7 ms·

I guess you perception of society is severely limited if you think a fancy autocomplete is capable of changing every aspect of it.

maxdoop 4y ago
I have fun on these HN chats responding to comments like yours . It’s just fancy auto complete to you? You honestly can’t see the capability it has and extend it the future? What’s that saying about “it’s hard to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on their not understanding it”.
- HervalFreire 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - _dain_ 4y ago
    > When these LLMs get normalized probably 5 years from now I'm going go back to these old threads and contact these people who are in self denial and throw it in their face. I'll just link this comment and be like I TOLD YOU, I TOLD YOU, YOU WERE WRONG. this isn't a kind thing to do.
    - HervalFreire 4y ago
      [flagged]
    - Jeff_Brown 4y ago
      Nor rational. What a strange impulse.
      - HervalFreire 4y ago
        [flagged]
- blurbleblurble 4y ago
  I feel very frustrated with these takes because instead of grappling with what we're going to do about it (like having a conversation) it's a flat, dismissive denial, and it isn't even grounded in the science, which says that "memory augmented large language models are computationally universal". So at the very least we're dealing with algorithms that can do anything a hand written program can do, except that they've been trained to do it using natural language in extremely flexible ways. I'm having a hard time seeing how "fancy autocomplete" is the right description for this.
  - maxdoop 4y ago
    I agree 100%. I don't understand why we can't look at the potential, or even current, capabilities of these LLMs and have a real conversation about how it might impact things. Yet so many folks here just confidently dismiss it. "It doesn't even think!" -- OK, define thinking? "It doesn't create novel ideas!" OK -- what do most devs do every day? "It is wrong sometimes!" OK -- is it wrong more or less often than an average dev?
    - spacemadness 4y ago
      In case we forget the amazing predictive capabilities of HN there’s always https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
  - enord 4y ago
    «Computationally universal»? Are you quite sure? Hoo boy pass the nitroglycerin hooooo aaah ohh after 80 years Turing was proven right after all ghasp
    - tel 4y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_approximation_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_approximation_theore...
    - blurbleblurble 4y ago
      Well I don't understand the nitroglycerin reference and of course "computationally universal" doesn't mean "sentient" but the point is when you add the external memory they (Flan-U-PaLM 540B to be specific) have been demonstrated to be capable of simulating a specific, well defined Turing machine without special training. There are some other papers out there arguing this from a theoretical angle too, but this is the one whose title I quoted: https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.04589 https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.04589
MVissers 4y ago
Funny- That’s like saying the iPhone is a nothingburger. Who would buy such thing right? Or the internet? Who’d even want a computer at home to talk to other computers. This is going to infiltrate every text-based tool. Email, social media, text. Speech and video already incoming.
- bena 4y ago
  Yes and no. But you're putting forth a "Bozo argument" by noting that that people also shit on the iPhone. "But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." - Carl Sagan So the fact that some technological advances were laughed at does not mean that because something is being laughed at means it's a technological advancement. Basically all you've done is say you disagree with the poster. But neither of you have given any sort of reasoning for your positions. Personally, I agree with your final conclusion. Even as a "fancy autocomplete", this thing is pretty fucking fancy. To toss ChatGPT a basic idea and get back a multi-paragraph text on that idea that only needs to be proofread is pretty choice. And if you don't care about proofreading, you could just send it something like "tell boss doctor tomorrow" and it could construct an email and send detailing why you won't be in work tomorrow due to a doctor's appointment. Human communication just got a bit more complicated.
- antibasilisk 4y ago
  I've been seeing alot of this 'nothing ever happens' attitude lately, and I find it very odd. I feel like people are using it to cope with the rapid pace of change we're experiencing.
tarruda 4y ago
That was what I thought until a few months ago when ChatGPT was released. I never cared much about LLMs because it always felt like a brute force method to solving problems. What I'm seeing now is that some kind of intelligence seem to emerge from these models, even though under the hoods it is just a bunch o matrix multiplications. Who's can say for sure that our own brains doesn't work similarly? Maybe human intelligence is something that emerges from similar primitives and AGI will simply be a really large language model.
- throwbadubadu 4y ago
  Oh man... if it will be as stupid as us humans we are completely doomed. For now lets assume what it most likely is: not emerging anything, just a very good simulation of that emergeance. I mean we already did stupid chat bots in the 90s with convoluted if-else-spaghettis that imitated Eliza. That could already hold for some sentences... GPT-4 now holds much longer, but still you can easily drive it to the point where it starts "looping" and not provide much more value, especially if you are more expert => makes me so far hope that this length will grow more, but still.. in my "sessions" did not (gladly) find anything emerging beyond the first wow and surprising answers... not even close to that.
  - tarruda 4y ago
    I have very limited understanding of how these systems are created, but as far as I know they are not programmed to simulate anything. It is just a system that outputs the most likely next word based on a really large dataset of training samples it was given. Yet you are still able to "chat" with these systems. Here's a session I just ran on llama.cpp (7 billion parameter version). Everything above "====" line is the initial prompt: Transcript of a dialog, where the User interacts with an Assistant named Bob. Bob is helpful, kind, honest, good at writing, and never fails to answer the User's requests immediately and with precision. User: Hello, Bob. Bob: Hello. How may I help you today? User: Please tell me the largest city in Europe. Bob: Sure. The largest city in Europe is Moscow, the capital of Russia. User: ==== Who are you? Bob: Who am I? I'm a virtual assistant, or a VA, for short. User: Do you have a name? Bob: Yes, I do. My name is Bob. User: How old are you? Bob: I am 19 years old. User: Do you know what is "Hacker News"? Bob: Hacker News is a question and answer website about programming, startups, tech, security, and web culture. This is a super simple example. Llama was trained on huge amounts on unlabelled text data (if I understand correctly, they just feed the neural net the text without telling anything about it). Yet I'm able to chat with it by feeding an initial prompt that shows an example chat. Isn't this an emergent property?
ben_w 4y ago
""" That riled me, but I held my temper as I asked, “What’s the matter with you?” He bellowed: “There’s nothing the matter with me. It’s you! You’re crazy if you think this fool contraption you’ve been wasting your time on will ever displace the horse.” """ - https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/01/get-horse-americas-skepticism-toward-first-automobiles/ https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/01/get-horse-americ...
blurbleblurble 4y ago
"Memory Augmented LLMs are Computationally Universal"
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

