7 ms·

Thought Cloning: Learning to think while acting by imitating human thinking

57 points by gardenfelder 3y ago

gardenfelder 3y ago
by way of this tweet https://twitter.com/johnjnay/status/1664798780644904960 https://twitter.com/johnjnay/status/1664798780644904960
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
galaxyLogic 3y ago
Isn't this what LLMs are all about, cloning the proper use of language from the internet?
red75prime 3y ago
That is AlphaGo stage (before Zero). I expect that learning to think by "self-play" will come before we manage to produce enough of explicitly expressed approximations of our way of thinking.
- keenmaster 3y ago
  Maybe, but that’s easier to do when winning/losing is binary and possibilities are more bounded within the rigidly defined rules and spaces of a chess match.
  - red75prime 3y ago
    Human play was used to bootstrap AlphaGo. But LLMs already have vast amount of data relating to human introspection. The problem is they cannot operationalize it, as they have no analogs of our thinking/speaking distinction. Speaking and thinking is the same for them: producing a token is a prerequisite to produce a next token. Building a system that can leverage that knowledge to bootstrap "thinking circuits" can prove challenging, that's for sure, but I expect that collecting quality "thinking out loud" data is more challenging.
- wahahah 3y ago
  Tangential, but the AlphaGo that beat Lee Sedol was written in Lua and I would have loved to see them stick with it instead of migrating to Python.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
Are there people who actually believe that they think "in language"? I know that it's a trope I see in television and other fiction, but I also see the one there concussions can lead to hours of unconsciousness that resolves itself without neurosurgery.
- two_in_one 3y ago
  I have inner dialog. Does this qualify as "think in language"?
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    No. That's not your "thought". It's just a little subroutine that evolved so you could rehearse dialogue with other humans... unclever people have it go a little haywire, and they mistake it for their actual thoughts. The hilarious part is that some even end up believing it makes them superior.
    - sublinear 3y ago
      > rehearse dialogue with other humans I'm going to make an even bolder claim and say that there's no such thing as a thought completely independent of dialogue with other humans.
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        Touch grass and you may think of your personal relation with grass.
    - haswell 3y ago
      > It's just a little subroutine that evolved so you could rehearse dialogue with other humans That’s an interesting claim to make. What are you basing this on? Framing this as a subroutine also seems a bit of a limited view on our dialogue generation abilities. I can assure you that my internal dialogue rarely stops (meditation is an exception), and most often isn’t worried about talking with other people.
dclowd9901 3y ago
Had a hard time with this thought: if we’re so sure we’d be able to manipulate agents thoughts (agents trained to think like humans), what keeps humans from being manipulated with similar efficacy?
egberts1 3y ago
Until we modify our basic CS binary logic to emulate the varied axon length of dendrite tree around a soma nerve cell (which in itself could be called multi-input variable-input-delay-OR logic in CS terms), this design of thought emulation would be severely constrained and fall short of the goal to true emulation of human thought.
- jakeinspace 3y ago
  Nonsense, we can emulate any sort of analog process with binary transistors. If you prefer using an analog computer, fine, it’s an interesting area, but I’m not better on analog neural network computers catching up to digital.
  - packetlost 3y ago
    > we can emulate any sort of analog process with binary transistors have... have you done any research on the topic at all? Yes, you can model any sort of system using binary transistors, but the fidelity in which you do so is severely constrained by bit-depth and, depending on the system, might have error propagation issues.
    - jakeinspace 3y ago
      In an analog computer, you’re trading quantization error for regular process noise and noise in initial conditions. If you’re concerned about modelling chaotic systems, you won’t get a more accurate just because you’re doing it analog.

57 points by gardenfelder 3y ago

by way of this tweet https://twitter.com/johnjnay/status/1664798780644904960 https://twitter.com/johnjnay/status/1664798780644904960

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

galaxyLogic 3y ago

Isn't this what LLMs are all about, cloning the proper use of language from the internet?

red75prime 3y ago

That is AlphaGo stage (before Zero). I expect that learning to think by "self-play" will come before we manage to produce enough of explicitly expressed approximations of our way of thinking.

keenmaster 3y ago
Maybe, but that’s easier to do when winning/losing is binary and possibilities are more bounded within the rigidly defined rules and spaces of a chess match.
- red75prime 3y ago
  Human play was used to bootstrap AlphaGo. But LLMs already have vast amount of data relating to human introspection. The problem is they cannot operationalize it, as they have no analogs of our thinking/speaking distinction. Speaking and thinking is the same for them: producing a token is a prerequisite to produce a next token. Building a system that can leverage that knowledge to bootstrap "thinking circuits" can prove challenging, that's for sure, but I expect that collecting quality "thinking out loud" data is more challenging.
wahahah 3y ago
Tangential, but the AlphaGo that beat Lee Sedol was written in Lua and I would have loved to see them stick with it instead of migrating to Python.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

Are there people who actually believe that they think "in language"? I know that it's a trope I see in television and other fiction, but I also see the one there concussions can lead to hours of unconsciousness that resolves itself without neurosurgery.

two_in_one 3y ago
I have inner dialog. Does this qualify as "think in language"?
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  No. That's not your "thought". It's just a little subroutine that evolved so you could rehearse dialogue with other humans... unclever people have it go a little haywire, and they mistake it for their actual thoughts. The hilarious part is that some even end up believing it makes them superior.
  - sublinear 3y ago
    > rehearse dialogue with other humans I'm going to make an even bolder claim and say that there's no such thing as a thought completely independent of dialogue with other humans.
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      Touch grass and you may think of your personal relation with grass.
  - haswell 3y ago
    > It's just a little subroutine that evolved so you could rehearse dialogue with other humans That’s an interesting claim to make. What are you basing this on? Framing this as a subroutine also seems a bit of a limited view on our dialogue generation abilities. I can assure you that my internal dialogue rarely stops (meditation is an exception), and most often isn’t worried about talking with other people.

dclowd9901 3y ago

Had a hard time with this thought: if we’re so sure we’d be able to manipulate agents thoughts (agents trained to think like humans), what keeps humans from being manipulated with similar efficacy?

egberts1 3y ago

Until we modify our basic CS binary logic to emulate the varied axon length of dendrite tree around a soma nerve cell (which in itself could be called multi-input variable-input-delay-OR logic in CS terms), this design of thought emulation would be severely constrained and fall short of the goal to true emulation of human thought.

jakeinspace 3y ago
Nonsense, we can emulate any sort of analog process with binary transistors. If you prefer using an analog computer, fine, it’s an interesting area, but I’m not better on analog neural network computers catching up to digital.
- packetlost 3y ago
  > we can emulate any sort of analog process with binary transistors have... have you done any research on the topic at all? Yes, you can model any sort of system using binary transistors, but the fidelity in which you do so is severely constrained by bit-depth and, depending on the system, might have error propagation issues.
  - jakeinspace 3y ago
    In an analog computer, you’re trading quantization error for regular process noise and noise in initial conditions. If you’re concerned about modelling chaotic systems, you won’t get a more accurate just because you’re doing it analog.