7 ms·

Mice can survive, forage, reproduce. Reproduce a mammal. There is a whole load of capability not available in an LLM. An LLM is essentially a search over a com

by nextts 2y ago

Mice can survive, forage, reproduce. Reproduce a mammal. There is a whole load of capability not available in an LLM. An LLM is essentially a search over a compressed dataset with a tiny bit of reasoning as emergent behaviour. Because it is a parrot that is why you get "hallucinations". The search failed (like when you get a bad result in Google) or the lossy compression failed or it's reasoning failed. Obviously there is a lot of stuff the LLM can find in its searches that are reminiscent of the great intelligence of the people writing for its training data. The magic trick is impressive because when we judge a human what do we do... an exam? an interview? Someone with a perfect memory can fool many people because most people only acquire memory from tacit knowledge. Most people need to live in Paris to become fluent in French. So we see a robot that has a tiny bit of reasoning and a brilliant memory as a brilliant mind. But this is an illusion. Here is an example: User: what is the French Revolution? Agent: The French Revolution was a period of political and societal change in France which began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the Coup of 18 Brumaire on 9 November 1799. Many of the revolution's ideas are considered fundamental principles of liberal democracy and its values remain central to modern French political discourse. Can you spot the trick?

pfisch 2y ago
When you talk to ~3 year old children they hallucinate quite a lot. Really almost nonstop when you ask them about almost anything. I'm not convinced that what LLM's are doing is that far off the beaten path from our own cognition.
- smelendez 2y ago
  That’s interesting. Lots of modern kids probably get exposed to way more fiction than fact thanks to TV. I was an only child and watched a lot of cartoons and bad sitcoms as a kid, and I remember for a while my conversational style was way too full of puns, one-liners, and deliberately naive statements made for laughs.
  - wegfawefgawefg 2y ago
    i wish more people were still like that
- nextts 2y ago
  Interesting but a bit non-sequitur. Humans learn and get things wrong. A formative mind is a seperate subject. But a 3 year old is vastly intelligent vs an LLM. Comparing the sounds from a 3 year old and the binary tokens from an LLM is simply indulging the illusion. I am also not convinced that magicians saw people in half, and thise people survive, defying medical and physical science.
  - refulgentis 2y ago
    I'm not sure I buy that, I didnt find the counter argument persuasive, but this comment basically took you from thoughtful to smug — unfairly so, ironically, because I've been so bored by not understanding Yann's "average housecat is smarter than an LLM" Speaking of which...I'm glad you're here ,because I have an interlocutor I can be honest with while getting at the root question of the Ask HN. What in the world does it mean that a 3 year old is smarter than an LLM? I don't understand the thing about sounds vs. binary either. Like, both go completely over my head. The only thing I can think of it's some implied intelligence scoring index where "writing a resume" and "writing creative fiction" and "writing code" are in the same bucket thats limited to 10 points. Then there's anther 10 point bucket for "can vocalize", that an LLM is going to get 0 on.* If that's the case, it comes across as intentionally obtuse, in that there's an implied prior about how intelligence is scored and it's a somewhat unique interpretation that seems more motivated by the question than reflective of reality — i.e. assume a blind mute human who types out answers out that match our LLMs. Would we say that person is not as intelligent as a 3 year old? * well, it shouldn't, but for now let's bypass that quagmire
    - nextts 2y ago
      It is easy to cross wires in a HN thread. I think what makes this discussion hard (hell it would be a hard PhD topic!) is: What do we mean by smart? Intelligent? Etc. What is my agenda and what is yours? What are we really asking? I won't make any more arguments but pose these questions. Not for you to answer but everyone to think about: Given (assuming) mammals including us have evolved and developed thought and language as a survival advantage, and LLMs use language because they have been trained on text produced by humans (as well as RLHF) - how do we tell on the scale of "Search engine for human output" to "Conscious Intelligent Thinking Being" where the LLM fits? When a human says I love you, do they mean it, or is it merely 3 tokens? If an LLM says it, does it mean it? I think the 3yr old thing is a red herring because adult intelligence VS AI is hard enough to compare (and we are the adults!) let alone bring children brain development into it. LLMs do not self organise their hardware. I'd say forget about 3 year olds for now. Talk about adults brainfarts instead. They happen!
CamperBob2 2y ago
Mice can survive, forage, reproduce. Reproduce a mammal. There is a whole load of capability not available in an LLM. And if it stood for "Large Literal Mouse", that might be a meaningful point. The subject is artificial intelligence, and a brief glance at your newspaper, TV, or nearest window will remind you that it doesn't take intelligence to survive, forage, or reproduce. The mouse comparison is absurd. You might as well criticize an LLM for being bad at putting out a fire, fixing a flat, or holding a door open.

