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I think you're making it much more complicated than it is. The fact is, nobody expected that speaking natural language, let alone reasoning capabilities, would

by tomp 3y ago

I think you're making it much more complicated than it is. The fact is, nobody expected that speaking natural language, let alone reasoning capabilities, would emerge at the scale of GPT-3. Even the people that suspected that scaling would improve GPT-2 (i.e. OpenAI), were surprised by the results. Clearly this is "strong convergence" according to your definition, behavior that cannot be derived or extrapolated from individual constituents (or smaller scale).

godelski 3y ago
> nobody expected that speaking natural language, let alone reasoning capabilities, would emerge at the scale of GPT-3 Tons of people expected it to "speak" natural language. I mean that's why we built it. Jury is still out on reasoning. I say this as a ML researcher btw > Even the people that suspected that scaling would improve GPT-2 (i.e. OpenAI), were surprised by the results. I'm sure some were, I'm sure some weren't. I mean as we've learned more about how it was trained and what it was trained on I think less people are being surprised. But fair to say that that's biased. But so is your version. The problem is that __who__ is being surprised matters. A caveman would be surprised by a computer, because they have no reference. But we aren't. Perspective doesn't make the computer magic. Nor does it make it strong emergence. It just makes the caveman less knowledgeable. It's okay if we're the caveman. > Clearly this is "strong convergence" according to your definition LOL > behavior that cannot be derived or extrapolated from individual constituents (or smaller scale). Jury's still out. Don't count your chickens before they hatch. Currently this is an unanswerable question. Just because __WE__ can't derive it, doesn't mean it can't be derived. That's the difference in the definition. It may very well be (I highly doubt it), but we have so little understanding of these networks that you can't make a strong claim in either way. But remember that strong emergence is a VERY bold claim, considering that we do not know of it anywhere in physics. This includes thermodynamics and quantum mechanics, mind you. But also remember that these fields too centuries to get to the point we're at now, and that still isn't a complete understanding (but it has accelerated for sure). Strong claims require strong evidence. Spend less time on twitter and more time reading papers and math books if you want to understand ML.

by tomp 3y ago

godelski 3y ago

> nobody expected that speaking natural language, let alone reasoning capabilities, would emerge at the scale of GPT-3 Tons of people expected it to "speak" natural language. I mean that's why we built it. Jury is still out on reasoning. I say this as a ML researcher btw > Even the people that suspected that scaling would improve GPT-2 (i.e. OpenAI), were surprised by the results. I'm sure some were, I'm sure some weren't. I mean as we've learned more about how it was trained and what it was trained on I think less people are being surprised. But fair to say that that's biased. But so is your version. The problem is that __who__ is being surprised matters. A caveman would be surprised by a computer, because they have no reference. But we aren't. Perspective doesn't make the computer magic. Nor does it make it strong emergence. It just makes the caveman less knowledgeable. It's okay if we're the caveman. > Clearly this is "strong convergence" according to your definition LOL > behavior that cannot be derived or extrapolated from individual constituents (or smaller scale). Jury's still out. Don't count your chickens before they hatch. Currently this is an unanswerable question. Just because __WE__ can't derive it, doesn't mean it can't be derived. That's the difference in the definition. It may very well be (I highly doubt it), but we have so little understanding of these networks that you can't make a strong claim in either way. But remember that strong emergence is a VERY bold claim, considering that we do not know of it anywhere in physics. This includes thermodynamics and quantum mechanics, mind you. But also remember that these fields too centuries to get to the point we're at now, and that still isn't a complete understanding (but it has accelerated for sure). Strong claims require strong evidence. Spend less time on twitter and more time reading papers and math books if you want to understand ML.