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> Specifically, we explore the potential of self-training models on their own outputs, akin to how humans learn and build on their previous thoughts and actions
by xg15 3y ago
> Specifically, we explore the potential of self-training models on their own outputs, akin to how humans learn and build on their previous thoughts and actions.
I'd argue this misrepresents even how humans learn. We learn from our previous thoughts and actions along with the reaction of the environment to them. That's more like reinforcement learning.
There are situations where someone can purely learn from their own thoughts - i.e. an author gaining more insight into their own characters as they imagine the story, or a mathematician building a proof in their head. But even those need real-world inputs from time to time: The author will be influenced by other stories they know and/or experiences they had in the past, the mathematician will write things down at some point and may gain new insight by actually looking at the formula/graphs/etc instead of just imagining them.
So I'm very sceptical that even humans could basically create infinite new knowledge by continuously "learning from their own thoughts".
- paulddraper 3y agoExactly. There's only so much you can learn via shower thoughts.
- im3w1l 3y agoI would argue that for a mathematician, the primary anchor is other mathematicians reading their proofs and complaining that it doesn't seem quite right. What anchors the mathematical community as a whole is applications - physics, cryptography, signal processing. The demand for applications is what keeps it from degenerating into some number-mysticism in the long term.
- lubesGordi 3y agoMaybe 'new information' can be generated by taking existing data and finding new relationships between that data. If that were the case, the original embedding for that data would change (new relationships = new associations). I agree that infinite knowledge would be difficult to generate this way, but maybe some new knowledge could be. And this process of finding new relationships between existing data might be something we can't automate yet.