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> can intuit the rules of the game from those examples, I am pretty sure a bunch of matrix multiplications can't intuit anything. naively, it doesn't seem ver

> can intuit the rules of the game from those examples, I am pretty sure a bunch of matrix multiplications can't intuit anything. naively, it doesn't seem very surprising that enormous amounts of self play cause the internal structure to reflect the inputs and outputs?

jddj 3y ago
We really need a list of verbs we're allowed to use when talking about computers and verbs that belong in the magic human/animal-only section
- sandgiant 3y ago
  You are probably joking, but I think it's actually very important to look at the language we use around LLMs, in order not to get stuck in assumptions and sociological bias associated with a vocabulary usually reserved for "magical" beings, as it were. This goes both ways by the way. I could be convinced that LLMs can achieve something the likes of intuition, but I strongly believe that it is a very different kind of intuition than we normally associate with humans/animals. Usins the same label is thus potentially confusing, and (human pride aside) might even prevent us from appreciating the full scope of what LLMs are capable of.
  - jddj 3y ago
    I think the issue is that we're suddenly trying to pin down something that was previously fine being loosely understood, but without any new information. If someone came to the table with "intuition is the process of a system inferring a likely outcome from given inputs by the process X - not to be confused with matmultuition which is process Y", that might be a reasonable proposal.
jstummbillig 3y ago
> naively, it doesn't seem very surprising that enormous amounts of self play cause the internal structure to reflect the inputs and outputs? Right. Wait, are you talking about AI or humans?
nerdponx 3y ago
It's not self-play. It's literally just reading sequences of moves. And it doesn't even know that they're moves, or that it's supposed to be learning a game. It's just learning to predict the next token given a sequence of previous tokens. What's kind of amazing is that, in doing so, it actually learns to play chess! That is, the model weights naturally organize into something resembling an understanding of chess, just by trying to minimize error on next-token prediction. It makes sense, but it's still kind of astonishing that it actually works.
golol 3y ago
> I am pretty sure a bunch of matrix multiplications can't intuit anything. I don't understand how people can say things like this when universal approximation is an easy thing to prove. You could reproduce Magnus Carlsen's exact chess-playing stochastic process with a bunch of matrix multiplications and nonlinear activations, up to arbitrarily small error.
- ben_w 3y ago
  I read such statements as being claims that "intuition" is part of consciousness etc. It's still too strong a claim given that matrix multiplication also describes quantum mechanics and by extension chemistry and by extension biology and by extension our own brains… but I frequently encounter examples of mistaking two related concepts for synonyms, and I assume in this case it is meant to be a weaker claim about LLMs not being conscious. Me, I think the word "intuition" is fine, just like I'd say that a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear it does produce a sound because sound is the vibration of the air instead of the qualia.
  - golol 3y ago
    Funnily, for me intuition is the part of intelligence which I can more easily imagine as being done by a neural network. When my intuition says this person is not to trust I can easily imagine that being something like a simple hyperplane classification in situation space. It's the active, iterative thinking and planning that is more critical for AGI and, while obviousky theoretically possible, much harder to imagine a neural network performing.
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    No, matrix multiplication is the system humans use to make predictions about those things but it doesn’t describe their fundamental structure and there’s no reason to imply they do.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      > describe their fundamental structure That is literally, literally, what it does. One may argue that it does so wrongly, but that's a different claim entirely. > there’s no reason to imply they do The predictions matching reality to the best of our collective abilities to test them is such a reason. The saying that "all models are wrong but some are useful" is a reason against that.
jhrmnn 3y ago
What does „intuit“ mean to you then?
empath-nirvana 3y ago
Can a bunch of neurons firing based on chemical and electrical triggers intuit anything? It has to be the case that any intelligent process must be the emergent result of non-intelligent processes, because intelligence is not an inherent property of anything.

jddj 3y ago

We really need a list of verbs we're allowed to use when talking about computers and verbs that belong in the magic human/animal-only section

sandgiant 3y ago
You are probably joking, but I think it's actually very important to look at the language we use around LLMs, in order not to get stuck in assumptions and sociological bias associated with a vocabulary usually reserved for "magical" beings, as it were. This goes both ways by the way. I could be convinced that LLMs can achieve something the likes of intuition, but I strongly believe that it is a very different kind of intuition than we normally associate with humans/animals. Usins the same label is thus potentially confusing, and (human pride aside) might even prevent us from appreciating the full scope of what LLMs are capable of.
- jddj 3y ago
  I think the issue is that we're suddenly trying to pin down something that was previously fine being loosely understood, but without any new information. If someone came to the table with "intuition is the process of a system inferring a likely outcome from given inputs by the process X - not to be confused with matmultuition which is process Y", that might be a reasonable proposal.

jstummbillig 3y ago

> naively, it doesn't seem very surprising that enormous amounts of self play cause the internal structure to reflect the inputs and outputs? Right. Wait, are you talking about AI or humans?

nerdponx 3y ago

It's not self-play. It's literally just reading sequences of moves. And it doesn't even know that they're moves, or that it's supposed to be learning a game. It's just learning to predict the next token given a sequence of previous tokens. What's kind of amazing is that, in doing so, it actually learns to play chess! That is, the model weights naturally organize into something resembling an understanding of chess, just by trying to minimize error on next-token prediction. It makes sense, but it's still kind of astonishing that it actually works.

golol 3y ago

> I am pretty sure a bunch of matrix multiplications can't intuit anything. I don't understand how people can say things like this when universal approximation is an easy thing to prove. You could reproduce Magnus Carlsen's exact chess-playing stochastic process with a bunch of matrix multiplications and nonlinear activations, up to arbitrarily small error.

ben_w 3y ago
I read such statements as being claims that "intuition" is part of consciousness etc. It's still too strong a claim given that matrix multiplication also describes quantum mechanics and by extension chemistry and by extension biology and by extension our own brains… but I frequently encounter examples of mistaking two related concepts for synonyms, and I assume in this case it is meant to be a weaker claim about LLMs not being conscious. Me, I think the word "intuition" is fine, just like I'd say that a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear it does produce a sound because sound is the vibration of the air instead of the qualia.
- golol 3y ago
  Funnily, for me intuition is the part of intelligence which I can more easily imagine as being done by a neural network. When my intuition says this person is not to trust I can easily imagine that being something like a simple hyperplane classification in situation space. It's the active, iterative thinking and planning that is more critical for AGI and, while obviousky theoretically possible, much harder to imagine a neural network performing.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  No, matrix multiplication is the system humans use to make predictions about those things but it doesn’t describe their fundamental structure and there’s no reason to imply they do.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > describe their fundamental structure That is literally, literally, what it does. One may argue that it does so wrongly, but that's a different claim entirely. > there’s no reason to imply they do The predictions matching reality to the best of our collective abilities to test them is such a reason. The saying that "all models are wrong but some are useful" is a reason against that.

jhrmnn 3y ago

What does „intuit“ mean to you then?

empath-nirvana 3y ago

Can a bunch of neurons firing based on chemical and electrical triggers intuit anything? It has to be the case that any intelligent process must be the emergent result of non-intelligent processes, because intelligence is not an inherent property of anything.