maxdoop 4y ago

I have fun on these HN chats responding to comments like yours . It’s just fancy auto complete to you? You honestly can’t see the capability it has and extend it the future? What’s that saying about “it’s hard to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on their not understanding it”.

HervalFreire 4y ago
[flagged]
- _dain_ 4y ago
  > When these LLMs get normalized probably 5 years from now I'm going go back to these old threads and contact these people who are in self denial and throw it in their face. I'll just link this comment and be like I TOLD YOU, I TOLD YOU, YOU WERE WRONG. this isn't a kind thing to do.
  - HervalFreire 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - Jeff_Brown 4y ago
    Nor rational. What a strange impulse.
    - HervalFreire 4y ago
      [flagged]
blurbleblurble 4y ago
I feel very frustrated with these takes because instead of grappling with what we're going to do about it (like having a conversation) it's a flat, dismissive denial, and it isn't even grounded in the science, which says that "memory augmented large language models are computationally universal". So at the very least we're dealing with algorithms that can do anything a hand written program can do, except that they've been trained to do it using natural language in extremely flexible ways. I'm having a hard time seeing how "fancy autocomplete" is the right description for this.
- maxdoop 4y ago
  I agree 100%. I don't understand why we can't look at the potential, or even current, capabilities of these LLMs and have a real conversation about how it might impact things. Yet so many folks here just confidently dismiss it. "It doesn't even think!" -- OK, define thinking? "It doesn't create novel ideas!" OK -- what do most devs do every day? "It is wrong sometimes!" OK -- is it wrong more or less often than an average dev?
  - spacemadness 4y ago
    In case we forget the amazing predictive capabilities of HN there’s always https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- enord 4y ago
  «Computationally universal»? Are you quite sure? Hoo boy pass the nitroglycerin hooooo aaah ohh after 80 years Turing was proven right after all ghasp
  - tel 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_approximation_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_approximation_theore...
  - blurbleblurble 4y ago
    Well I don't understand the nitroglycerin reference and of course "computationally universal" doesn't mean "sentient" but the point is when you add the external memory they (Flan-U-PaLM 540B to be specific) have been demonstrated to be capable of simulating a specific, well defined Turing machine without special training. There are some other papers out there arguing this from a theoretical angle too, but this is the one whose title I quoted: https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.04589 https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.04589

