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I have yet to see an LLM that is cooperative. The magic of collaborating with someone is that we can both understand the problem and reason about it. The curre

I have yet to see an LLM that is cooperative. The magic of collaborating with someone is that we can both understand the problem and reason about it. The current degree of LLM intelligence is not compelling for a social creature like me.

theendisney 3y ago
Is it even allowed to ask questions?? Edit: my sience fiction joke in the 90s was AI though bots chatting in irc channels. They could seemlesly integrate human intelligence that way.
ben_w 3y ago
Surprised to read that. I use them as a cooperative partner by default. Also: quite a few people have had instances work with other instances, sometimes of the same model and sometimes of other models.
- hackable_sand 3y ago
  Cooperation is more than an i/o loop. Layering and pooling models is nice though. Perhaps "conceptualization" is the indicator here.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    Perhaps I'm up too late, but I can't think what else is there to cooperation besides two or more agents doing things in alignment with some goal? (Regardless of who or what sets that goal). Also I don't know what you mean by "conceptualization".
    - hackable_sand 3y ago
      It's fuzzy because intelligence is relative right. I mean "being able to conceive an idea". As humans, two or more of us can reason our way to a conclusion without domain knowledge. There is an upper limit where the idea is incomplete (assuming respectful ignorance), but it's generative nonetheless. With an LLM I have to prompt engineer to guide it. I would rather have it generate novel concepts to push domain boundaries. They work great as knowledge bases though.
      - ben_w 2y ago
        > As humans, two or more of us can reason our way to a conclusion without domain knowledge That sounds like step-by-step thinking? > With an LLM I have to prompt engineer to guide it. I generally have to in humans, too. I mean, you and I are prompting each other, aren't we? For me the difference between prompting a human and prompting an AI is that I can reset the AI, I can't make a human forget a previous analogy that had only confused them. (And likewise, I don't expect that I fully forget bad analogies which confuse me, though I do try). > They work great as knowledge bases though. IMO, that's their weakest part. We had knowledge bases before — where each claim can be easily localised within the model, corrected when it needs to be, verified in advance, and which give predictable output — LLMs are none of those things. LLMs are much better at understanding the question (constant time for a fixed-length output, even when the query is phrased badly and relatively complex), and being able to synthesise things in the form of "${x} won't work, try ${y}".
        hackable_sand 2y ago
        Huh. Do you think integrating the Semantic Web metadata and ontologies in LLM training can help us bootstrap conceptual modeling using natural language?
koonsolo 3y ago
Have you ever talked to real average people? I would say an LLM is more intelligent than at least some people I know. And in the domain of programming, most people I know. Simply by the fact that most people don't know programming.
- dartos 3y ago
  Programmers aren’t any better than someone who doesn’t know how to program. Programming skill isn’t a measure of intelligence. Go outside. Talk to real people. Touch some grass.
  - koonsolo 2y ago
    I have a friend called Nick, but we call him Nikipedia, since he has a crazy amount of facts stored into his brain. When we go to quizzes, our group is most likely to win. I can tell you this: LLM's know more than Nick and would beat these quizzes every single time. You can use any definition of "intelligence" that makes you happy, no problem.
- samus 3y ago
  LLMs are idiot savants that can do a few things very well and fail horribly at others. And they require careful prodding to correctly process tricky logical questions, exposing what they are at the core: text expanders and parroters. Highly useful of course to save typing effort and to aggregate insights over large context lengths. If anything, dealing with LLMs has helped me appreciate the capabilities of people more.
  - DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
    > exposing what they are at the core: text expanders and parroters. They're much more than that. You can ask an LLM a question that it has never seen before, and it will give you a logical, reasonable answer. That requires knowledge of the world and the ability to reason. LLMs aren't the same as humans, but neither are dogs or cats, and they're obviously intelligent in their own ways.
Kiro 3y ago
I really can't relate to that experience. On the contrary I think this is something LLMs are really good at.
- hackable_sand 3y ago
  You could convince me with a React agent in a shared environment. Do you have any models that you find compelling? Maybe a domain model that you like or have wanted to try. Don't get me wrong, I still use LLMs, but they just really need that extra augmentation for any non-trivial task.

