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Oh please. This community is filled to the brim with people that are addicted to negativity and contrarianism. LLM criticisms very typically go far far beyond “

Oh please. This community is filled to the brim with people that are addicted to negativity and contrarianism. LLM criticisms very typically go far far beyond “this isn’t the singularity”, well toward “LLMs do nothing of value, snd certainly can’t I - the esteemed developer - with anything I find hard in my job!”

Jensson 4y ago
Not many say "LLMs do nothing of value". Many comments say LLMs aren't useful to them, but I haven't seen many say that LLMs aren't useful at all.
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  I’ve seen countless comments stating that it is just predicting the next token, move along, nothing to see here.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    That is literally what LLMs do though. Those comments try to explain how it works so you better can see how it produced the results you see, they aren't trying to say that the program is worthless just that it isn't the magic some people think it is. These models are trained to produce text snippets that look like text snippets it has seen before, and it has seen all internet. That means it can do a lot of impressive things, but also that it is very dumb in other ways.
    - dm33tri 4y ago
      These comments are deceptive. Yes, this is how LLMs work, but that doesn't mean they only repeat things they have seen before. LLMs are capable of following instructions to construct new words in any language they know, words never seen before. I've seen it being dumb in maths or real world problems. But as a large language models, they understand and speak languages fine, and even mistakes they make look like mistakes humans who are not natives in the language would make. We may as well say that when we speak, we are just predicting words we have trained on. I don't see how these models are worse than people in that regard. The general knowledge and thinking of these models are surely limited. But seeing GPT-4 go from text only input to text with images, I think it is very possible to break the barriers very soon.
      - oska 4y ago
        Ok, since you called out the gp comment as 'deceptive', I in turn am going to call out your comment (and others like it) as delusional, and point to specific places in your comment that exhibit this state of delusion (about LLMs). > they understand and speak languages fine No, they neither 'understand' nor 'speak' languages. The first word here is the more delusional, they have no understanding of languages. They have simply generated a model of the language. And they do not 'speak' the language they have modeled; they generate text in that language. Speaking generally implies an active intelligence; there is no intelligence behind an LLM. There is simply a machine generating (wholly derivative) output text from input text. > We may as well say that when we speak, we are just predicting words we have trained on This is the delusion, commonly being repeated, that humans themselves are only LLMs. This is a dangerous delusion, in my view, and one that has no evidence behind it. It is only a supposition, and a sterile and nihilistic one in my view. > The general knowledge and thinking of these models are surely limited [...] I think it is very possible to break the barriers very soon The limitations are fundamental to LLMs. LLMs have no general knowledge and LLMs don't do any 'thinking'. Your understanding of what they are doing is in grave error, and that error is based on a personification of the machine. An error coming from the delusion that because they generate 'natural' language they are operating similarly to us (false and addressed above). They are never going to break the limits because they have never started to transcend those limits in the first place, nor can they. They don't and will never 'think' or 'reason'.
adt 4y ago
>Oh please. This community is filled to the brim with people that are addicted to negativity and contrarianism. LLM criticisms very typically go far far beyond “this isn’t the singularity”, well toward “LLMs do nothing of value, snd certainly can’t I - the esteemed developer - with anything I find hard in my job!” Yep. Welcome to HN. And welcome to the majority of humanity! https://lifearchitect.ai/contrarianism/ https://lifearchitect.ai/contrarianism/ https://lifearchitect.ai/why-does-ai-make-you-so-angry/ https://lifearchitect.ai/why-does-ai-make-you-so-angry/ https://lifearchitect.ai/ai-panic/ https://lifearchitect.ai/ai-panic/

Jensson 4y ago

Not many say "LLMs do nothing of value". Many comments say LLMs aren't useful to them, but I haven't seen many say that LLMs aren't useful at all.

UncleEntity 4y ago
I’ve seen countless comments stating that it is just predicting the next token, move along, nothing to see here.
- Jensson 4y ago
  That is literally what LLMs do though. Those comments try to explain how it works so you better can see how it produced the results you see, they aren't trying to say that the program is worthless just that it isn't the magic some people think it is. These models are trained to produce text snippets that look like text snippets it has seen before, and it has seen all internet. That means it can do a lot of impressive things, but also that it is very dumb in other ways.
  - dm33tri 4y ago
    These comments are deceptive. Yes, this is how LLMs work, but that doesn't mean they only repeat things they have seen before. LLMs are capable of following instructions to construct new words in any language they know, words never seen before. I've seen it being dumb in maths or real world problems. But as a large language models, they understand and speak languages fine, and even mistakes they make look like mistakes humans who are not natives in the language would make. We may as well say that when we speak, we are just predicting words we have trained on. I don't see how these models are worse than people in that regard. The general knowledge and thinking of these models are surely limited. But seeing GPT-4 go from text only input to text with images, I think it is very possible to break the barriers very soon.
    - oska 4y ago
      Ok, since you called out the gp comment as 'deceptive', I in turn am going to call out your comment (and others like it) as delusional, and point to specific places in your comment that exhibit this state of delusion (about LLMs). > they understand and speak languages fine No, they neither 'understand' nor 'speak' languages. The first word here is the more delusional, they have no understanding of languages. They have simply generated a model of the language. And they do not 'speak' the language they have modeled; they generate text in that language. Speaking generally implies an active intelligence; there is no intelligence behind an LLM. There is simply a machine generating (wholly derivative) output text from input text. > We may as well say that when we speak, we are just predicting words we have trained on This is the delusion, commonly being repeated, that humans themselves are only LLMs. This is a dangerous delusion, in my view, and one that has no evidence behind it. It is only a supposition, and a sterile and nihilistic one in my view. > The general knowledge and thinking of these models are surely limited [...] I think it is very possible to break the barriers very soon The limitations are fundamental to LLMs. LLMs have no general knowledge and LLMs don't do any 'thinking'. Your understanding of what they are doing is in grave error, and that error is based on a personification of the machine. An error coming from the delusion that because they generate 'natural' language they are operating similarly to us (false and addressed above). They are never going to break the limits because they have never started to transcend those limits in the first place, nor can they. They don't and will never 'think' or 'reason'.

adt 4y ago

>Oh please. This community is filled to the brim with people that are addicted to negativity and contrarianism. LLM criticisms very typically go far far beyond “this isn’t the singularity”, well toward “LLMs do nothing of value, snd certainly can’t I - the esteemed developer - with anything I find hard in my job!” Yep. Welcome to HN. And welcome to the majority of humanity! https://lifearchitect.ai/contrarianism/ https://lifearchitect.ai/contrarianism/ https://lifearchitect.ai/why-does-ai-make-you-so-angry/ https://lifearchitect.ai/why-does-ai-make-you-so-angry/ https://lifearchitect.ai/ai-panic/ https://lifearchitect.ai/ai-panic/