4 ms·

I feel like it's the difference between something that has been engineered and something that has been discovered. I feel like most of our industry up until no

I feel like it's the difference between something that has been engineered and something that has been discovered. I feel like most of our industry up until now has been engineered. LLMs were discovered.

arketyp 3y ago
I understand your distinction, I think, but I would say it is more engineering than ever. It's like the early days of the steam engine or firearms development. It's not a hard science, not formal analysis, it's engineering: tinkering, testing, experimenting, iterating.
- peddling-brink 3y ago
  > tinkering, testing, experimenting, iterating But that describes science. http://imgur.com/1h3K2TT/ http://imgur.com/1h3K2TT/
- amelius 3y ago
  AI requires a lot of engineering. However, the engineering is not what makes working in AI interesting. It's the plumbing, basically.
justanotheratom 3y ago
and finally, this justifies the "science" in Computer Science.
SkyMarshal 3y ago
If the Black Swan model of science is true, then most of the consequential innovations and advances are discovered rather than engineered.
herval 3y ago
LLMs were very much engineered... the exact results they yield are hard to determine since they're large statistical models, but I don't think that categorizes the LLMs themselves as a 'discovery' (like say Penicilin)
- baq 3y ago
  There’s an argument that all maths are discovered instead of invented or engineered. LLM hardware certainly is hard engineering but the numbers you put in it aren’t, once you have them; if you stumbled upon them by chance or they were revealed to you in your sleep it’d work just as well. (‘ollama run mixtral’ is good enough for a dream to me!)
mejutoco 3y ago
I believe, from what I saw in Mathematics, this is a matter of taste. Discovered or invented are 2 perspectives. Some people prefer to think that light is reaching in previously dark corners of knowledge waiting to be discovered(discover). Others prefer to think that by force of genius they brought the thing into the world. To me, personally, these are 2 sides of the coin, without one having more proof than the other.

arketyp 3y ago

I understand your distinction, I think, but I would say it is more engineering than ever. It's like the early days of the steam engine or firearms development. It's not a hard science, not formal analysis, it's engineering: tinkering, testing, experimenting, iterating.

peddling-brink 3y ago
> tinkering, testing, experimenting, iterating But that describes science. http://imgur.com/1h3K2TT/ http://imgur.com/1h3K2TT/
amelius 3y ago
AI requires a lot of engineering. However, the engineering is not what makes working in AI interesting. It's the plumbing, basically.

justanotheratom 3y ago

and finally, this justifies the "science" in Computer Science.

SkyMarshal 3y ago

If the Black Swan model of science is true, then most of the consequential innovations and advances are discovered rather than engineered.

herval 3y ago

LLMs were very much engineered... the exact results they yield are hard to determine since they're large statistical models, but I don't think that categorizes the LLMs themselves as a 'discovery' (like say Penicilin)

baq 3y ago
There’s an argument that all maths are discovered instead of invented or engineered. LLM hardware certainly is hard engineering but the numbers you put in it aren’t, once you have them; if you stumbled upon them by chance or they were revealed to you in your sleep it’d work just as well. (‘ollama run mixtral’ is good enough for a dream to me!)

mejutoco 3y ago

I believe, from what I saw in Mathematics, this is a matter of taste. Discovered or invented are 2 perspectives. Some people prefer to think that light is reaching in previously dark corners of knowledge waiting to be discovered(discover). Others prefer to think that by force of genius they brought the thing into the world. To me, personally, these are 2 sides of the coin, without one having more proof than the other.