4 ms·

You believe LLMs are capable of predicting financial markets? In his line of work, he’s absolutely right. Correlations change. Markets react to themselves. LLM

by rank0 3y ago

You believe LLMs are capable of predicting financial markets? In his line of work, he’s absolutely right. Correlations change. Markets react to themselves. LLMs may have some place in analyzing prior data…but it can’t predict what interest rates will be, whether or not congress will increase taxes on stock buybacks, or anticipate an armed conflict with China. Let’s get real here FFS

maxilevi 3y ago
I agree but he wasn't talking about predicting financial markets, he was talking about global implications in industries like law and finance. And LLMs as a knowledge retrieval mechanism can already be pretty useful in those areas.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  They can, yes. But the hype machine that's running overtime about LLMs is not making that case at all. It's all about how LLMs are some kind of miracle machine that will either solve or cause all of mankind's problems. The hype is insane and is absolutely harming the cause that the pro-AI crowd is trying to push forward. I wouldn't really mind this much aside from on grounds of taste, except that it's actively preventing people from actually understanding these technologies and being able to reach grounded conclusions about them.
  - than3 3y ago
    Well it most definitely will cause unrest/revolution if it stalls the economic cycle where people can't get food. That's happened enough times in recorded history to have a solid causal link. Which is already possible with current LLM capabilities; but since its decentralized won't be noticeable until its too late (like a dam breaking).
    - JimtheCoder 3y ago
      "Well it most definitely will cause unrest/revolution if it stalls the economic cycle where people can't get food. That's happened enough times in recorded history to have a solid causal link." Examples? Genuinely curious
      - than3 3y ago
        More recently: https://www.csis.org/analysis/dangerously-hungry-link-between-food-insecurity-and-conflict https://www.csis.org/analysis/dangerously-hungry-link-betwee... https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2022/07/12/food-insecurity-and-unrest-what-you-need-to-know/ https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2022/07/12/food-insec... Less recently: https://law.uoregon.edu/sites/law2.uoregon.edu/files/fakhri_history_of_food_2020.pdf https://law.uoregon.edu/sites/law2.uoregon.edu/files/fakhri_... Boyd Orr also wrote on the subject and won the Nobel peace price in 1949 for his work.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      Yes, this is the main, and major, problem I see with this tech (and to be fair, it's not so much a problem with the tech as it's a problem with how we as a society handle work and earning a living). At this point, that result is looking probable to me. I hope I'm wrong. But mainstream skepticism of LLMs largely revolves around absurd hype along the lines of "AI will be a malevolent superintelligence" (which is just the flip side of same absurd argument that many AI proponents engage in: "AI will be a beneficial superintelligence") which makes discussing more realistic risks and their possible solutions difficult if not impossible.
    - mrtranscendence 3y ago
      What, exactly, is already possible with current LLM capabilities? If you're implying they could replace workers, I don't think that will happen broadly. They're simply not that good yet, and it's unclear to me that they'll become that good in the next several years. And they definitely can't replace most jobs that involve any kind of manual labor.
      - than3 3y ago
        Its already happening in a broad number of fields. Bioinformaticians, copyrighting, research studies, law (though we've already seen the downsides). All the companies want to automate everything they can because of the cost savings even if there is a reduction in quality. Cents versus tens of dollars per hour is a no brainer in terms of cost so replacement it is. Importantly, this is also just the start, and it gets better exponentially, currently the rate of change exceeds the rate at which we can evaluate the changes and thus take action. Most manual labor jobs account for the lowest rung on the payscale outside of trades which have limited supportability due to limited market size. 1 company per 12-50,000 people for it to be economically viable depending on the trade. Those simply can't absorb the hundreds of thousands of jobs and now deprecated business sectors where those degrees that people are still paying off on their college loans have no benefit.
