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It's a great engineering advancement, but scientific advancement implies some kind of gain in human knowledge, and that hasn't happened to a great extent. We s

It's a great engineering advancement, but scientific advancement implies some kind of gain in human knowledge, and that hasn't happened to a great extent. We still don't understand how these models really work, at least not in a way that teaches us anything about language or about humanity.

pixl97 4y ago
>implies some kind of gain in human knowledge I find that a strange take. Almost all scientific advancement ends in one thing. Another set of unanswered questions. Quite often we gain more knowledge, but know less because we realize there are thousands more questions we should have been asking. For example, theory of mind being observed out of just processing language is a big arrow that we may have been thinking about many things wrong in the past and open new avenues for 'scientific' tests that give us answers.
- ianmcgowan 4y ago
  It's got to have shaken up the field of cognitive research or people studying mind/consciousness. Is there a "hacker news" of theory of mind researchers? Probably some interesting conversations happening over there.
dd36 4y ago
We’ve absolutely gained knowledge. We’ve learned how good these models can be. We’ve effectively made like a general teenager that can be up-trained for specific tasks. It’s super useful if you know how to use it.
boringg 4y ago
I'd 100% agree with this take. It's a great engineering achievement but it isn't a scientific breakthrough, much less one of the greatest scientific achievements of humankind.
moffkalast 4y ago
> but scientific advancement implies some kind of gain in productivity FTFY. At least any kind of actually notable scientific advancement like using metals, farming, steam power, electricity, cars, planes, computers, etc. If a person can use a chatbot to speed up their work then that's a major advancement in productivity right there.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ianmcgowan 4y ago
  Almost a textbook answer to "what is the difference between science and technology".
  - moffkalast 4y ago
    Two sides of the same coin.
rcme 4y ago
> We still don't understand how these models really work, at least not in a way that teaches us anything about language or about humanity. We understand how LLMs work conceptually. Human language, when parameterized as a sequence of tokens, has geometry and structure in a billion dimensional space. A priori, we didn't know that. So in a very real sense, a discovery was made.
est 4y ago
> but scientific advancement implies some kind of gain in human knowledge The unexplained Chain-of-Thought emerges from LLM surely would an huge gain in "knowledge". In fact I'd say it potentially the most important meta-knowledge human race can gain, you know, to unlock the mystery of "conciousness" itself.

pixl97 4y ago

>implies some kind of gain in human knowledge I find that a strange take. Almost all scientific advancement ends in one thing. Another set of unanswered questions. Quite often we gain more knowledge, but know less because we realize there are thousands more questions we should have been asking. For example, theory of mind being observed out of just processing language is a big arrow that we may have been thinking about many things wrong in the past and open new avenues for 'scientific' tests that give us answers.

ianmcgowan 4y ago
It's got to have shaken up the field of cognitive research or people studying mind/consciousness. Is there a "hacker news" of theory of mind researchers? Probably some interesting conversations happening over there.

dd36 4y ago

We’ve absolutely gained knowledge. We’ve learned how good these models can be. We’ve effectively made like a general teenager that can be up-trained for specific tasks. It’s super useful if you know how to use it.

boringg 4y ago

I'd 100% agree with this take. It's a great engineering achievement but it isn't a scientific breakthrough, much less one of the greatest scientific achievements of humankind.

moffkalast 4y ago

> but scientific advancement implies some kind of gain in productivity FTFY. At least any kind of actually notable scientific advancement like using metals, farming, steam power, electricity, cars, planes, computers, etc. If a person can use a chatbot to speed up their work then that's a major advancement in productivity right there.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ianmcgowan 4y ago
Almost a textbook answer to "what is the difference between science and technology".
- moffkalast 4y ago
  Two sides of the same coin.

rcme 4y ago

> We still don't understand how these models really work, at least not in a way that teaches us anything about language or about humanity. We understand how LLMs work conceptually. Human language, when parameterized as a sequence of tokens, has geometry and structure in a billion dimensional space. A priori, we didn't know that. So in a very real sense, a discovery was made.

est 4y ago

> but scientific advancement implies some kind of gain in human knowledge The unexplained Chain-of-Thought emerges from LLM surely would an huge gain in "knowledge". In fact I'd say it potentially the most important meta-knowledge human race can gain, you know, to unlock the mystery of "conciousness" itself.