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LLMs don't create new information, they only compress existing complexity in their train and inference data sets. Humans definitely create new information. (We
by otabdeveloper4 3y ago
LLMs don't create new information, they only compress existing complexity in their train and inference data sets.
Humans definitely create new information. (Well, at least some humans do.)
- Gringham 3y agoDo they though? Or do humans just combine things they have learned about the world?
- danielmarkbruce 3y agoHow are you defining "create new information" ?
- otabdeveloper4 3y agoIn the information theoretic sense. (Increasing information entropy.)
- danielmarkbruce 3y agoWhat do you define as the system here? The LLM itself? The world of all text? What about for the human?
- Zambyte 3y agoLossy compression + interpolated decompression = new information
- otabdeveloper4 3y agoLossy compression decreases information entropy by definition.
- Zambyte 3y agoInterpolated decompression increases information entropy by definition.
- wongarsu 3y agoDo we? Humans can observe new information, but that's obviously not that unique. We can reason about existing information, creating new hypotheses, but that is arguably a compression of existing information. When we act on them and observe the effects they become information, but that's not us creating the information (and LLMs can both act on the environment and have the effects fed back to their input to observe, so it's not really unique). There is this whole field of art, but art is constantly going through a mental crisis whether anyone is creating anything new, or if it's all just derivations of what has come before. Same with dreams, which appear "novel" but might just be an artefact of our brain's process that compresses the experiences of the day.
- zhynn 3y agoLife creates novelty. Humans are a member of that category, but all life is producing novelty. More information: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06600-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06600-9
- Zambyte 3y agoIs the inverse true? Does novelty create life? Can something be novel devoid of life?
- chx 3y agolet's say you wanted to count the number of coins on a table you organize them into piles of ten this created new information
- BlueTemplar 3y agoMore like you converted information you had about energy powering your muscles into that one - resulting in less total information for you in the end.
- chx 3y agothat's not how information theory works
- chrbr 3y agoI agree. A thought experiment I had recently: Let's say we could somehow train an LLM on all written and spoken language from the western Roman civilization (Republic + Western Empire, up until 476 AD/CE, just so I don't muddy the experiment with near-modern timelines). Would it, without novel information from humans, ever be able to spit out a correct predecessor of modern science like atomic theory? What about steam power, would that be feasible since Romans were toying with it? How far back do we have to go on the tech tree for such an LLM be able to "discover" something novel or generate useful new information? My thought is that the LLM would forever be "stuck" in the knowledge of the era it was trained in. Something in the complexity of human brains working together is what drives new information. We can continue training new LLMs with new information, and LLMs might be able to find new patterns in data that humans can't see and can augment our work, but the LLM's capability for novelty is stuck on a complexity treadmill, rooted in its training data. I don't view this ability of humans as some magic consciousness, just a system so complex to us right now that we can't fully understand or re-create it. If we're stochastic parrots, we seem to be ones that are magnitudes more powerful and unpredictable than current LLMs, and maybe even constructed in a way that our current technology path can't hope to replicate.
- PeterisP 3y agoFor your thought experiment, I'd assert that the key missing part is experimentation in the real world, as that is what acquires new information, not the complexity of human brains working together. If you took millions of genius-level immortal humans with all the same Roman data but had them sit in a blank, empty room with their hands tied and simply discuss philosophy for eternity, I'm certain that they would not be able ever spit out a correct predecessor of modern science like atomic theory. Perhaps they could spit out billions of theories including the atomic theory as well, but they would have no data to presume that the atomic theory is more relevant than any other. Extensive information processing can squeeze out every last ounce of knowledge from some data, but anything that isn't in that data can't be acquired by mere thinking about it. On the other hand, if you gave some "LLM++" the ability to toy around with reality and attempt all kinds of experiments to test various hypotheses, then I wouldn't assume that it would not be forever stuck in the knowledge of the era it was trained in.