4 ms·

LLM are just large language models, they're not capable of thinking or coming up with novel ideas. They could enable people to do so by providing food for brain

LLM are just large language models, they're not capable of thinking or coming up with novel ideas. They could enable people to do so by providing food for brainstorming.

mkaic 2y ago
> "...they're not capable of thinking or coming up with novel ideas." This claim is unfalsifiable given common definitions of "thinking" and "coming up with novel ideas".
- jonathaneunice 2y ago
  But it is verifiable. We could quibble over "who judges novelty," but I bet if there were regular examples of it doing so, and there were some community agreement the ideas were indeed suitably novel, we'd pretty quickly shout "existence proof!" and be done.
- lostmsu 2y ago
  No, it is very much demonstrably false. Here's a simple program that does not even do LLMs that will trivially enumerate all ideas (broken UTF8 handling omitted for brevity): for (var numeral = new BigInteger(0); ; numeral++) WriteLine(UTF8.GetString(numeral.ToByteArray()); For any given idea in English LLMs will certainly get it faster.
janalsncm 2y ago
Anytime I see an argument of the form X is just Y an alarm bell goes off in my head. While it is descriptive of the components, these arguments ignore the possibility of emergent complexity. Sometimes things are more than just the sum of their parts. The sun is just a bunch of hydrogen. A computer is just a bunch of transistors. Humans are just a bunch of cells. An artificial neural network is just a bunch of matrix multiplications. I personally think LLMs are extremely limited and overhyped. But this form of argument seems incorrect to me since it can be used to argue that LLMs cannot do things we already know they can do.
- ninetyninenine 2y ago
  Probably overhyped from a business and media perspective. From a technological perspective LLMs are the first thing we've ever built that can rocket past a turing test. LLMs are like mentally challenged autistic human beings. The fact that we even built such a thing is a milestone in humanity.

LLM are just large language models, they're not capable of thinking or coming up with novel ideas. They could enable people to do so by providing food for brainstorming.

mkaic 2y ago

> "...they're not capable of thinking or coming up with novel ideas." This claim is unfalsifiable given common definitions of "thinking" and "coming up with novel ideas".

jonathaneunice 2y ago
But it is verifiable. We could quibble over "who judges novelty," but I bet if there were regular examples of it doing so, and there were some community agreement the ideas were indeed suitably novel, we'd pretty quickly shout "existence proof!" and be done.
lostmsu 2y ago
No, it is very much demonstrably false. Here's a simple program that does not even do LLMs that will trivially enumerate all ideas (broken UTF8 handling omitted for brevity): for (var numeral = new BigInteger(0); ; numeral++) WriteLine(UTF8.GetString(numeral.ToByteArray()); For any given idea in English LLMs will certainly get it faster.

janalsncm 2y ago

Anytime I see an argument of the form X is just Y an alarm bell goes off in my head. While it is descriptive of the components, these arguments ignore the possibility of emergent complexity. Sometimes things are more than just the sum of their parts. The sun is just a bunch of hydrogen. A computer is just a bunch of transistors. Humans are just a bunch of cells. An artificial neural network is just a bunch of matrix multiplications. I personally think LLMs are extremely limited and overhyped. But this form of argument seems incorrect to me since it can be used to argue that LLMs cannot do things we already know they can do.

ninetyninenine 2y ago
Probably overhyped from a business and media perspective. From a technological perspective LLMs are the first thing we've ever built that can rocket past a turing test. LLMs are like mentally challenged autistic human beings. The fact that we even built such a thing is a milestone in humanity.