4 ms·

Despite the fancy name (Chain Of Thought) and multiple arxiv papers, I'd definitely consider it a temporary hack that the models will overcome as they get more

Despite the fancy name (Chain Of Thought) and multiple arxiv papers, I'd definitely consider it a temporary hack that the models will overcome as they get more powerful and as they are better-trained to avoid hallucination. From this paper, it looks like ChatGPT may have already overcome it for some types of questions. What may be here to stay might be more task-specific prompting to break a problem down. For example, a variation might be "Let's think step by step, making sure we do or consider X before we do Y". By way of analogy, when my toddler was really young, if he couldn't figure something out, I'd ask him to break it down into steps (very similar to general Cot prompting). Now, he rarely needs that, but still needs more occasional, task-specific "prompting", eg "Let's think about the weather, and what we're going to be doing, before deciding what to wear".

JieJie 4y ago
Isn't breaking things down into steps always going to be a part of solving any problem? I think of how I was told to approach problems while developing software in this manner. Maybe the LLM gets so smart that it doesn't need to do this, but that I would definitely want to call a super-intelligence, because I sure can't solve big problems without breaking them down into smaller parts. But maybe you are on to something when you say there are some things that we've just done so much that we don't really have to think them through to accomplish them anymore. I don't know what that would say about an AI that was smart enough it could just spit out the right answer to literally any question we could devise. That would be quite a feat of engineering.
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  > But maybe you are on to something when you say there are some things that we've just done so much that we don't really have to think them through to accomplish them anymore. It’s like multiplication tables for thought. Using the “what to wear” example, you’ve essentially already just memorized what to wear for every occasion so you rarely need to think about it. Eg you know what is work appropriate, and if it’s raining or snowing or hot you’re still fine. But a wedding for a foreign culture you’re not familiar with in a city with weather you’re not familiar with, and you might not immediately know what to wear, so you have to break it down.
  - JieJie 4y ago
    I've taken to calling these things "language golems" because they seem to be able to animate language itself and unlock all these hidden qualities that we seem to know are there, take for granted, and never seemed to ask ourselves how they worked on a fundamental level. Even if they are "stochastic parrots" that are no more effective at elucidating truth than Ouija boards, they are still better than the autocorrect on my phone right now.

JieJie 4y ago

Isn't breaking things down into steps always going to be a part of solving any problem? I think of how I was told to approach problems while developing software in this manner. Maybe the LLM gets so smart that it doesn't need to do this, but that I would definitely want to call a super-intelligence, because I sure can't solve big problems without breaking them down into smaller parts. But maybe you are on to something when you say there are some things that we've just done so much that we don't really have to think them through to accomplish them anymore. I don't know what that would say about an AI that was smart enough it could just spit out the right answer to literally any question we could devise. That would be quite a feat of engineering.

vineyardmike 4y ago
> But maybe you are on to something when you say there are some things that we've just done so much that we don't really have to think them through to accomplish them anymore. It’s like multiplication tables for thought. Using the “what to wear” example, you’ve essentially already just memorized what to wear for every occasion so you rarely need to think about it. Eg you know what is work appropriate, and if it’s raining or snowing or hot you’re still fine. But a wedding for a foreign culture you’re not familiar with in a city with weather you’re not familiar with, and you might not immediately know what to wear, so you have to break it down.
- JieJie 4y ago
  I've taken to calling these things "language golems" because they seem to be able to animate language itself and unlock all these hidden qualities that we seem to know are there, take for granted, and never seemed to ask ourselves how they worked on a fundamental level. Even if they are "stochastic parrots" that are no more effective at elucidating truth than Ouija boards, they are still better than the autocorrect on my phone right now.