theendisney 3y ago

Is it even allowed to ask questions?? Edit: my sience fiction joke in the 90s was AI though bots chatting in irc channels. They could seemlesly integrate human intelligence that way.

ben_w 3y ago

Surprised to read that. I use them as a cooperative partner by default. Also: quite a few people have had instances work with other instances, sometimes of the same model and sometimes of other models.

hackable_sand 3y ago
Cooperation is more than an i/o loop. Layering and pooling models is nice though. Perhaps "conceptualization" is the indicator here.
- ben_w 3y ago
  Perhaps I'm up too late, but I can't think what else is there to cooperation besides two or more agents doing things in alignment with some goal? (Regardless of who or what sets that goal). Also I don't know what you mean by "conceptualization".
  - hackable_sand 3y ago
    It's fuzzy because intelligence is relative right. I mean "being able to conceive an idea". As humans, two or more of us can reason our way to a conclusion without domain knowledge. There is an upper limit where the idea is incomplete (assuming respectful ignorance), but it's generative nonetheless. With an LLM I have to prompt engineer to guide it. I would rather have it generate novel concepts to push domain boundaries. They work great as knowledge bases though.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      > As humans, two or more of us can reason our way to a conclusion without domain knowledge That sounds like step-by-step thinking? > With an LLM I have to prompt engineer to guide it. I generally have to in humans, too. I mean, you and I are prompting each other, aren't we? For me the difference between prompting a human and prompting an AI is that I can reset the AI, I can't make a human forget a previous analogy that had only confused them. (And likewise, I don't expect that I fully forget bad analogies which confuse me, though I do try). > They work great as knowledge bases though. IMO, that's their weakest part. We had knowledge bases before — where each claim can be easily localised within the model, corrected when it needs to be, verified in advance, and which give predictable output — LLMs are none of those things. LLMs are much better at understanding the question (constant time for a fixed-length output, even when the query is phrased badly and relatively complex), and being able to synthesise things in the form of "${x} won't work, try ${y}".
      - hackable_sand 2y ago
        Huh. Do you think integrating the Semantic Web metadata and ontologies in LLM training can help us bootstrap conceptual modeling using natural language?

koonsolo 3y ago

Have you ever talked to real average people? I would say an LLM is more intelligent than at least some people I know. And in the domain of programming, most people I know. Simply by the fact that most people don't know programming.

dartos 3y ago
Programmers aren’t any better than someone who doesn’t know how to program. Programming skill isn’t a measure of intelligence. Go outside. Talk to real people. Touch some grass.
- koonsolo 2y ago
  I have a friend called Nick, but we call him Nikipedia, since he has a crazy amount of facts stored into his brain. When we go to quizzes, our group is most likely to win. I can tell you this: LLM's know more than Nick and would beat these quizzes every single time. You can use any definition of "intelligence" that makes you happy, no problem.
samus 3y ago
LLMs are idiot savants that can do a few things very well and fail horribly at others. And they require careful prodding to correctly process tricky logical questions, exposing what they are at the core: text expanders and parroters. Highly useful of course to save typing effort and to aggregate insights over large context lengths. If anything, dealing with LLMs has helped me appreciate the capabilities of people more.
- DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
  > exposing what they are at the core: text expanders and parroters. They're much more than that. You can ask an LLM a question that it has never seen before, and it will give you a logical, reasonable answer. That requires knowledge of the world and the ability to reason. LLMs aren't the same as humans, but neither are dogs or cats, and they're obviously intelligent in their own ways.

Kiro 3y ago

I really can't relate to that experience. On the contrary I think this is something LLMs are really good at.

hackable_sand 3y ago
You could convince me with a React agent in a shared environment. Do you have any models that you find compelling? Maybe a domain model that you like or have wanted to try. Don't get me wrong, I still use LLMs, but they just really need that extra augmentation for any non-trivial task.