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Even if you only care about fish, it is possible that the pursuit of a swimming machine will yield insights into how fish do it. In terms of scientific underst

Even if you only care about fish, it is possible that the pursuit of a swimming machine will yield insights into how fish do it. In terms of scientific understanding in general, I'm not sure why you would say that building a statistical model of a natural process is be irrelevant. On one level, much of science is about building models of natural processes and then probing those models for insights. On another level, attempts to build artificial intelligence are acts of science. We are studying the limits of statistical algorithms in their ability to pick out patterns from raw data. This study has produced data that has already surprised those who had assumed that a competent language model would need a universal grammar component, as mentioned in the article. If a solid theory is developed, I assume it would yield insights for studies of human cognition.

foobarqux 3y ago
> Even if you only care about fish, it is possible that the pursuit of a swimming machine will yield insights into how fish do it. It's possible but it doesn't happen by accident, you have to show that they are related, and no one does (because the people who work on LLMs aren't actually interested in this question, despite the fact that argue it to death). > In terms of scientific understanding in general, I'm not sure why you would say that building a statistical model of a natural process is be irrelevant. On one level, much of science is about building models of natural processes and then probing those models for insights. You have to have a reason to believe that it would yield insights. There isn't one. > attempts to build artificial intelligence are acts of science. They are not, they are math and engineering. > If a solid theory is developed, I assume it would yield insights for studies of human cognition. You have to actually have a rational process to produce insights, not just mix a bunch of numbers in a vat and "assume" that some insight is going to come from it.
- markisus 3y ago
  > It's possible but it doesn't happen by accident, you have to show that they are related, and no one does (because the people who work on LLMs aren't actually interested in this question, despite the fact that argue it to death). The relatedness of human language cognition and machine language performance is already evident, in that studies of machine language performance can already falsify some theories of human language cognition. The pattern goes like this. 1. Language competency requires component X. 2. Humans have language competency. 3. Therefore, humans have component X. When we see a machine, without component X, using language as a human does, we know the theory has gone wrong at the first step. The article mentions one such instantiation of this pattern. The new data has narrowed the space of plausible theories of human language cognition. The machine learning engineers play the role of experimentalists. They collect data but may not have a theory ready to explain what results. > You have to have a reason to believe that it would yield insights. There isn't one. The reason is that models in general yield insights. They have yielded insights before, and so we may expect them to yield insights in the future. The explanation for this is either philosophical or psychological. Whatever the reason, humans who look into a specific system are very good at generalizing to a whole class of systems. F=ma is a model, and certainly wrong. But by probing it, we can begin to discover general principles like energy conservation. In the same way, a large language model is a model of a system that acquires language. By examining its specific behavior, we may come to understand more general principles of language acquisition. > You have to actually have a rational process to produce insights, not just mix a bunch of numbers in a vat and "assume" that some insight is going to come from it. Where there is already an understood rational process, you no longer need the insight. Sometimes the big leaps of scientific understanding come from looking at the data and then coming to Eureka.
  - foobarqux 3y ago
    > in that studies of machine language performance can already falsify some theories of human language cognition. They do not. > Language competency requires component X... I assume X is something like "can't be learned statistically". LLMs haven't shown that in humans (which is what we are talking about): Beside the fact that humans use much less data LLMs can learn arbitrary patterns, including patterns humans can't learn (just as humans can't "learn" to understand a 56k modem). > The reason is that models in general yield insights. Prediction machines don't generate insights by default, that isn't even their objective, so if they did it would just be by chance. You might as well say that by mixing random chemicals you might get a discovery in chemistry. It's possible but absurd. > Where there is already an understood rational process, you no longer need the insight. The rational process I'm talking about is the process of inquiry not the process under investigation. > Sometimes the big leaps of scientific understanding come from looking at the data You could imagine something like this happening abstractly but it hasn't happened, no one has proposed specifically how it might happen and no one is pursuing anything like this because there isn't any obvious thing to pursue. It's just wishful thinking. Maybe if I do random stuff I'll make a scientific breakthrough. Maybe! But extremely improbable and silly to go even further and assume that you would.

foobarqux 3y ago

> Even if you only care about fish, it is possible that the pursuit of a swimming machine will yield insights into how fish do it. It's possible but it doesn't happen by accident, you have to show that they are related, and no one does (because the people who work on LLMs aren't actually interested in this question, despite the fact that argue it to death). > In terms of scientific understanding in general, I'm not sure why you would say that building a statistical model of a natural process is be irrelevant. On one level, much of science is about building models of natural processes and then probing those models for insights. You have to have a reason to believe that it would yield insights. There isn't one. > attempts to build artificial intelligence are acts of science. They are not, they are math and engineering. > If a solid theory is developed, I assume it would yield insights for studies of human cognition. You have to actually have a rational process to produce insights, not just mix a bunch of numbers in a vat and "assume" that some insight is going to come from it.

markisus 3y ago
> It's possible but it doesn't happen by accident, you have to show that they are related, and no one does (because the people who work on LLMs aren't actually interested in this question, despite the fact that argue it to death). The relatedness of human language cognition and machine language performance is already evident, in that studies of machine language performance can already falsify some theories of human language cognition. The pattern goes like this. 1. Language competency requires component X. 2. Humans have language competency. 3. Therefore, humans have component X. When we see a machine, without component X, using language as a human does, we know the theory has gone wrong at the first step. The article mentions one such instantiation of this pattern. The new data has narrowed the space of plausible theories of human language cognition. The machine learning engineers play the role of experimentalists. They collect data but may not have a theory ready to explain what results. > You have to have a reason to believe that it would yield insights. There isn't one. The reason is that models in general yield insights. They have yielded insights before, and so we may expect them to yield insights in the future. The explanation for this is either philosophical or psychological. Whatever the reason, humans who look into a specific system are very good at generalizing to a whole class of systems. F=ma is a model, and certainly wrong. But by probing it, we can begin to discover general principles like energy conservation. In the same way, a large language model is a model of a system that acquires language. By examining its specific behavior, we may come to understand more general principles of language acquisition. > You have to actually have a rational process to produce insights, not just mix a bunch of numbers in a vat and "assume" that some insight is going to come from it. Where there is already an understood rational process, you no longer need the insight. Sometimes the big leaps of scientific understanding come from looking at the data and then coming to Eureka.
- foobarqux 3y ago
  > in that studies of machine language performance can already falsify some theories of human language cognition. They do not. > Language competency requires component X... I assume X is something like "can't be learned statistically". LLMs haven't shown that in humans (which is what we are talking about): Beside the fact that humans use much less data LLMs can learn arbitrary patterns, including patterns humans can't learn (just as humans can't "learn" to understand a 56k modem). > The reason is that models in general yield insights. Prediction machines don't generate insights by default, that isn't even their objective, so if they did it would just be by chance. You might as well say that by mixing random chemicals you might get a discovery in chemistry. It's possible but absurd. > Where there is already an understood rational process, you no longer need the insight. The rational process I'm talking about is the process of inquiry not the process under investigation. > Sometimes the big leaps of scientific understanding come from looking at the data You could imagine something like this happening abstractly but it hasn't happened, no one has proposed specifically how it might happen and no one is pursuing anything like this because there isn't any obvious thing to pursue. It's just wishful thinking. Maybe if I do random stuff I'll make a scientific breakthrough. Maybe! But extremely improbable and silly to go even further and assume that you would.