by nextts 2y ago

pfisch 2y ago

When you talk to ~3 year old children they hallucinate quite a lot. Really almost nonstop when you ask them about almost anything. I'm not convinced that what LLM's are doing is that far off the beaten path from our own cognition.

smelendez 2y ago
That’s interesting. Lots of modern kids probably get exposed to way more fiction than fact thanks to TV. I was an only child and watched a lot of cartoons and bad sitcoms as a kid, and I remember for a while my conversational style was way too full of puns, one-liners, and deliberately naive statements made for laughs.
- wegfawefgawefg 2y ago
  i wish more people were still like that
nextts 2y ago
Interesting but a bit non-sequitur. Humans learn and get things wrong. A formative mind is a seperate subject. But a 3 year old is vastly intelligent vs an LLM. Comparing the sounds from a 3 year old and the binary tokens from an LLM is simply indulging the illusion. I am also not convinced that magicians saw people in half, and thise people survive, defying medical and physical science.
- refulgentis 2y ago
  I'm not sure I buy that, I didnt find the counter argument persuasive, but this comment basically took you from thoughtful to smug — unfairly so, ironically, because I've been so bored by not understanding Yann's "average housecat is smarter than an LLM" Speaking of which...I'm glad you're here ,because I have an interlocutor I can be honest with while getting at the root question of the Ask HN. What in the world does it mean that a 3 year old is smarter than an LLM? I don't understand the thing about sounds vs. binary either. Like, both go completely over my head. The only thing I can think of it's some implied intelligence scoring index where "writing a resume" and "writing creative fiction" and "writing code" are in the same bucket thats limited to 10 points. Then there's anther 10 point bucket for "can vocalize", that an LLM is going to get 0 on.* If that's the case, it comes across as intentionally obtuse, in that there's an implied prior about how intelligence is scored and it's a somewhat unique interpretation that seems more motivated by the question than reflective of reality — i.e. assume a blind mute human who types out answers out that match our LLMs. Would we say that person is not as intelligent as a 3 year old? * well, it shouldn't, but for now let's bypass that quagmire
  - nextts 2y ago
    It is easy to cross wires in a HN thread. I think what makes this discussion hard (hell it would be a hard PhD topic!) is: What do we mean by smart? Intelligent? Etc. What is my agenda and what is yours? What are we really asking? I won't make any more arguments but pose these questions. Not for you to answer but everyone to think about: Given (assuming) mammals including us have evolved and developed thought and language as a survival advantage, and LLMs use language because they have been trained on text produced by humans (as well as RLHF) - how do we tell on the scale of "Search engine for human output" to "Conscious Intelligent Thinking Being" where the LLM fits? When a human says I love you, do they mean it, or is it merely 3 tokens? If an LLM says it, does it mean it? I think the 3yr old thing is a red herring because adult intelligence VS AI is hard enough to compare (and we are the adults!) let alone bring children brain development into it. LLMs do not self organise their hardware. I'd say forget about 3 year olds for now. Talk about adults brainfarts instead. They happen!

CamperBob2 2y ago

Mice can survive, forage, reproduce. Reproduce a mammal. There is a whole load of capability not available in an LLM. And if it stood for "Large Literal Mouse", that might be a meaningful point. The subject is artificial intelligence, and a brief glance at your newspaper, TV, or nearest window will remind you that it doesn't take intelligence to survive, forage, or reproduce. The mouse comparison is absurd. You might as well criticize an LLM for being bad at putting out a fire, fixing a flat, or holding a door open.