        mrtranscendence 3y ago
        Cite that bioinformaticians and lawyers/paralegals have been laid off in substantial numbers due specifically to machine learning / AI automation? > currently the rate of change exceeds the rate at which we can evaluate the changes and thus take action I dispute this. I believe we're seeing a plateau in capabilities, due to limitations of the transformer architecture and the massive, expensive amounts of compute it takes to create marginally better models. I don't believe we'll see anything like exponential growth in what LLMs can do.
        than3 3y ago
        You seem under the mistaken impression that if I can't cite it, its not happening. This is why cascade failures cause so much mayhem and death. Because so many people subscribe to show me proof, and if there is no tangible proof because proof is a lagging indicator its not happening. This is a complete failure in any professional risk management. This is like a dam collapsing, I'm pointing at a crack, and you are saying show me proof this crack will cause everyone in the valley below to die. Its a flawed way of thinking in many ways especially with fundamental things that we base our lives and welfare on (as a society). In engineering there is different criteria for evaluating risk with items that are safety-critical. This is safety critical. Here is an example of a copyrighter losing her job. There are many other examples if you bother to go looking. https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/tech-copywriter-says-chatgpt-replaced-her-at-her-job-becomes-a-dog-walker-2389530-2023-06-06 https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/tech-copywri... You can dispute it all you want, it won't make you any less wrong when it happens, and many experts are deeply concerned because the rate of change has been exponential even if you refuse to believe it. There's a video that covers the important parts if you want to educate yourself, its on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVJKj8lcNQ&t=5s&ab_channel=CenterforHumaneTechnology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVJKj8lcNQ&t=5s&ab_channel=...
than3 3y ago
I believe the large number of people using LLMs are capable of noticing when there is a hole in the market that is actively being used to steal people's retirement money. This announcement smacks of a fear trade to dissuade a lot of people from looking closer at things they shouldn't be looking closely at. Backtest Gamestop and FRC. You'll notice two different inconsistencies with the options, and market makers actions/reactions even before the first breaking news that FRC was in trouble, or the fake news where people posted edited video claiming a bank run was in progress (on a Sunday, where the FRC sign was reversed in the wrong direction for a glass reflection relative to the position the shot was being taken from). Lets definitely get real here. What happens when you create a lot of additional counterfeit shares in a market where the number of buyers or sellers on the ticker decides price action (up or down)... It goes down. Ask yourself how holding/writing options works when a company goes into receivership, and how it differs when you are a market maker instead of a individual. Do you really believe there is no preferential treatment where the entity deciding has a conflict of interest (because its on the hook if the market maker is on the hook). How is that not jumping on the bandwagon of potential price manipulation to bankrupt a company (any company)? Obviously do your own due dilligence. When they say its done on a case-by-case basis, and they have a vested interest in the outcome; shady stuff rarely ever gets punished; its how corruption and fraud work.
- rank0 3y ago
  Anomaly detection has been around for a long time. You don’t need a chat based LLM to analyze data. The beauty of the markets is that you can put your money where your mouth is. If you believe there’s an inefficiency go fill it yourself and become rich.

