7 ms·

I have been trying to help folks understand what the underlying mechanisms of these generative LLM's are so it's not such a surprise when we get wrong answers f

I have been trying to help folks understand what the underlying mechanisms of these generative LLM's are so it's not such a surprise when we get wrong answers from them by putting together some youtube videos on the topic. * [On the question of replacing Engineers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMmIol4mnLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMmIol4mnLo) * [On AI Plagiarism](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whbNCSZb3c8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whbNCSZb3c8) The consensus seems to be building now on HackerNews that there is a huge over-hype. Hopefully these two videos help see some of the nuance behind why it's an over-hype. That being said, being that language generation is probabilistic, a given language model which is transformer based can either be trained or fine-tuned to have fewer errors in a particular domain - so this is all far from settled. Long-term, I think we're going to see something closer to human intelligence from CNN's and other forms of neural networks than from transformers, which are really a poor man's NN. As hardware advances and NN's inevitably become cheaper to run, we will continue to see scarier and scarier A.I. -- I'm talking over a 10-20 year timeframe.

whimsicalism 4y ago
HN was always going to be overly pessimistic with regards to this stuff, so this was utterly predictable. I work in this field & it almost pains me to see it come into the mainstream and see all of the terrible takes that pundits can contort this into, ie. LLM as a "lossy jpeg of the internet" (bad, but honestly one of the better ones).
- wwwpatdelcom 4y ago
  Yes..."Lossy JPEG," at least describes the idea that there is, some kind of "subsampling," going on, rather than just...a magical box? I think most laypeople understand the simple statement, "it's a parrot." I had the original author of this paper reach out to me about my plagiarism video on Mastodon: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922 The idea of a lossy JPEG/Parrot helps capture the idea that there are dangers and opportunities in LLM's. You can have fake or doctored images spread, you can have a Parrot swear at someone and cause un-needed conflict - but they can also be great tools and/or cute and helpful companions, as long as we understand their limitations.
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    The issue is that it doesn't just recreate things it was trained on, it generates novel content. There is no reason that novel pathways of "thought" (or whatever makes one comfortable) aren't emergent in a model under optimization & regularization. This is what the "lossy compression" and "stochastic parrot" layperson models do not capture. Nonetheless, people will lap them up. They want a more comfortable understanding that lets them avoid having to question their pseudo-belief in souls and the duality of mind and body. Few in the public seem to want to confront the idea of the mind as an emergent phenomenon from interactions of neurons in the brain. It is not simply regurgitating training data like everyone seems to want it to.
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
      I think its unfair and asinine to caricature sceptics as ignorant people in denial, holding on to some outdated idea of a soul. That's the sort of argument someone makes when they're so entrenched in their own views they see nothing but their own biases.
      - whimsicalism 4y ago
        Ask people to describe how they think the mind functions and you will very often get something very akin to soul-like belief. Many, many people are not very comfortable with the mind as emergent phenomenon. A straight majority of people in the US (and likely globally) believe in souls when polled, you are the one imputing the words of "ignorant people in denial" onto my statement of why people find views to the contrary uncomfortable. I understand that HN is a civil community. I don't think it is crossing the line to characterize people I disagree with as wrong and also theorize on why they might hold those wrong beliefs. Indeed, you are doing the same thing with my comment - speculating on why I might hold views that are 'asinine' because I see 'nothing but [my] own biases.'
        mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
        I'm not saying it's not true of most people in the world, but that doesn't make it a constructive argument. And you didn't use the words ignorant and denial, but they're reasonable synonyms to what you did say. When I do the "same thing" I'm really saying that when you represent yourself as from the field, you might want to cultivate a more nuanced view of the people outside the field, if you want to be taken seriously. Instead, given the view you presented, I'm forced to give your views the same credence I give a physicist who says their model of quantum gravity is definitely the correct one. I.e: "sure, you'd say that, wouldn't you"

whimsicalism 4y ago

HN was always going to be overly pessimistic with regards to this stuff, so this was utterly predictable. I work in this field & it almost pains me to see it come into the mainstream and see all of the terrible takes that pundits can contort this into, ie. LLM as a "lossy jpeg of the internet" (bad, but honestly one of the better ones).

wwwpatdelcom 4y ago
Yes..."Lossy JPEG," at least describes the idea that there is, some kind of "subsampling," going on, rather than just...a magical box? I think most laypeople understand the simple statement, "it's a parrot." I had the original author of this paper reach out to me about my plagiarism video on Mastodon: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922 The idea of a lossy JPEG/Parrot helps capture the idea that there are dangers and opportunities in LLM's. You can have fake or doctored images spread, you can have a Parrot swear at someone and cause un-needed conflict - but they can also be great tools and/or cute and helpful companions, as long as we understand their limitations.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  The issue is that it doesn't just recreate things it was trained on, it generates novel content. There is no reason that novel pathways of "thought" (or whatever makes one comfortable) aren't emergent in a model under optimization & regularization. This is what the "lossy compression" and "stochastic parrot" layperson models do not capture. Nonetheless, people will lap them up. They want a more comfortable understanding that lets them avoid having to question their pseudo-belief in souls and the duality of mind and body. Few in the public seem to want to confront the idea of the mind as an emergent phenomenon from interactions of neurons in the brain. It is not simply regurgitating training data like everyone seems to want it to.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    I think its unfair and asinine to caricature sceptics as ignorant people in denial, holding on to some outdated idea of a soul. That's the sort of argument someone makes when they're so entrenched in their own views they see nothing but their own biases.
    - whimsicalism 4y ago
      Ask people to describe how they think the mind functions and you will very often get something very akin to soul-like belief. Many, many people are not very comfortable with the mind as emergent phenomenon. A straight majority of people in the US (and likely globally) believe in souls when polled, you are the one imputing the words of "ignorant people in denial" onto my statement of why people find views to the contrary uncomfortable. I understand that HN is a civil community. I don't think it is crossing the line to characterize people I disagree with as wrong and also theorize on why they might hold those wrong beliefs. Indeed, you are doing the same thing with my comment - speculating on why I might hold views that are 'asinine' because I see 'nothing but [my] own biases.'
      - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
        I'm not saying it's not true of most people in the world, but that doesn't make it a constructive argument. And you didn't use the words ignorant and denial, but they're reasonable synonyms to what you did say. When I do the "same thing" I'm really saying that when you represent yourself as from the field, you might want to cultivate a more nuanced view of the people outside the field, if you want to be taken seriously. Instead, given the view you presented, I'm forced to give your views the same credence I give a physicist who says their model of quantum gravity is definitely the correct one. I.e: "sure, you'd say that, wouldn't you"