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This is what you said originally: "We only need a single counter example to show that Othello-GPT does not have a systemic understanding of the rules, only a st

This is what you said originally: "We only need a single counter example to show that Othello-GPT does not have a systemic understanding of the rules, only a statistical inference of them." I don't believe this statement to be true. It is clearly not true that a single counter example rules out systemic understanding of rules for ALL intelligent systems. Human intelligence is offered as the case in point. So, given that the statement is not true for all systems, by what logic do you conclude that the statement is true specifically for an LLM?

nickelpro 4y ago
> It is clearly not true that a single counter example rules out systemic understanding of rules for ALL intelligent systems. I didn't say anything about "intelligence", the OP is not about "intelligence". The OP claim is, "we find interesting evidence that simple sequence prediction can lead to the formation of a world model". A world model, an accurate one, is a very different thing than a statistical model. An inaccurate world model is indistinguishable from a statistical model. An accurate world model, definitionally, does not make mistakes. These models are trivial to produce, classical chess engines are accurate world models. > Human intelligence is offered as the case in point. I think you've hit on a more interesting point about human intelligence, that it is often not an accurate world model, which means it is inaccurate or more likely, statistical in nature. > So, given that the statement is not true for all systems, by what logic do you conclude that the statement is true specifically for an LLM? So what we're left with is that OthelloGPT (and humans, but again, what's going on with humans is irrelevant to the study of an LLM) is in one of two scenarios, it either: A) Has an inaccurate world model, or we might say, an accurate world model of a game that is not Othello B) Is still basically just a curve fitting algorithm, which there's all the evidence in the world to suggest it is It sits upon the authors to distinguish between these two choices, and they never offer any evidence either way. So I side with B.

nickelpro 4y ago

> It is clearly not true that a single counter example rules out systemic understanding of rules for ALL intelligent systems. I didn't say anything about "intelligence", the OP is not about "intelligence". The OP claim is, "we find interesting evidence that simple sequence prediction can lead to the formation of a world model". A world model, an accurate one, is a very different thing than a statistical model. An inaccurate world model is indistinguishable from a statistical model. An accurate world model, definitionally, does not make mistakes. These models are trivial to produce, classical chess engines are accurate world models. > Human intelligence is offered as the case in point. I think you've hit on a more interesting point about human intelligence, that it is often not an accurate world model, which means it is inaccurate or more likely, statistical in nature. > So, given that the statement is not true for all systems, by what logic do you conclude that the statement is true specifically for an LLM? So what we're left with is that OthelloGPT (and humans, but again, what's going on with humans is irrelevant to the study of an LLM) is in one of two scenarios, it either: A) Has an inaccurate world model, or we might say, an accurate world model of a game that is not Othello B) Is still basically just a curve fitting algorithm, which there's all the evidence in the world to suggest it is It sits upon the authors to distinguish between these two choices, and they never offer any evidence either way. So I side with B.