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LLMs don't generally predict the most likely output, except when people go in to tweak temperature and other settings to make them more predictable for certain
by hansvm 3y ago
LLMs don't generally predict the most likely output, except when people go in to tweak temperature and other settings to make them more predictable for certain more mechanical tasks. The whole point of an LLM is that its output is calibrated; it produces a text with the same conditional probability you would expect seeing that text in the wild (give or take that we still don't understand why neural networks generalize).
- Fripplebubby 3y agoWould the output with the same conditional probability not also be the most likely in a conventional sense? I'm not understanding the distinction, but I'm not an expert so this might be a subtlety I just don't grasp
- hansvm 3y agoConditional probabilities are probabilistic. If you ask again you might get a different answer. The most likely answer is a single sample. It often isn't actually the result you want, it often has a much lower probability of occurring than your intuition would suggest, and even if it's correct once it's often not something you would appreciate appearing repeatedly if you re-asked the same question. I can add more details/comparisons/nuance/explanations/... if you're curious why that matters, but hopefully the distinction is clear now?
- Fripplebubby 3y agoI think that helped, thanks!