4 ms·

Impossible. If humans are just predicting the next word then this makes us no different from LLMs.

peteradio 4y ago
What is a word?
LoganDark 4y ago
Ever wondered why some people always try to complete others' sentences (myself included)? It's because some people can't keep the possibilities to themselves. The problem isn't that they're predicting, it's that they echo their predictions before the other person is even done speaking. Everyone forms those predictions, it's how they come to an understanding of what was just said. You don't necessarily memorize just the words themselves. You derive conclusions from them, and therefore, while you are hearing them, you are deriving possible conclusions that will be confirmed or denied based on what you hear next. I have an audio processing disorder, where I can clearly hear and memorize words, but sometimes I just won't understand them and will say "what?". But sometimes, before the other person can repeat anything, I'll have used my memory of those words to process them properly, and I'll give a response anyway. A lot of people thought I just had a habit of saying "what?" for no reason. And this happens in tandem with tending to complete any sentences I can process in time...
- pxc 4y ago
  > I have an audio processing disorder, where I can clearly hear and memorize words, but sometimes I just won't understand them and will say "what?". But sometimes, before the other person can repeat anything, I'll have used my memory of those words to process them properly, and I'll give a response anyway. What's it called? I do this sometimes also and I'd like to know more.
  - LoganDark 4y ago
    > What's it called? I do this sometimes also and I'd like to know more. I think it's called "Auditory Processing Disorder"[0]. I'm pretty sure it has to do with me being autistic. I've done hearing tests before and my hearing is just fine, it's just processing what I hear that is the problem. "Sometimes saying [“huh,” “what,” or “I don’t understand”] and then immediately responding appropriately"[1] is exactly what happens with me. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder [1]: https://www.vocovision.com/resources/parents/auditory-processing-disorder/#:~:text=Sometimes%20saying%20one%20of%20the%20above,immediately%20responding%20appropriately https://www.vocovision.com/resources/parents/auditory-proces...
    - pxc 4y ago
      Huh. I always just thought this was a feature of my ADHD, if I thought anything of it at all. Not sure if I'd qualify for a diagnosis, but either way, it's cool to have confirmed that such experiences are 'a thing'.
      - LoganDark 4y ago
        > if I thought anything of it at all I also only noticed because people would ask me to stop saying it, and then I would immediately say it anyway because it wasn't compulsive and I really couldn't tell that I was right about to understand what they said. I hadn't yet figured out that there was just a delay sometimes.
  - zingar 4y ago
    Thank you! I’ve been wondering about this behavior in myself my entire life.
permo-w 4y ago
there’s more to humans than language processing
whatshisface 4y ago
There are a lot of times when you're reading stuff that really does sound like the human equivalent of an LLM's output, but that is bad - you are not supposed to do it. A certain degree of that is necessary to write with good grammar but you are supposed to control your "tongue" (which is how previous generations would have phrased it) with the rest of your faculties.
- jalino23 4y ago
  word
jonplackett 4y ago
I don’t think that’s the right conclusion - predicting the next word doesn’t mean that’s the only thing we’re doing. But it would be a sensible and useful bit of information to have for more processing by other bits of brain. It makes complete sense you would have an idea of the next word in any sentence and some brain machinery to make that happen. It in no way means you’re just a LLM
- FrustratedMonky 4y ago
  I think this is moving the goal post. Every time there is an advance in AI/Machine Learning, the response is "well humans can still do X that a computer can't do, explain that!". And whenever there is a discovering in the brain, the response is "well, ok, that looks a lot like its running an algorithm, but we still have X that is totally un-explainable". "and some brain machinery to make that happen" - Getting close to not having a lot of "brain machinery" left that is still a mystery. Pretty soon we'll have to accept that we are just biological machines (albeit in the form of crap throwing monkeys), built on carbon instead of silicon, and we run a process that looks a lot like large scale neural nets, and we have same limitations, and how we respond to our environment is pre-determined.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    Setting short goals and them moving that goal once you hit it is a valid way to make progress, not sure why you think this is a bad thing. We hit a goal, now we are talking about future goals, why not?
    - FrustratedMonky 4y ago
      Sorry. Was responding to the overall gestalt of AI, where there are always things that "only a human can do", then they gets solved or duplicated by a computer, then the argument is "well, humans can still do X that a computer never will because of some mysterious component that is unique to humans, thus a computer can never ever replace humans or be conscious"
petilon 4y ago
LLMs are no different from us, because we modeled it after our brains. These papers suggest we are just predicting the next word: https://www.psycholinguistics.com/gerry_altmann/research/papers/files/Kamide_et_al_03.pdf https://www.psycholinguistics.com/gerry_altmann/research/pap... https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/23273798.2020.1859568 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/23273798.2020.18... https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1551-6709.2009.01022.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1551-6709.2009... https://www.earth.com/news/our-brains-are-constantly-working-to-predict-what-comes-next/ https://www.earth.com/news/our-brains-are-constantly-working...
- nuancebydefault 4y ago
  There's one thing you forgot: we only have some model of how a brain might work. The model will only stand as long as we don't find a better model. That's how science works.
  - taberiand 4y ago
    At some point though, the difference between the model and reality fall within a negligible error margin - particularly within a practical everyday context. Like, Newton's theory of gravity isn't perfect, but for most things it's pretty much good enough. Similarly if LLMs can be used to model human intelligence, and predict and manipulate human behaviour, it'll be good enough for corporations to exploit.
    - precompute 4y ago
      I think brain == LLM is only approaching true in the clean, "rational" world of the academia. The internet now amplifies this. IMHO it is not possible to make something perfectly similar to our own image in a culture that has taken to feeding upon itself. This sort of culture makes extracting value from it much, much more difficult. I think we map the model of our understanding of how we understand things to these "AI" programs. Doesn't count for much. We have so much more than our five senses, and I fully believe that we were made by God. We might come close to something that fulfills a great number of conditions for "life" but it will never be truly alive.
cscurmudgeon 4y ago
The "just" in your comment doesn't follow from the article. There is no evidence that there is nothing other than "predicting the next word" in the brain. It may be a part but not the only part.
thewataccount 4y ago
Predicting words != LLM. There's different methods of doing it, current LLMs are not necessarily the most optimal method. The paper states this as well, > This computational organization is at odds with current language algorithms, which are mostly trained to make adjacent and word-level predictions (Fig. 1a) I feel like you're suggesting because humans != LLMs then humans cannot be doing next word prediction.
- thomastjeffery 4y ago
  LLMs generate continuations. Those continuations are built from the text they are trained on. I see GP suggesting that because humans!= LLMs that "doing word prediction" is not an exhaustive list of human behavior.
thomastjeffery 4y ago
This is especially tricky for people to hear, because most of the talk around LLMs is actually about LLMs personified. Prediction certainly is one of the things we do with language. That doesn't mean it is the only thing! It's my contention that most of the behavior people are excited about LLMs exhibiting is really still human behavior that was captured and saved as data into the language itself. LLMs are not modeling grammar or language: they are modeling language examples. Human examples. Language echoes human thought, so it's natural for a model of that behavior (a model of humans using language) to echo the same behavior (human thought). Let's not forget, as exciting as it may be, that an echo is not an emulation.
- IIAOPSW 4y ago
  In the limit of 100% confidence of prediction, does it not equate a model? Put another way, when all the probabilities get set to either 100% or 0%, do you not simply arrive back at classical True/False logic?
mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
Wait, so now the fact that the brain tries to predict future inputs at all(which is not exactly news, btw, it'sbeen known a long time), suddenly means that's all the brain does? This is not how science works.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

