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I wonder how long people will still protest in these threads that "It doesn't know anything! It's just an autocomplete parrot!" Because.. yea, it is. However..

I wonder how long people will still protest in these threads that "It doesn't know anything! It's just an autocomplete parrot!" Because.. yea, it is. However.. it keeps expanding, it keeps getting more useful. Yea people and especially companies are using it for things which it has no business being involved in.. and despite that it keeps growing, it keeps progressing. I do find the "stochastic parrot" comments slowly dwindle in number and volume with each significant release, though. Still, i find it weirdly interesting to see a bunch of people be both right and "wrong" at the same time. They're completely right, and yet it's like they're also being proven wrong in the ways that matter. Very weird space we're living in.

a_wild_dandan 2y ago
The "statistical parrot" parrots have been demonstrably wrong for years (see e.g. LeCun et al[1]). It's just harder to ignore reality with hundreds of millions of people now using incredible new AI tools. We're approaching "don't believe your lying eyes" territory. Deniers will continue pretending that LLMs are just an NFT-level fad or bubble or whatever. The AI revolution will continue to pass them by. More's the pity. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.09485 https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.09485
- mensetmanusman 2y ago
  A trillion dimensional stochastic parrot is still a stochastic parrot. If these systems showed understanding we would notice. No one is denying that this form of intelligence is useful.
  - logicchains 2y ago
    I don't know how you can say they lack understanding of the world when in pretty much any standardised test designed to measure human intelligence they perform better than the average human. They only thing that don't understand is touch because they're not trained on that, but they can already understand audio and video.
    - zeroonetwothree 2y ago
      An answer key would outperform the average human but it isn’t intelligent. Tests designed for humans are not appropriate to judge non humans.
    - zeknife 2y ago
      You said it, those tests are designed to measure human intelligence, because we know that there is a correspondence between test results and other, more general tasks - in humans. We do not know that such a correspondence exists with language models. I would actually argue that they demonstrably do not, since even an LLM that passes every IQ test you put in front of it can still trip up on trivial exceptions that wouldn't fool a child.
      - esafak 2y ago
        So they fail in their own way? They're not humans; that's to be expected.
  - devmor 2y ago
    No you don’t understand, if i put a billion billion trillion monkeys on typewriters, they’re actually now one super intelligent monkey because they’re useful now! We just need more monkeys and it will be the same as a human brain.
- croes 2y ago
  What does the mass of users change about what it is? How many of these check the results for hallucinations and how many don’t because I part of AI? More than once these tools fail at tasks a fifth grader could understand
- outworlder 2y ago
