6 ms·

Internalising the idea (not 'fact') that 'we're basically LLMs' will only take you to a place of deep sterility, delusion and nihilism.

by oska 4y ago

vkazanov 4y ago
Why? Do you prefer magical "handwavy" thinking? A lot of things just fall in place if you accept an obvious fact that the brain is just a powerful enough function with certain inputs and outputs. Neurons are not that complicated. There are interesting consequences here though: no stable grammars, no truly uniform thinking, no singular way to understand people.
- oska 4y ago
  The 'handwavey' thinking here is from those who state as a 'fact' that the human brain is an LLM
  - vkazanov 4y ago
    Well, I didn't say a brain is just an LLM. It's more complicated than just this. But what LLM showed is that it works using the same simple building blocks + specialised parts of the brain: memory, constant relearning and world input, etc. So in this particular case of LLMs we've managed to optimise our way around having specialised brain structures using a powerful enough math function. Next steps require improvements in how the model is trained, how we can reduce the amount of training data, what additional machinery might be necessary, etc... But, damn it, this very thing that makes humanity possible - our language - is solved now. Natural language is a solved problem now. That very thing that makes complex societies possible - it's done. This is the fact. And it is crazy. EDIT: typos
    - oska 4y ago
      I don't share any of the excitement that ppl like you appear to be feeling, and I recoil from the grandiose claims being made by people who, in my opinion, are being fooled by the 21st century equivalent of a ventriloquist's doll. (I did feel excitement while following the development of AlphaZero and its played Go matches, but that was because it was revealing greater depths and beauty in the human created game of Go. And I maintain some interest in following the development of self-driving, particularly by Tesla.) With regard to LLMs I can see how they could be useful. I think more particularly useful when they work from a constrained corpus, so the user can know what they're drawing from (and thus the limitations of that knowledge base). The example site that been posted by its maker to HN [1] where you can ask questions against a particular book is a good one for showing the use of the tool I think. But it's just a tool and it's not in any way a breakthrough in our understanding of ourselves, of cognition or anything like that. I think the people who are making these claims can't distinguish science fiction from actual reality. They are fantasists and I think they are leading themselves and others into delusion. [1] https://portal.konjer.xyz/ https://portal.konjer.xyz/
      - vkazanov 4y ago
        I am not excited. I am terrified. Right at the beginning of the current wave (2010-2012) of ML approaches I did some work on ML systems and NLP, and back then I clearly saw how nothing truly outstanding is happening, we were only starting to figure our what GPUs were capable of. So all of this was fun: NLP, ML, vintage AI. But nothing felt like it did was groundbreaking, or would solve fundamental true GAI problems, or was even close. Yet, 10 years later, here we are. Language is solved. In most areas I know /something/ about (programming, ML, NLP, compilers) this is huge and makes mountains of knowledge obsolete.
      - vkazanov 4y ago
        For me AlphaZero was boring. :-) Solution space is vast but rules are simple. It was a question of time when somebody could put things together here. There was nothing unknowable about it, unlike how natural languages were always a mystery to me. Even with all the syntax, grammars, linguistic knowledge, NLP... Something was lacking.
        oska 4y ago
        Interesting to have this contrast in perspectives. For me, the language generated by ChatGPT is flat and boring. No spark of human creativity or originality or flair. And this cheap trick of getting it to write in rhyme or 'in the style of' such and such I find awfully tacky. I'm not saying AlphaZero was creative either. But because it was operating inside a system that was already beautiful and which had such a vast 'solution space' as you put it, its exploration into greater depths of that space I found intriguing. I think that's the contrast for me. Machine learning can be useful and even intriguing inside constrained spaces That's why I liked AlphaZero, working inside a very constrained (but deep) space. And why I also find Tesla's progress with self-driving interesting. It's a constrained task, even though it has a huge range of variables. And again why I find ChatGPT potentially useful in drawing from a constrained corpus but still don't find the language it generates appealing. It comes across as exactly what it is - machine generated text.
        vkazanov 4y ago
stevenhuang 4y ago
This has the same sort of energy as the fears of the devotedly religious that a world without religion leads people to moral depravity. Just more pearl clutching and reverence for the mystical is what it looks like to me.
- oska 4y ago
  > a world without religion leads people to moral depravity This is exactly the case. Religion is a constant in human society across time and space. And one of its main functions is exactly that - to keep people away from moral depravity. Speaking against this function of religion (again, proved across all cultures and all times) only shows profound shallowness. Personally I'm not much of a fan of Christianity or the other Abrahamic religions. And I think generally its time is coming to an end (with a long tapering off). But I think you can see quite clearly that the moving away from Christianity (probably inevitable) over the last century or so has led to moral decline and depravity in the West. If Christianity's time is coming to an end, we will neeed (and I believe we will generate) a new religion to replace it. And I don't think it will be in the Abrahamic tradition.
  - vkazanov 4y ago
    And astrology, and magical thinking, and many other things were always there. So what you say is that humanity is not capable of learning moral behaviour without gods? And this is why it needs deities?
    - oska 4y ago
      No, humans continually develop moral behaviour and codify it in religion (for transmission and social maintenance). Gods and deities aren't strictly necessary. Buddhism started without such but it is interesting that the conceptualisations of Buddhas & Boddhisattvas have become more and more like the gods & deities of other religions (at least in the popular religious traditions of Buddhism).
      - vkazanov 4y ago