What is a word?

Ever wondered why some people always try to complete others' sentences (myself included)? It's because some people can't keep the possibilities to themselves. The problem isn't that they're predicting, it's that they echo their predictions before the other person is even done speaking. Everyone forms those predictions, it's how they come to an understanding of what was just said. You don't necessarily memorize just the words themselves. You derive conclusions from them, and therefore, while you are hearing them, you are deriving possible conclusions that will be confirmed or denied based on what you hear next. I have an audio processing disorder, where I can clearly hear and memorize words, but sometimes I just won't understand them and will say "what?". But sometimes, before the other person can repeat anything, I'll have used my memory of those words to process them properly, and I'll give a response anyway. A lot of people thought I just had a habit of saying "what?" for no reason. And this happens in tandem with tending to complete any sentences I can process in time...

pxc 4y ago
> I have an audio processing disorder, where I can clearly hear and memorize words, but sometimes I just won't understand them and will say "what?". But sometimes, before the other person can repeat anything, I'll have used my memory of those words to process them properly, and I'll give a response anyway. What's it called? I do this sometimes also and I'd like to know more.
- LoganDark 4y ago
  > What's it called? I do this sometimes also and I'd like to know more. I think it's called "Auditory Processing Disorder"[0]. I'm pretty sure it has to do with me being autistic. I've done hearing tests before and my hearing is just fine, it's just processing what I hear that is the problem. "Sometimes saying [“huh,” “what,” or “I don’t understand”] and then immediately responding appropriately"[1] is exactly what happens with me. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder [1]: https://www.vocovision.com/resources/parents/auditory-processing-disorder/#:~:text=Sometimes%20saying%20one%20of%20the%20above,immediately%20responding%20appropriately https://www.vocovision.com/resources/parents/auditory-proces...
  - pxc 4y ago
    Huh. I always just thought this was a feature of my ADHD, if I thought anything of it at all. Not sure if I'd qualify for a diagnosis, but either way, it's cool to have confirmed that such experiences are 'a thing'.
    - LoganDark 4y ago
      > if I thought anything of it at all I also only noticed because people would ask me to stop saying it, and then I would immediately say it anyway because it wasn't compulsive and I really couldn't tell that I was right about to understand what they said. I hadn't yet figured out that there was just a delay sometimes.
- zingar 4y ago
  Thank you! I’ve been wondering about this behavior in myself my entire life.