  > Deniers will continue pretending that LLMs are just an NFT-level fad or bubble or whatever. The AI revolution will continue to pass them by. More's the pity. You should re-read that very slowly and carefully and really think about it. Calling anyone that's skeptical a 'denier' is a red flag. We have been through these AI cycles before. In every case, the tools were impressive for their time. Their limitations were always brushed aside and we would get a hype cycle. There was nothing wrong with the technology, but humans always like to try to extrapolate their capabilities and we usually get that wrong. When hype caught up to reality, investments dried up and nobody wanted to touch "AI" for a while. Rinse, repeat. LLMs are again impressive, for our time. When the dust settles, we'll get some useful tools but I'm pretty sure we will experience another – severe – AI winter. If we had some optimistic but also realistic discussions on their limitations, I'd be less skeptical. As it is, we are talking about 'revolution', and developers being out of jobs, and superintelligence and whatnot. That's not the level the technology is at today and it is not clear we are going to do anything else other than get stuck in a local maxima.
wavemode 2y ago
You're conflating three different things. There's the question, "is an LLM just autocomplete"? The answer to that question is obviously no, but the question is also a strawman - people who actually use LLM's regularly do recognize that there is more to their capabilities than randomized pattern matching. Separately, there's the question of "will LLM's become AGI and/or become super intelligent." Most people recognize that LLM's are not currently super intelligent, and that there currently isn't a clear path toward making them so. Still, many people seem to feel that we're on the verge of progress here, and feel very strongly that anyone who disagrees is an AI "doomer". Then there's the question of "are we in an AI bubble"? This is more a matter of debate. Some would argue that if LLM reasoning capabilities plateau, people will stop investing in the technology. I actually don't agree with that view - I think there is a lot of economic value still yet to be realized in AI advancements - I don't think we're on the verge of some sort of AI winter, even if LLM's never become super intelligent.
- sdesol 2y ago
  > Most people recognize that LLM's are not currently super intelligent, I think calling it intelligent is being extremely generous. Take a look at the following example which is a spelling and grammar checker that I wrote: https://app.gitsense.com/?doc=f7419bfb27c89&temperature=0.50&samples=5 https://app.gitsense.com/?doc=f7419bfb27c89&temperature=0.50... When the temperature is 0.5, both Claude 3.5 and GPT-4o can't properly recognize that GitHub is capitalized. You can see the responses by clicking in the sentence. Each model was asked to validate the sentence 5 times. If the temperature is set to 0.0, most models will get it right (most of the time), but Claude 3.5 still can't see the sentence in front of it. https://app.gitsense.com/?doc=f7419bfb27c89&temperature=0.00&samples=5 https://app.gitsense.com/?doc=f7419bfb27c89&temperature=0.00... Right now, LLM is an insanely useful and powerful next word predictor, but I wouldn't call it intelligent.
  - digging 2y ago
    > I think calling it intelligent is being extremely generous ... can't properly recognize that GitHub is capitalized. Wouldn't this make chimpanzees and ravens and dolphins unintelligent too? You're asking it to do a task that's (mostly) easy for humans. It's not a human though. It's an alien intelligence which "thinks" in our language, but not in the same way we do. If they could, specialized AI might think we're unintelligent based on how often we fail, even with advanced tools, pattern matching tasks that are trivial for them. Would you say they're right to feel that way?
croes 2y ago
Are you confusing frequency of use with usefulness? If these tools boost tue productivity where is the output spike of all the companies, the spike in revenue and profits? How often do we lose the benefit auto text generation to the loop of That’s wrong Oh yes of course, here is the correct version Nope, still wrong Prompt editing?