by rank0 3y ago

maxilevi 3y ago

I agree but he wasn't talking about predicting financial markets, he was talking about global implications in industries like law and finance. And LLMs as a knowledge retrieval mechanism can already be pretty useful in those areas.

JohnFen 3y ago
They can, yes. But the hype machine that's running overtime about LLMs is not making that case at all. It's all about how LLMs are some kind of miracle machine that will either solve or cause all of mankind's problems. The hype is insane and is absolutely harming the cause that the pro-AI crowd is trying to push forward. I wouldn't really mind this much aside from on grounds of taste, except that it's actively preventing people from actually understanding these technologies and being able to reach grounded conclusions about them.
- than3 3y ago
  Well it most definitely will cause unrest/revolution if it stalls the economic cycle where people can't get food. That's happened enough times in recorded history to have a solid causal link. Which is already possible with current LLM capabilities; but since its decentralized won't be noticeable until its too late (like a dam breaking).
  - JimtheCoder 3y ago
    "Well it most definitely will cause unrest/revolution if it stalls the economic cycle where people can't get food. That's happened enough times in recorded history to have a solid causal link." Examples? Genuinely curious
    - than3 3y ago
      More recently: https://www.csis.org/analysis/dangerously-hungry-link-between-food-insecurity-and-conflict https://www.csis.org/analysis/dangerously-hungry-link-betwee... https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2022/07/12/food-insecurity-and-unrest-what-you-need-to-know/ https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2022/07/12/food-insec... Less recently: https://law.uoregon.edu/sites/law2.uoregon.edu/files/fakhri_history_of_food_2020.pdf https://law.uoregon.edu/sites/law2.uoregon.edu/files/fakhri_... Boyd Orr also wrote on the subject and won the Nobel peace price in 1949 for his work.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Yes, this is the main, and major, problem I see with this tech (and to be fair, it's not so much a problem with the tech as it's a problem with how we as a society handle work and earning a living). At this point, that result is looking probable to me. I hope I'm wrong. But mainstream skepticism of LLMs largely revolves around absurd hype along the lines of "AI will be a malevolent superintelligence" (which is just the flip side of same absurd argument that many AI proponents engage in: "AI will be a beneficial superintelligence") which makes discussing more realistic risks and their possible solutions difficult if not impossible.
  - mrtranscendence 3y ago
    What, exactly, is already possible with current LLM capabilities? If you're implying they could replace workers, I don't think that will happen broadly. They're simply not that good yet, and it's unclear to me that they'll become that good in the next several years. And they definitely can't replace most jobs that involve any kind of manual labor.
    - than3 3y ago
      Its already happening in a broad number of fields. Bioinformaticians, copyrighting, research studies, law (though we've already seen the downsides). All the companies want to automate everything they can because of the cost savings even if there is a reduction in quality. Cents versus tens of dollars per hour is a no brainer in terms of cost so replacement it is. Importantly, this is also just the start, and it gets better exponentially, currently the rate of change exceeds the rate at which we can evaluate the changes and thus take action. Most manual labor jobs account for the lowest rung on the payscale outside of trades which have limited supportability due to limited market size. 1 company per 12-50,000 people for it to be economically viable depending on the trade. Those simply can't absorb the hundreds of thousands of jobs and now deprecated business sectors where those degrees that people are still paying off on their college loans have no benefit.
      - mrtranscendence 3y ago
        Cite that bioinformaticians and lawyers/paralegals have been laid off in substantial numbers due specifically to machine learning / AI automation? > currently the rate of change exceeds the rate at which we can evaluate the changes and thus take action I dispute this. I believe we're seeing a plateau in capabilities, due to limitations of the transformer architecture and the massive, expensive amounts of compute it takes to create marginally better models. I don't believe we'll see anything like exponential growth in what LLMs can do.
        than3 3y ago
        You seem under the mistaken impression that if I can't cite it, its not happening. This is why cascade failures cause so much mayhem and death. Because so many people subscribe to show me proof, and if there is no tangible proof because proof is a lagging indicator its not happening. This is a complete failure in any professional risk management. This is like a dam collapsing, I'm pointing at a crack, and you are saying show me proof this crack will cause everyone in the valley below to die. Its a flawed way of thinking in many ways especially with fundamental things that we base our lives and welfare on (as a society). In engineering there is different criteria for evaluating risk with items that are safety-critical. This is safety critical. Here is an example of a copyrighter losing her job. There are many other examples if you bother to go looking. https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/tech-copywriter-says-chatgpt-replaced-her-at-her-job-becomes-a-dog-walker-2389530-2023-06-06 https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/tech-copywri... You can dispute it all you want, it won't make you any less wrong when it happens, and many experts are deeply concerned because the rate of change has been exponential even if you refuse to believe it. There's a video that covers the important parts if you want to educate yourself, its on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVJKj8lcNQ&t=5s&ab_channel=CenterforHumaneTechnology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVJKj8lcNQ&t=5s&ab_channel=...

than3 3y ago

I believe the large number of people using LLMs are capable of noticing when there is a hole in the market that is actively being used to steal people's retirement money. This announcement smacks of a fear trade to dissuade a lot of people from looking closer at things they shouldn't be looking closely at. Backtest Gamestop and FRC. You'll notice two different inconsistencies with the options, and market makers actions/reactions even before the first breaking news that FRC was in trouble, or the fake news where people posted edited video claiming a bank run was in progress (on a Sunday, where the FRC sign was reversed in the wrong direction for a glass reflection relative to the position the shot was being taken from). Lets definitely get real here. What happens when you create a lot of additional counterfeit shares in a market where the number of buyers or sellers on the ticker decides price action (up or down)... It goes down. Ask yourself how holding/writing options works when a company goes into receivership, and how it differs when you are a market maker instead of a individual. Do you really believe there is no preferential treatment where the entity deciding has a conflict of interest (because its on the hook if the market maker is on the hook). How is that not jumping on the bandwagon of potential price manipulation to bankrupt a company (any company)? Obviously do your own due dilligence. When they say its done on a case-by-case basis, and they have a vested interest in the outcome; shady stuff rarely ever gets punished; its how corruption and fraud work.

rank0 3y ago
Anomaly detection has been around for a long time. You don’t need a chat based LLM to analyze data. The beauty of the markets is that you can put your money where your mouth is. If you believe there’s an inefficiency go fill it yourself and become rich.