permo-w 4y ago

there’s more to humans than language processing

whatshisface 4y ago

There are a lot of times when you're reading stuff that really does sound like the human equivalent of an LLM's output, but that is bad - you are not supposed to do it. A certain degree of that is necessary to write with good grammar but you are supposed to control your "tongue" (which is how previous generations would have phrased it) with the rest of your faculties.

jalino23 4y ago
word

jonplackett 4y ago

I don’t think that’s the right conclusion - predicting the next word doesn’t mean that’s the only thing we’re doing. But it would be a sensible and useful bit of information to have for more processing by other bits of brain. It makes complete sense you would have an idea of the next word in any sentence and some brain machinery to make that happen. It in no way means you’re just a LLM

FrustratedMonky 4y ago
I think this is moving the goal post. Every time there is an advance in AI/Machine Learning, the response is "well humans can still do X that a computer can't do, explain that!". And whenever there is a discovering in the brain, the response is "well, ok, that looks a lot like its running an algorithm, but we still have X that is totally un-explainable". "and some brain machinery to make that happen" - Getting close to not having a lot of "brain machinery" left that is still a mystery. Pretty soon we'll have to accept that we are just biological machines (albeit in the form of crap throwing monkeys), built on carbon instead of silicon, and we run a process that looks a lot like large scale neural nets, and we have same limitations, and how we respond to our environment is pre-determined.
- Jensson 4y ago
  Setting short goals and them moving that goal once you hit it is a valid way to make progress, not sure why you think this is a bad thing. We hit a goal, now we are talking about future goals, why not?
  - FrustratedMonky 4y ago
    Sorry. Was responding to the overall gestalt of AI, where there are always things that "only a human can do", then they gets solved or duplicated by a computer, then the argument is "well, humans can still do X that a computer never will because of some mysterious component that is unique to humans, thus a computer can never ever replace humans or be conscious"

petilon 4y ago

LLMs are no different from us, because we modeled it after our brains. These papers suggest we are just predicting the next word: https://www.psycholinguistics.com/gerry_altmann/research/papers/files/Kamide_et_al_03.pdf https://www.psycholinguistics.com/gerry_altmann/research/pap... https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/23273798.2020.1859568 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/23273798.2020.18... https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1551-6709.2009.01022.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1551-6709.2009... https://www.earth.com/news/our-brains-are-constantly-working-to-predict-what-comes-next/ https://www.earth.com/news/our-brains-are-constantly-working...

nuancebydefault 4y ago
There's one thing you forgot: we only have some model of how a brain might work. The model will only stand as long as we don't find a better model. That's how science works.
- taberiand 4y ago
  At some point though, the difference between the model and reality fall within a negligible error margin - particularly within a practical everyday context. Like, Newton's theory of gravity isn't perfect, but for most things it's pretty much good enough. Similarly if LLMs can be used to model human intelligence, and predict and manipulate human behaviour, it'll be good enough for corporations to exploit.
  - precompute 4y ago
    I think brain == LLM is only approaching true in the clean, "rational" world of the academia. The internet now amplifies this. IMHO it is not possible to make something perfectly similar to our own image in a culture that has taken to feeding upon itself. This sort of culture makes extracting value from it much, much more difficult. I think we map the model of our understanding of how we understand things to these "AI" programs. Doesn't count for much. We have so much more than our five senses, and I fully believe that we were made by God. We might come close to something that fulfills a great number of conditions for "life" but it will never be truly alive.

cscurmudgeon 4y ago

The "just" in your comment doesn't follow from the article. There is no evidence that there is nothing other than "predicting the next word" in the brain. It may be a part but not the only part.

thewataccount 4y ago

Predicting words != LLM. There's different methods of doing it, current LLMs are not necessarily the most optimal method. The paper states this as well, > This computational organization is at odds with current language algorithms, which are mostly trained to make adjacent and word-level predictions (Fig. 1a) I feel like you're suggesting because humans != LLMs then humans cannot be doing next word prediction.

thomastjeffery 4y ago
LLMs generate continuations. Those continuations are built from the text they are trained on. I see GP suggesting that because humans!= LLMs that "doing word prediction" is not an exhaustive list of human behavior.

thomastjeffery 4y ago

This is especially tricky for people to hear, because most of the talk around LLMs is actually about LLMs personified. Prediction certainly is one of the things we do with language. That doesn't mean it is the only thing! It's my contention that most of the behavior people are excited about LLMs exhibiting is really still human behavior that was captured and saved as data into the language itself. LLMs are not modeling grammar or language: they are modeling language examples. Human examples. Language echoes human thought, so it's natural for a model of that behavior (a model of humans using language) to echo the same behavior (human thought). Let's not forget, as exciting as it may be, that an echo is not an emulation.

IIAOPSW 4y ago
In the limit of 100% confidence of prediction, does it not equate a model? Put another way, when all the probabilities get set to either 100% or 0%, do you not simply arrive back at classical True/False logic?

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago

Wait, so now the fact that the brain tries to predict future inputs at all(which is not exactly news, btw, it'sbeen known a long time), suddenly means that's all the brain does? This is not how science works.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]