a_wild_dandan 2y ago

The "statistical parrot" parrots have been demonstrably wrong for years (see e.g. LeCun et al[1]). It's just harder to ignore reality with hundreds of millions of people now using incredible new AI tools. We're approaching "don't believe your lying eyes" territory. Deniers will continue pretending that LLMs are just an NFT-level fad or bubble or whatever. The AI revolution will continue to pass them by. More's the pity. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.09485 https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.09485

mensetmanusman 2y ago
A trillion dimensional stochastic parrot is still a stochastic parrot. If these systems showed understanding we would notice. No one is denying that this form of intelligence is useful.
- logicchains 2y ago
  I don't know how you can say they lack understanding of the world when in pretty much any standardised test designed to measure human intelligence they perform better than the average human. They only thing that don't understand is touch because they're not trained on that, but they can already understand audio and video.
  - zeroonetwothree 2y ago
    An answer key would outperform the average human but it isn’t intelligent. Tests designed for humans are not appropriate to judge non humans.
  - zeknife 2y ago
    You said it, those tests are designed to measure human intelligence, because we know that there is a correspondence between test results and other, more general tasks - in humans. We do not know that such a correspondence exists with language models. I would actually argue that they demonstrably do not, since even an LLM that passes every IQ test you put in front of it can still trip up on trivial exceptions that wouldn't fool a child.
    - esafak 2y ago
      So they fail in their own way? They're not humans; that's to be expected.
- devmor 2y ago
  No you don’t understand, if i put a billion billion trillion monkeys on typewriters, they’re actually now one super intelligent monkey because they’re useful now! We just need more monkeys and it will be the same as a human brain.
croes 2y ago
What does the mass of users change about what it is? How many of these check the results for hallucinations and how many don’t because I part of AI? More than once these tools fail at tasks a fifth grader could understand
outworlder 2y ago
> Deniers will continue pretending that LLMs are just an NFT-level fad or bubble or whatever. The AI revolution will continue to pass them by. More's the pity. You should re-read that very slowly and carefully and really think about it. Calling anyone that's skeptical a 'denier' is a red flag. We have been through these AI cycles before. In every case, the tools were impressive for their time. Their limitations were always brushed aside and we would get a hype cycle. There was nothing wrong with the technology, but humans always like to try to extrapolate their capabilities and we usually get that wrong. When hype caught up to reality, investments dried up and nobody wanted to touch "AI" for a while. Rinse, repeat. LLMs are again impressive, for our time. When the dust settles, we'll get some useful tools but I'm pretty sure we will experience another – severe – AI winter. If we had some optimistic but also realistic discussions on their limitations, I'd be less skeptical. As it is, we are talking about 'revolution', and developers being out of jobs, and superintelligence and whatnot. That's not the level the technology is at today and it is not clear we are going to do anything else other than get stuck in a local maxima.

wavemode 2y ago

You're conflating three different things. There's the question, "is an LLM just autocomplete"? The answer to that question is obviously no, but the question is also a strawman - people who actually use LLM's regularly do recognize that there is more to their capabilities than randomized pattern matching. Separately, there's the question of "will LLM's become AGI and/or become super intelligent." Most people recognize that LLM's are not currently super intelligent, and that there currently isn't a clear path toward making them so. Still, many people seem to feel that we're on the verge of progress here, and feel very strongly that anyone who disagrees is an AI "doomer". Then there's the question of "are we in an AI bubble"? This is more a matter of debate. Some would argue that if LLM reasoning capabilities plateau, people will stop investing in the technology. I actually don't agree with that view - I think there is a lot of economic value still yet to be realized in AI advancements - I don't think we're on the verge of some sort of AI winter, even if LLM's never become super intelligent.

sdesol 2y ago
> Most people recognize that LLM's are not currently super intelligent, I think calling it intelligent is being extremely generous. Take a look at the following example which is a spelling and grammar checker that I wrote: https://app.gitsense.com/?doc=f7419bfb27c89&temperature=0.50&samples=5 https://app.gitsense.com/?doc=f7419bfb27c89&temperature=0.50... When the temperature is 0.5, both Claude 3.5 and GPT-4o can't properly recognize that GitHub is capitalized. You can see the responses by clicking in the sentence. Each model was asked to validate the sentence 5 times. If the temperature is set to 0.0, most models will get it right (most of the time), but Claude 3.5 still can't see the sentence in front of it. https://app.gitsense.com/?doc=f7419bfb27c89&temperature=0.00&samples=5 https://app.gitsense.com/?doc=f7419bfb27c89&temperature=0.00... Right now, LLM is an insanely useful and powerful next word predictor, but I wouldn't call it intelligent.
- digging 2y ago
  > I think calling it intelligent is being extremely generous ... can't properly recognize that GitHub is capitalized. Wouldn't this make chimpanzees and ravens and dolphins unintelligent too? You're asking it to do a task that's (mostly) easy for humans. It's not a human though. It's an alien intelligence which "thinks" in our language, but not in the same way we do. If they could, specialized AI might think we're unintelligent based on how often we fail, even with advanced tools, pattern matching tasks that are trivial for them. Would you say they're right to feel that way?

croes 2y ago

Are you confusing frequency of use with usefulness? If these tools boost tue productivity where is the output spike of all the companies, the spike in revenue and profits? How often do we lose the benefit auto text generation to the loop of That’s wrong Oh yes of course, here is the correct version Nope, still wrong Prompt editing?