5 ms·

"Grok" in AI doesn't quite describe generalization, it's more specific that that. It's more like "delayed and fairly sudden generalization" or something like th

by erwald 3y ago

"Grok" in AI doesn't quite describe generalization, it's more specific that that. It's more like "delayed and fairly sudden generalization" or something like that. There was some discussion of this in the comments of this post[1], which proposes calling the phenomenon "eventual recovery from overfitting" instead. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GpSzShaaf8po4rcmA/qapr-5-grokking-is-maybe-not-that-big-a-deal https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GpSzShaaf8po4rcmA/qapr-5-gro...

gorjusborg 3y ago
Whoever suggested 'eventual recovery from overfitting' is a kindred spirit. Why throw away the context and nuance? That decision only further leans into the 'AI is magic' attitude.
- jeremyjh 3y ago
  No, actually this is just how language evolves. I'm glad we have the word "car" instead of "carriage powered by internal combustion engine" even if it confused some people 100 years ago when the term became used exclusively to mean something a bit more specfic. Of course the jargon used in a specific sub-field evolves much more quickly than common usage because the intended audience of paper like this is expected to be well-read and current in the field already.
  - smolder 3y ago
    Language devolves just as it evolves. We (the grand we) regularly introduce ambiguity --words and meanings with no useful purpose, or that are worse than useless. I'm not really weighing in on the appropriateness of the use "grok" in this case. It's just a pet peeve of mine that people bring out "language evolves" as an excuse for why any arbitrary change is natural and therefore acceptable and we should go with the flow. Some changes are strictly bad ones. A go-to example is when "literally" no longer means "literally", but its opposite, or nothing at all. We don't have a replacement word, so now in some contexts people have to explain that they "literally mean literally".
    - krapp 3y ago
      Language only evolves, "devolving" isn't a thing. All changes are arbitrary. Language is always messy, fluid and ambigious. You should go with the flow because being a prescriptivist about the way other people speak is obnoxious and pointless. And "literally" has been used to mean "figuratively" for as long as the word has existed[0]. [0]https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/25/96439 https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/25/96439
      - smolder 3y ago
        I'm going to take a rosier view of prescriptivists and say they are a necessary part of the speaking/writing public, doing the valuable work of fighting entropic forces to prevent making our language dumb. They don't always need to win or be right. That's the first time I've seen literally-as-figuratively defended from a historical perspective. I still think we'd all be better off if people didn't mindlessly use it as a filler word or for emphasis, which is generally what people are doing these days that is the source of controversy, not reviving an archaic usage. Also, it's kind of ironic you corrected my use of "devolves", where many would accept it. :)
      - mdp2021 3y ago
        > devolving isn't a thing Incompetent use is devolution.
        gorjusborg 3y ago
        Also being overlooked is that the nuances in what we accept is in large part how we define group culture. If you want to use the word 'irregardless' unironically there are people who will accept that. Then there are the rest of us.
        kaba0 3y ago
        Just as an added data point, some languages (e.g. Hungarian) do use double negative “natively”, and I have definitely caught myself having to fight some native expression seeping into my English, including ‘irregardless’. For example a Hungarian would say “I have never done nothing bad” over “anything bad”, but it is used not in a logical sense, but more as an emphasis, perhaps? (!)Regardless, what I’m trying to say is that due to the unique position of English as the de facto world language, it has to “suffer” some non-idiomatic uses seeping in from non-natives. Actually, I would go even further and say that most smaller languages will slowly stop evolving and only English will have that property going forward (most new inventions no longer gets a native name in most languages, the English one is used).
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - gorjusborg 3y ago
    > No, actually this is just how language evolves Stop making 'fetch' happen, it's not going to happen.
tbalsam 3y ago
Part of the issue here is posting a LessWrong post. There is some good in there, but much of that site is like a Flat Earth conspiracy theory for neural networks. Neural network training [edit: on a fixed point task, as is often the case {such as image->label}] is always (always) biphasic necessarily, so there is no "eventual recovery from overfitting". In my experience, it is just people newer to the field or just noodling around fundamentally misunderstanding what is happening, as their network goes through a very delayed phase change. Unfortunately there is a significant amplification to these kinds of posts and such, as people like chasing the new shiny of some fad-or-another-that-does-not-actually-exist instead of the much more 'boring' (which I find fascinating) math underneath it all. To me, as someone who specializes in optimizing network training speeds, it just indicates poor engineering to the problem on the part of the person running the experiments. It is not a new or strange phenomenon, it is a literal consequence of the information theory underlying neural network training.
- tbalsam 3y ago
  To further clarify things, the reason there is no mystical 'eventual recovery from overfitting ' is because overfitting is a stable bound that is approached. Adding this false denomination to this implies a non-biphasic nature to neural network training, and adds false information that wasn't there before. Thankfully things are pretty stable in the over/underfitting regime. I feel sad when I see ML misinformation propagated on a forum that requires little experience but has high leverage due to the rampant misuse of existing terms and complete invention of a in-group-language that has little touch with the mathematical foundations of what's happening behind the scenes. I've done this for 7-8 years at this point at a pretty deep level and have a strong pocket of expertise, so I'm not swinging at this one blindly.
- ShamelessC 3y ago
  > Part of the issue here is posting a LessWrong post. There is some good in there, but much of that site is like a Flat Earth conspiracy theory for neural networks. Indeed! It’s very frustrating that so many people here are such staunch defenders of LessWrong. Some/much of the behavior there is honestly concerning.

