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And I'm much less frustrated by people who are, in fact, claiming that LLMs can do these things, whether or not I agree with them. Frankly, while I have a basic

And I'm much less frustrated by people who are, in fact, claiming that LLMs can do these things, whether or not I agree with them. Frankly, while I have a basic understanding of the underlying technology, I'm not in the ML field myself, and can't claim to be enough of an expert to say with any real authority what an LLM could ever be able to do, just what the particular LLMs I've used or seen the detailed explanations of can do. No; this is specifically about people who stipulate that the LLMs can't do these things, but still want to claim that they are or will become AGI, so they just basically say "well, humans can't really do it, can they? so LLMs don't need to do it either!"

godelski 2y ago
I am an ML researcher, I don't think LLMs can reason, but similar to you I'm annoyed by people who say ML systems "will never" reason. This is a strong claim that needs be substantiated too! Just as the strong claim of LLMs reasoning needs strong evidence (which I've yet to see). It's subtle, but that matters and subtle things is why expertise is often required for many things. We don't have a proof of universal approximation in a meaningful sense with transformers (yes, I'm aware of that paper). Fwiw, I'm never frustrated by people having opinions. We're human, we all do. But I'm deeply frustrated with how common it is to watch people with no expertise argue with those that do. It's one thing for LeCun to argue with Hinton, but it's another when Musk or some random anime profile picture person does. And it's weird that people take strong sides on discussions happening in the open. Opinions, totally fine. So are discussions. But it's when people assert correctness that it turns to look religious. And there's many that over inflate the knowledge that they have. So what I'm saying is please keep this attitude. Skepticism and pushback are not problematic, they are tools that can be valuable to learn. The things you're skeptical about are good to be skeptical about. As much as I hate the AGI hype I'm also upset by the over correction many of my peers take. Neither is scientific.

godelski 2y ago

I am an ML researcher, I don't think LLMs can reason, but similar to you I'm annoyed by people who say ML systems "will never" reason. This is a strong claim that needs be substantiated too! Just as the strong claim of LLMs reasoning needs strong evidence (which I've yet to see). It's subtle, but that matters and subtle things is why expertise is often required for many things. We don't have a proof of universal approximation in a meaningful sense with transformers (yes, I'm aware of that paper). Fwiw, I'm never frustrated by people having opinions. We're human, we all do. But I'm deeply frustrated with how common it is to watch people with no expertise argue with those that do. It's one thing for LeCun to argue with Hinton, but it's another when Musk or some random anime profile picture person does. And it's weird that people take strong sides on discussions happening in the open. Opinions, totally fine. So are discussions. But it's when people assert correctness that it turns to look religious. And there's many that over inflate the knowledge that they have. So what I'm saying is please keep this attitude. Skepticism and pushback are not problematic, they are tools that can be valuable to learn. The things you're skeptical about are good to be skeptical about. As much as I hate the AGI hype I'm also upset by the over correction many of my peers take. Neither is scientific.