4 ms·
LLMs do not invent new information. They respond with the information they were trained on, in the same way a search engine responds with search results. So th
by goodSteveramos 4y ago
LLMs do not invent new information. They respond with the information they were trained on, in the same way a search engine responds with search results. So they are not information content providers any more than google is for picking which search results to give you.
- sillysaurusx 4y agoI think 30 years from now people will still be echoing this, the same way flat earthers are convinced the world isn’t a sphere. No matter how much evidence you provide to the contrary, it never seems to matter. I wonder why. It feels like there’s an aspect of “I want to believe” in this, except in the other direction — if LLMs can come up with new information, it threatens one’s identity of what it means to be human. (As for evidence: https://twitter.com/d_feldman/status/1636955260680847361?s=61&t=jQbmCk1JqL7depzFWJNuPA https://twitter.com/d_feldman/status/1636955260680847361?s=6...)
- nonethewiser 4y agoIt doesn’t feel that way to me.
- poszlem 4y agoI believe you've nailed it with this one. There's a TON of coping going on from folks. I get why people feel that way, but to me, it's kinda like plugging your ears and yelling, "La la la, I can't hear you!" "I'm not listening!"
- return_to_monke 4y agoI do not think so. I see this argument made all the time. While it might be correct at a Micro-Level ("all it does is predict the next word!!!" "it just finds patterns!!!") I dont think that semantics matter here. It has demonstrated to create new things based on existing ones. ChatGPT will happily create a fan fiction about the rust mascot Ferris, in the style of the Bible. I am 99% certain that wasn't in the training set
- goodSteveramos 4y agoGenerative language models have existed for decades and there is no need to change the law surrounding their output based on an arbitrary “creativeness” threshold.
- LeoPanthera 4y agoTo me it seems obvious that it's thinking. It's trained on (mostly) English language text, so it's probably thinking in English. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this is how humans work, too.
- malnourish 4y agoI think it's quite a stretch to say that it's "thinking" -- as far as I'm aware it only reacts when prompted and it follows prompts to the best of its ability.
- LeoPanthera 4y agoI don't mean that it's thinking all the time. But the part between input and output could probably be described that way, if only loosely.
- basch 4y ago230 protects you if you run a service people post information to. I'm not so sure if it protects you when you run a service that scrapes others. Ive never quite thought Google search results had the protection they claimed they do, unless people submitted their website for evaluation.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- chriswait 4y agoThis is super interesting, and I think depends how you define information. You can take some information, combine it with other information, apply various kinds of reasoning to it, and get something new as a result. E.g. (1) Bob is a monkey. (2) All monkeys like banannas. Would you call it "new information" if I tell you that Bob likes banannas? LLMs can do this to varying degrees of success, so probably not. Maybe you mean something like in Information Theory, where information is something that resolves uncertainty? It'd be interesting to know, what is it you think humans are capable of that LLMs can't be?
- CamperBob2 4y agoLLMs do not invent new information. If this statement is true, it is true for humans as well. LLMs can and have authored original works of art that are no more traceable to specific training influences than any work of art created by a human.