4 ms·

That is a terrible headline. It implies that the _abilities_ are a mirage, but it's actually the "emergent" part that might be a mirage -- which is to say it's

That is a terrible headline. It implies that the _abilities_ are a mirage, but it's actually the "emergent" part that might be a mirage -- which is to say it's not an unpredictable "phase transition" but gradual and predictable improvement in ability as the models scale.

unclenoriega 3y ago
FWIW, I read the headline as saying the abilities of LLMs are not emergent.
- anon291 3y ago
  Emergent and breakthrough are not the same quality. Something can be emergent and develop gradually
  - andsoitis 3y ago
    > Something can be emergent and develop gradually Emergent can be defined as the sudden appearance of novel behavior.
    - hdarshane 3y ago
      emergence simply means something the model wasn't trained and expected to produce.
taneq 3y ago
And “emergent” in this context usually means “behaviour resulting from the interaction of a large number of individually simple units”, not “suddenly appearing.”
- hdarshane 3y ago
  This interpretation is most definitely right. As with all things, it's coming down to semantics.
CamperBob2 3y ago
Not only that, but what's the point in evaluating a language model on its ability to do arithmetic? It's like criticizing a talking dog because the C++ code it wrote was full of buffer-overflow bugs. In reality, if you ask a good LLM to solve a math-related problem, it will write and run a Python program to return the answer. Sometimes this even works. Sometimes it returns garbage. And sometimes it realizes that its own answer isn't realistic and tries a different approach. Sometimes people claim this isn't a valid manifestation of intelligence. Completely pointless study, unworthy of Wired or HN.
- naasking 3y ago
  Arithmetic is treated as a proxy for general reasoning abilities.
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    Arithmetic is treated as a proxy for general reasoning abilities. Which is stupid, because it's not. A pocket calculator can perform arithmetic, as can a Python program, or for that matter a Japanese cormorant, who counts the fish it helps you catch. None of those are considered capable of "reasoning" on their own. Meanwhile, GPT4 will cheerfully write a program to carry out the required arithmetic operations (and then some.) A study that doesn't acknowledge that is worthless at best.
    - Jensson 3y ago
      > Meanwhile, GPT4 will cheerfully write a program to carry out the required arithmetic operations (and then some.) A study that doesn't acknowledge that is worthless at best. We don't want to see if the LLM can be used as a tool to do arithmetics, but whether it can learn complex data relationships like arithmetics. Arithmetics is a stepping stone, not a goal so that the model can solve it by invoking a calculator isn't relevant. The problems we want it to solve doesn't have tools like calculators so it doesn't help getting us there.
      - 3y ago

unclenoriega 3y ago

FWIW, I read the headline as saying the abilities of LLMs are not emergent.

anon291 3y ago
Emergent and breakthrough are not the same quality. Something can be emergent and develop gradually
- andsoitis 3y ago
  > Something can be emergent and develop gradually Emergent can be defined as the sudden appearance of novel behavior.
  - hdarshane 3y ago
    emergence simply means something the model wasn't trained and expected to produce.

taneq 3y ago

And “emergent” in this context usually means “behaviour resulting from the interaction of a large number of individually simple units”, not “suddenly appearing.”

hdarshane 3y ago
This interpretation is most definitely right. As with all things, it's coming down to semantics.

CamperBob2 3y ago

Not only that, but what's the point in evaluating a language model on its ability to do arithmetic? It's like criticizing a talking dog because the C++ code it wrote was full of buffer-overflow bugs. In reality, if you ask a good LLM to solve a math-related problem, it will write and run a Python program to return the answer. Sometimes this even works. Sometimes it returns garbage. And sometimes it realizes that its own answer isn't realistic and tries a different approach. Sometimes people claim this isn't a valid manifestation of intelligence. Completely pointless study, unworthy of Wired or HN.

naasking 3y ago
Arithmetic is treated as a proxy for general reasoning abilities.
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  Arithmetic is treated as a proxy for general reasoning abilities. Which is stupid, because it's not. A pocket calculator can perform arithmetic, as can a Python program, or for that matter a Japanese cormorant, who counts the fish it helps you catch. None of those are considered capable of "reasoning" on their own. Meanwhile, GPT4 will cheerfully write a program to carry out the required arithmetic operations (and then some.) A study that doesn't acknowledge that is worthless at best.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    > Meanwhile, GPT4 will cheerfully write a program to carry out the required arithmetic operations (and then some.) A study that doesn't acknowledge that is worthless at best. We don't want to see if the LLM can be used as a tool to do arithmetics, but whether it can learn complex data relationships like arithmetics. Arithmetics is a stepping stone, not a goal so that the model can solve it by invoking a calculator isn't relevant. The problems we want it to solve doesn't have tools like calculators so it doesn't help getting us there.
    - 3y ago