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This is the first post in LessWrong that I found interesting and not insipid navel gazing. My interpretation of the finding is that the LLM training has reveal
by kridsdale1 3y ago
This is the first post in LessWrong that I found interesting and not insipid navel gazing.
My interpretation of the finding is that the LLM training has revealed the primordial nature of human language, akin to the primary function of genetic code predominately being to ensure the ongoing mechanical homeostasis of the organism.
Language’s evolutionary purpose is to drive group-fitness. Group management fundamentals are thus the predominant themes in the undefined latent space.
Who is in our tribe? Who should we trust? Who should we kill? Who leads us?
These matters likely dominated human speech for a thousand millennia.
- andrewflnr 3y agoI would at minimum want to see the analysis replicated across a variety of languages before I started drawing conclusions about "the primordial nature of human language". In particular, languages with no known relation to English; Chinese would be a good one, far from the Indo-European tree and with a big corpus. The membership-centric is certainly appealing, but really it's too appealing to let ourselves take it seriously without counterbalancing it with a high standard of evidence.
- __loam 3y ago> My interpretation of the finding is that the LLM training has revealed the primordial nature of human language, akin to the primary function of genetic code predominately being to ensure the ongoing mechanical homeostasis of the organism. We've truly reached peak hype. It's a token predictor dude.
- pests 3y agojust set a server up with ftp and ssh...
- bomewish 3y agoI mean to take the evopsych spin off it and just distil what you’re saying: “language is a tool we use to do stuff in the world.” Notwrong!