive language in your own papers).
  - AbrahamParangi 4y ago
    I think of it as something like the journalist becoming part of the story. Yes we all have our opinions but to the extent that I can tell what yours are the researcher has become the subject and frankly, that is much less interesting.
thorncorona 4y ago
The sin is not activist language, the sin is applying rhetoric in academic language to distort the truth to make a point. It’s concern trolling to gain academic clout. Page 3 of a 14 page paper already claims with a straight face that LLMs are responsible for the sinking of Maldives. > Training a single BERT base model (without hyperparameter tuning) on GPUs was estimated to require as much energy as a trans-American flight. > Is it fair or just to ask, for example, that the residents of the Maldives (likely to be underwater by 2100 [6]) or the 800,000 people in Sudan affected by drastic floods7 pay the environmental price of training and deploying ever larger English LMs, when similar large-scale models aren’t being produced for Dhivehi or Sudanese Arabic?
- rcme 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - UncleEntity 4y ago
    I don’t even think they’re using jet fuel to power the computers used to train these models… We need a new measure, how about “how many bitcoins could have been mined from the energy used”?
- wizzwizz4 4y ago
  The text you quoted claims that the "environmental price" is of "as much energy as a trans-American flight". It implies that this would contribute to these issues (true), and rhetorically suggests that this is not fair, but words-as-written, I don't see any distortion of truth. Heck, it's using familiar units: most of us have an order-of-magnitude idea how many trans-American flights there are each month. "Author is not affecting a neutral point of view" is not the same as "author is distorting truth".
- matsemann 4y ago
  You say it "distort the truth to make a point", and then in your next paragraph lie about the contents of the paper.. Like, it absolutely does not claim LLMs sinking the Maldives. How can you say that with a straight face?
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
> I'm a little surprised at the contrast between the contents of the paper and how people have described it on HN. I haven't read the paper beyond the abstract yet, so can't comment on it's contents, but can you specify what you mean by "how people have described it on HN"? To be frank, I don't like this style of argument, because I literally don't know what you're referring to. I'm quite familiar with the hubbub that happened when Gebru left Google, but feelings around what happened there shouldn't be misconstrued as feedback on this paper specifically. In other words, if you think that people are arguing that this paper is "outside the realm of valid academic discourse", I think you should call out what you're referring to, because I haven't seen that as a widely held opinion. It feels like a straw man, or at the very least you are discounting some very specific critiques other commenters have made by just broadly referring to "HN sentiment".
- hardwaregeek 4y ago
  Apologies, I assumed it would be clear from the other comments. When I posted this the top comment was a very visibly negative take on the paper. Similarly, Google must have considered this paper to be sufficiently outside the realm of valid academic discourse because their actions around the release of this paper lead to the termination of a couple authors and a PR snafu.
  - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    Thanks for explaining. FWIW, I don't think your last sentence is a fair assessment of what happened at all. Pointing out major deficiencies in a paper is not the same thing as saying it's "sufficiently outside the realm of valid academic discourse", and, having closely followed the news when this all went down, it's clear that it's what happened in the aftermath of this paper that led to the terminations - it's not like Google said "this paper is so bad, you're fired".
    - hardwaregeek 4y ago
      I can’t speak to the aftermath but even interfering in the publication of the paper is pretty dramatic. If Google had let it go through and not said anything, or at worst published a milquetoast response saying they disagree but respect the discourse, I don’t think the paper would have had half the attention. If your scientists publish a paper that is not even wrong, do you ask them to retract it? Shouldn’t the response from the larger academic community be enough?

AbrahamParangi 4y ago

I guess if one aspires to academic discourse about Truth rather than about Activism or about Power then this will seem somewhat like motivated reasoning.

wizzwizz4 4y ago
If you want academic discourse about truth, become a philosopher. Activism and power are just as real as trees and language models. Discussing them is discussing the world. Your concern about motivated reasoning is a valid one – but motivated reasoning is different to persuasive language. If anything, persuasive language highlights the places you should be looking for motivated reasoning (but it also makes it harder to spot, for some people; I don't recommend using persuasive language in your own papers).
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  I think of it as something like the journalist becoming part of the story. Yes we all have our opinions but to the extent that I can tell what yours are the researcher has become the subject and frankly, that is much less interesting.

thorncorona 4y ago

The sin is not activist language, the sin is applying rhetoric in academic language to distort the truth to make a point. It’s concern trolling to gain academic clout. Page 3 of a 14 page paper already claims with a straight face that LLMs are responsible for the sinking of Maldives. > Training a single BERT base model (without hyperparameter tuning) on GPUs was estimated to require as much energy as a trans-American flight. > Is it fair or just to ask, for example, that the residents of the Maldives (likely to be underwater by 2100 [6]) or the 800,000 people in Sudan affected by drastic floods7 pay the environmental price of training and deploying ever larger English LMs, when similar large-scale models aren’t being produced for Dhivehi or Sudanese Arabic?

rcme 4y ago
[flagged]
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  I don’t even think they’re using jet fuel to power the computers used to train these models… We need a new measure, how about “how many bitcoins could have been mined from the energy used”?
wizzwizz4 4y ago
The text you quoted claims that the "environmental price" is of "as much energy as a trans-American flight". It implies that this would contribute to these issues (true), and rhetorically suggests that this is not fair, but words-as-written, I don't see any distortion of truth. Heck, it's using familiar units: most of us have an order-of-magnitude idea how many trans-American flights there are each month. "Author is not affecting a neutral point of view" is not the same as "author is distorting truth".
matsemann 4y ago
You say it "distort the truth to make a point", and then in your next paragraph lie about the contents of the paper.. Like, it absolutely does not claim LLMs sinking the Maldives. How can you say that with a straight face?

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

> I'm a little surprised at the contrast between the contents of the paper and how people have described it on HN. I haven't read the paper beyond the abstract yet, so can't comment on it's contents, but can you specify what you mean by "how people have described it on HN"? To be frank, I don't like this style of argument, because I literally don't know what you're referring to. I'm quite familiar with the hubbub that happened when Gebru left Google, but feelings around what happened there shouldn't be misconstrued as feedback on this paper specifically. In other words, if you think that people are arguing that this paper is "outside the realm of valid academic discourse", I think you should call out what you're referring to, because I haven't seen that as a widely held opinion. It feels like a straw man, or at the very least you are discounting some very specific critiques other commenters have made by just broadly referring to "HN sentiment".

hardwaregeek 4y ago
Apologies, I assumed it would be clear from the other comments. When I posted this the top comment was a very visibly negative take on the paper. Similarly, Google must have considered this paper to be sufficiently outside the realm of valid academic discourse because their actions around the release of this paper lead to the termination of a couple authors and a PR snafu.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  Thanks for explaining. FWIW, I don't think your last sentence is a fair assessment of what happened at all. Pointing out major deficiencies in a paper is not the same thing as saying it's "sufficiently outside the realm of valid academic discourse", and, having closely followed the news when this all went down, it's clear that it's what happened in the aftermath of this paper that led to the terminations - it's not like Google said "this paper is so bad, you're fired".
  - hardwaregeek 4y ago
    I can’t speak to the aftermath but even interfering in the publication of the paper is pretty dramatic. If Google had let it go through and not said anything, or at worst published a milquetoast response saying they disagree but respect the discourse, I don’t think the paper would have had half the attention. If your scientists publish a paper that is not even wrong, do you ask them to retract it? Shouldn’t the response from the larger academic community be enough?