Internalising the idea (not 'fact') that 'we're basically LLMs' will only take you to a place of deep sterility, delusion and nihilism.

by oska 4y ago

Internalising the idea (not 'fact') that 'we're basically LLMs' will only take you to a place of deep sterility, delusion and nihilism.

vkazanov 4y ago

Why? Do you prefer magical "handwavy" thinking? A lot of things just fall in place if you accept an obvious fact that the brain is just a powerful enough function with certain inputs and outputs. Neurons are not that complicated. There are interesting consequences here though: no stable grammars, no truly uniform thinking, no singular way to understand people.

oska 4y ago
The 'handwavey' thinking here is from those who state as a 'fact' that the human brain is an LLM
- vkazanov 4y ago
  Well, I didn't say a brain is just an LLM. It's more complicated than just this. But what LLM showed is that it works using the same simple building blocks + specialised parts of the brain: memory, constant relearning and world input, etc. So in this particular case of LLMs we've managed to optimise our way around having specialised brain structures using a powerful enough math function. Next steps require improvements in how the model is trained, how we can reduce the amount of training data, what additional machinery might be necessary, etc... But, damn it, this very thing that makes humanity possible - our language - is solved now. Natural language is a solved problem now. That very thing that makes complex societies possible - it's done. This is the fact. And it is crazy. EDIT: typos
  - oska 4y ago
    I don't share any of the excitement that ppl like you appear to be feeling, and I recoil from the grandiose claims being made by people who, in my opinion, are being fooled by the 21st century equivalent of a ventriloquist's doll. (I did feel excitement while following the development of AlphaZero and its played Go matches, but that was because it was revealing greater depths and beauty in the human created game of Go. And I maintain some interest in following the development of self-driving, particularly by Tesla.) With regard to LLMs I can see how they could be useful. I think more particularly useful when they work from a constrained corpus, so the user can know what they're drawing from (and thus the limitations of that knowledge base). The example site that been posted by its maker to HN [1] where you can ask questions against a particular book is a good one for showing the use of the tool I think. But it's just a tool and it's not in any way a breakthrough in our understanding of ourselves, of cognition or anything like that. I think the people who are making these claims can't distinguish science fiction from actual reality. They are fantasists and I think they are leading themselves and others into delusion. [1] https://portal.konjer.xyz/ https://portal.konjer.xyz/
    - vkazanov 4y ago
      I am not excited. I am terrified. Right at the beginning of the current wave (2010-2012) of ML approaches I did some work on ML systems and NLP, and back then I clearly saw how nothing truly outstanding is happening, we were only starting to figure our what GPUs were capable of. So all of this was fun: NLP, ML, vintage AI. But nothing felt like it did was groundbreaking, or would solve fundamental true GAI problems, or was even close. Yet, 10 years later, here we are. Language is solved. In most areas I know /something/ about (programming, ML, NLP, compilers) this is huge and makes mountains of knowledge obsolete.
    - vkazanov 4y ago
      For me AlphaZero was boring. :-) Solution space is vast but rules are simple. It was a question of time when somebody could put things together here. There was nothing unknowable about it, unlike how natural languages were always a mystery to me. Even with all the syntax, grammars, linguistic knowledge, NLP... Something was lacking.
      - oska 4y ago
        Interesting to have this contrast in perspectives. For me, the language generated by ChatGPT is flat and boring. No spark of human creativity or originality or flair. And this cheap trick of getting it to write in rhyme or 'in the style of' such and such I find awfully tacky. I'm not saying AlphaZero was creative either. But because it was operating inside a system that was already beautiful and which had such a vast 'solution space' as you put it, its exploration into greater depths of that space I found intriguing. I think that's the contrast for me. Machine learning can be useful and even intriguing inside constrained spaces That's why I liked AlphaZero, working inside a very constrained (but deep) space. And why I also find Tesla's progress with self-driving interesting. It's a constrained task, even though it has a huge range of variables. And again why I find ChatGPT potentially useful in drawing from a constrained corpus but still don't find the language it generates appealing. It comes across as exactly what it is - machine generated text.
        vkazanov 4y ago

stevenhuang 4y ago

This has the same sort of energy as the fears of the devotedly religious that a world without religion leads people to moral depravity. Just more pearl clutching and reverence for the mystical is what it looks like to me.

oska 4y ago
> a world without religion leads people to moral depravity This is exactly the case. Religion is a constant in human society across time and space. And one of its main functions is exactly that - to keep people away from moral depravity. Speaking against this function of religion (again, proved across all cultures and all times) only shows profound shallowness. Personally I'm not much of a fan of Christianity or the other Abrahamic religions. And I think generally its time is coming to an end (with a long tapering off). But I think you can see quite clearly that the moving away from Christianity (probably inevitable) over the last century or so has led to moral decline and depravity in the West. If Christianity's time is coming to an end, we will neeed (and I believe we will generate) a new religion to replace it. And I don't think it will be in the Abrahamic tradition.
- vkazanov 4y ago
  And astrology, and magical thinking, and many other things were always there. So what you say is that humanity is not capable of learning moral behaviour without gods? And this is why it needs deities?
  - oska 4y ago
    No, humans continually develop moral behaviour and codify it in religion (for transmission and social maintenance). Gods and deities aren't strictly necessary. Buddhism started without such but it is interesting that the conceptualisations of Buddhas & Boddhisattvas have become more and more like the gods & deities of other religions (at least in the popular religious traditions of Buddhism).
    - vkazanov 4y ago