MVissers 4y ago

Funny- That’s like saying the iPhone is a nothingburger. Who would buy such thing right? Or the internet? Who’d even want a computer at home to talk to other computers. This is going to infiltrate every text-based tool. Email, social media, text. Speech and video already incoming.

bena 4y ago
Yes and no. But you're putting forth a "Bozo argument" by noting that that people also shit on the iPhone. "But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." - Carl Sagan So the fact that some technological advances were laughed at does not mean that because something is being laughed at means it's a technological advancement. Basically all you've done is say you disagree with the poster. But neither of you have given any sort of reasoning for your positions. Personally, I agree with your final conclusion. Even as a "fancy autocomplete", this thing is pretty fucking fancy. To toss ChatGPT a basic idea and get back a multi-paragraph text on that idea that only needs to be proofread is pretty choice. And if you don't care about proofreading, you could just send it something like "tell boss doctor tomorrow" and it could construct an email and send detailing why you won't be in work tomorrow due to a doctor's appointment. Human communication just got a bit more complicated.
antibasilisk 4y ago
I've been seeing alot of this 'nothing ever happens' attitude lately, and I find it very odd. I feel like people are using it to cope with the rapid pace of change we're experiencing.

tarruda 4y ago

That was what I thought until a few months ago when ChatGPT was released. I never cared much about LLMs because it always felt like a brute force method to solving problems. What I'm seeing now is that some kind of intelligence seem to emerge from these models, even though under the hoods it is just a bunch o matrix multiplications. Who's can say for sure that our own brains doesn't work similarly? Maybe human intelligence is something that emerges from similar primitives and AGI will simply be a really large language model.

throwbadubadu 4y ago
Oh man... if it will be as stupid as us humans we are completely doomed. For now lets assume what it most likely is: not emerging anything, just a very good simulation of that emergeance. I mean we already did stupid chat bots in the 90s with convoluted if-else-spaghettis that imitated Eliza. That could already hold for some sentences... GPT-4 now holds much longer, but still you can easily drive it to the point where it starts "looping" and not provide much more value, especially if you are more expert => makes me so far hope that this length will grow more, but still.. in my "sessions" did not (gladly) find anything emerging beyond the first wow and surprising answers... not even close to that.
- tarruda 4y ago
  I have very limited understanding of how these systems are created, but as far as I know they are not programmed to simulate anything. It is just a system that outputs the most likely next word based on a really large dataset of training samples it was given. Yet you are still able to "chat" with these systems. Here's a session I just ran on llama.cpp (7 billion parameter version). Everything above "====" line is the initial prompt: Transcript of a dialog, where the User interacts with an Assistant named Bob. Bob is helpful, kind, honest, good at writing, and never fails to answer the User's requests immediately and with precision. User: Hello, Bob. Bob: Hello. How may I help you today? User: Please tell me the largest city in Europe. Bob: Sure. The largest city in Europe is Moscow, the capital of Russia. User: ==== Who are you? Bob: Who am I? I'm a virtual assistant, or a VA, for short. User: Do you have a name? Bob: Yes, I do. My name is Bob. User: How old are you? Bob: I am 19 years old. User: Do you know what is "Hacker News"? Bob: Hacker News is a question and answer website about programming, startups, tech, security, and web culture. This is a super simple example. Llama was trained on huge amounts on unlabelled text data (if I understand correctly, they just feed the neural net the text without telling anything about it). Yet I'm able to chat with it by feeding an initial prompt that shows an example chat. Isn't this an emergent property?

ben_w 4y ago

""" That riled me, but I held my temper as I asked, “What’s the matter with you?” He bellowed: “There’s nothing the matter with me. It’s you! You’re crazy if you think this fool contraption you’ve been wasting your time on will ever displace the horse.” """ - https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/01/get-horse-americas-skepticism-toward-first-automobiles/ https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/01/get-horse-americ...

blurbleblurble 4y ago

"Memory Augmented LLMs are Computationally Universal"

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]