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I don't know exactly how humans think or how LLM's "predict the next token", but your argument is just refuting a high level description of behavior in place of
by CapsAdmin 3y ago
I don't know exactly how humans think or how LLM's "predict the next token", but your argument is just refuting a high level description of behavior in place of a low level description.
To me at least, it's a bit like saying a car's wheel do not spin when stepping on the pedal, it's the petrol engine that makes the wheel spin. You can replace petrol engine with an electric engine, and the description about the wheel spinning when stepping on the pedal is still technically correct regardless of any lower level explanation.
We don't know how to describe the behavior of LLM's because of how foreign they are to us right now. Hallucinations are confabulations are meant to describe human behavior of couse, so the downside is it might make us anthropomorphize LLM's. However it's the best we could come up with I guess.
If confabulation is a more precise explanation of behavior then I don't see why that's a bad idea.
- inopinatus 3y agoWe do know how to describe their behaviour. It's in terms of plausibility. The central dogma of LLM-as-chatbot-assistant is that at sufficient scale, plausibility converges towards accuracy, and becomes a proxy for utility. This is not proven, but that is incidental to the deeper issue. The deep issue is that when a "conversation" kicks off with the LLM being confidently incorrect, the most plausible continuation to take from human literature, and from a good deal of human interaction, is that they continue to be wrong.
- olalonde 3y agoI don't think it's that deep of an issue, or at least OpenAI seems to know how to fix it. ChatGPT often tell me when it's wrong and it also often recognizes that it has made a mistake when prompted (e.g. "are you sure?").
- inopinatus 3y agoYes, I too have seen ChatGPT issue an apology. Then it gives a worse version of its previous answer, buggier code etc. And it's because the most plausible continuation of that interaction is now of an ongoing conversation with an apologetic incompetent. Do not anthropomorphize the LLM. It does not have mental state. It does not have feelings. It does not have a suddenly realised goal of "doing better". The written apology was merely the most plausible text to issue at that point. It will then go on to simulate being wrong again, which I've come to recognise is more plausible than an idiot suddenly becoming a wizard. In such circumstances, the actual best remedy is to start afresh with a revised prompt.