by erwald 3y ago

gorjusborg 3y ago

Whoever suggested 'eventual recovery from overfitting' is a kindred spirit. Why throw away the context and nuance? That decision only further leans into the 'AI is magic' attitude.

jeremyjh 3y ago
No, actually this is just how language evolves. I'm glad we have the word "car" instead of "carriage powered by internal combustion engine" even if it confused some people 100 years ago when the term became used exclusively to mean something a bit more specfic. Of course the jargon used in a specific sub-field evolves much more quickly than common usage because the intended audience of paper like this is expected to be well-read and current in the field already.
- smolder 3y ago
  Language devolves just as it evolves. We (the grand we) regularly introduce ambiguity --words and meanings with no useful purpose, or that are worse than useless. I'm not really weighing in on the appropriateness of the use "grok" in this case. It's just a pet peeve of mine that people bring out "language evolves" as an excuse for why any arbitrary change is natural and therefore acceptable and we should go with the flow. Some changes are strictly bad ones. A go-to example is when "literally" no longer means "literally", but its opposite, or nothing at all. We don't have a replacement word, so now in some contexts people have to explain that they "literally mean literally".
  - krapp 3y ago
    Language only evolves, "devolving" isn't a thing. All changes are arbitrary. Language is always messy, fluid and ambigious. You should go with the flow because being a prescriptivist about the way other people speak is obnoxious and pointless. And "literally" has been used to mean "figuratively" for as long as the word has existed[0]. [0]https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/25/96439 https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/25/96439
    - smolder 3y ago
      I'm going to take a rosier view of prescriptivists and say they are a necessary part of the speaking/writing public, doing the valuable work of fighting entropic forces to prevent making our language dumb. They don't always need to win or be right. That's the first time I've seen literally-as-figuratively defended from a historical perspective. I still think we'd all be better off if people didn't mindlessly use it as a filler word or for emphasis, which is generally what people are doing these days that is the source of controversy, not reviving an archaic usage. Also, it's kind of ironic you corrected my use of "devolves", where many would accept it. :)
    - mdp2021 3y ago
      > devolving isn't a thing Incompetent use is devolution.
      - gorjusborg 3y ago
        Also being overlooked is that the nuances in what we accept is in large part how we define group culture. If you want to use the word 'irregardless' unironically there are people who will accept that. Then there are the rest of us.
        kaba0 3y ago
        Just as an added data point, some languages (e.g. Hungarian) do use double negative “natively”, and I have definitely caught myself having to fight some native expression seeping into my English, including ‘irregardless’. For example a Hungarian would say “I have never done nothing bad” over “anything bad”, but it is used not in a logical sense, but more as an emphasis, perhaps? (!)Regardless, what I’m trying to say is that due to the unique position of English as the de facto world language, it has to “suffer” some non-idiomatic uses seeping in from non-natives. Actually, I would go even further and say that most smaller languages will slowly stop evolving and only English will have that property going forward (most new inventions no longer gets a native name in most languages, the English one is used).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- gorjusborg 3y ago
  > No, actually this is just how language evolves Stop making 'fetch' happen, it's not going to happen.

tbalsam 3y ago

Part of the issue here is posting a LessWrong post. There is some good in there, but much of that site is like a Flat Earth conspiracy theory for neural networks. Neural network training [edit: on a fixed point task, as is often the case {such as image->label}] is always (always) biphasic necessarily, so there is no "eventual recovery from overfitting". In my experience, it is just people newer to the field or just noodling around fundamentally misunderstanding what is happening, as their network goes through a very delayed phase change. Unfortunately there is a significant amplification to these kinds of posts and such, as people like chasing the new shiny of some fad-or-another-that-does-not-actually-exist instead of the much more 'boring' (which I find fascinating) math underneath it all. To me, as someone who specializes in optimizing network training speeds, it just indicates poor engineering to the problem on the part of the person running the experiments. It is not a new or strange phenomenon, it is a literal consequence of the information theory underlying neural network training.

tbalsam 3y ago
To further clarify things, the reason there is no mystical 'eventual recovery from overfitting ' is because overfitting is a stable bound that is approached. Adding this false denomination to this implies a non-biphasic nature to neural network training, and adds false information that wasn't there before. Thankfully things are pretty stable in the over/underfitting regime. I feel sad when I see ML misinformation propagated on a forum that requires little experience but has high leverage due to the rampant misuse of existing terms and complete invention of a in-group-language that has little touch with the mathematical foundations of what's happening behind the scenes. I've done this for 7-8 years at this point at a pretty deep level and have a strong pocket of expertise, so I'm not swinging at this one blindly.
ShamelessC 3y ago
> Part of the issue here is posting a LessWrong post. There is some good in there, but much of that site is like a Flat Earth conspiracy theory for neural networks. Indeed! It’s very frustrating that so many people here are such staunch defenders of LessWrong. Some/much of the behavior there is honestly concerning.