4 ms·

The first step isn't from natural language to formal language. It's from the idea in your head into natural language. Getting that step right in a way that a co

The first step isn't from natural language to formal language. It's from the idea in your head into natural language. Getting that step right in a way that a computer could hope to turn into a useful thing is hard.

falcor84 2y ago
Without descending fully into epistemology, I tend to think that there is no proper "idea" in your head before it's phrased in language - the act of initially describing something in natural language *is* the act of generating it.
- antonvs 2y ago
  Research on LLMs suggest that's probably not the case. See the work on reasoning in latent space, and on shared concepts between languages being represented independently of the individual language. Of course one might argue that even if LLMs are capable of ideation and conceptualisation without natural language, doesn't mean humans are. But the fact that up to 50% of people have no inner monologue seems to refute that.
  - card_zero 2y ago
    Humans can't share ideas directly, they pass through language. Some idea is created at the other end, nominally the same one, but there's no reason to suppose a universal internal format. Even translating between human languages loses details, where words in one language map imperfectly to words in another. Moving ideas directly from one brain to another probably can't happen. So the statement in language doesn't map very well to the idea (whichever person's version of the idea). And at some point before the idea is formed there has to be some sort of proto-idea or potential, with less definite boundaries. So "there is no proper idea" sounds right to me. There's something idiosyncratic, not the formal idea that's frozen when put into words.
    - antonvs 2y ago
      Sure, you can define "proper" and "idea" to the claim post-facto to change what's being claimed, but the point is we do have ideas without language, and converting into language is not creating the idea.
      - card_zero 2y ago
        Why not both? Yes, we have ideas without language: and, creating a form of words to express the idea is creating a new and somewhat different version.
- yencabulator 2y ago
  Are you saying it's impossible to program without first formulating a natural language sentence? That sounds dubious at the very least.
  - falcor84 2y ago
    That's a really deep question. Obviously there are types of creativity that don't require words, like painting or sculpting, or improvising music, but I'm having real difficulty imagining programming without something at least resembling natural language. The closest my imagination gets is Scratch/Blockly, but even then you're essentially creating an AST composed out of statements and expressions, even if they're pictorial. Can you imagine the (intentional) creation of a program entirely without language? Or, I suppose, if you're ok with it not being intentional, you can program via an evolutionary algorithm - is that what you have in mind?
    - yencabulator 2y ago
      I think you're the kind of person who has an internal voice talking in their head, and can't imagine any other kind of thought? Math is all about abstract shapes and properties, for me. So is much of programming.
      - toasterlovin 2y ago
        Yeah, just chiming in to say the same. Essentially all of my thinking is geometric in nature. The only time I have any internal monologue is as a mnemonic device to remember a sequence.
      - falcor84 2y ago
        Yeah, I suppose you're right and I'd love to understand more. Do you imagine a modality of programming a computer in an abstract (pictorial? diagrammatic?) way that fully bypasses the current need to form statements?
        yencabulator 2y ago
jasode 2y ago
>It's from the idea in your head into natural language. Getting that step right in a way that a computer could hope to turn into a useful thing is hard. The "inside the head" conversion step would be more relevant in the reply to the gp if the hypothetical AI computer would be hooked up directly to brain implants like neuralink, functional MRI scans, etc to translate brain activity to natural language or programming language code. But today, human developers who are paid to code for business people are not translating brain implant output signals. (E.g. Javascript programmers are not translating raw electrical waveforms[1] into React code.) Instead, they translate from "natural language" specifications of businesspeople to computer code. This layer of translation is more tractable for future AI computers even though natural language is more fuzzy and ambiguous. The language ambiguity in business requirements is unavoidable but it still hasn't stopped developers from somehow converting it into concrete non-ambiguous code. [1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/06/844908/a-new-implant-for-blind-people-jacks-directly-into-the-brain/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/06/844908/a-new-imp...

falcor84 2y ago

Without descending fully into epistemology, I tend to think that there is no proper "idea" in your head before it's phrased in language - the act of initially describing something in natural language *is* the act of generating it.

antonvs 2y ago
Research on LLMs suggest that's probably not the case. See the work on reasoning in latent space, and on shared concepts between languages being represented independently of the individual language. Of course one might argue that even if LLMs are capable of ideation and conceptualisation without natural language, doesn't mean humans are. But the fact that up to 50% of people have no inner monologue seems to refute that.
- card_zero 2y ago
  Humans can't share ideas directly, they pass through language. Some idea is created at the other end, nominally the same one, but there's no reason to suppose a universal internal format. Even translating between human languages loses details, where words in one language map imperfectly to words in another. Moving ideas directly from one brain to another probably can't happen. So the statement in language doesn't map very well to the idea (whichever person's version of the idea). And at some point before the idea is formed there has to be some sort of proto-idea or potential, with less definite boundaries. So "there is no proper idea" sounds right to me. There's something idiosyncratic, not the formal idea that's frozen when put into words.
  - antonvs 2y ago
    Sure, you can define "proper" and "idea" to the claim post-facto to change what's being claimed, but the point is we do have ideas without language, and converting into language is not creating the idea.
    - card_zero 2y ago
      Why not both? Yes, we have ideas without language: and, creating a form of words to express the idea is creating a new and somewhat different version.
yencabulator 2y ago
Are you saying it's impossible to program without first formulating a natural language sentence? That sounds dubious at the very least.
- falcor84 2y ago
  That's a really deep question. Obviously there are types of creativity that don't require words, like painting or sculpting, or improvising music, but I'm having real difficulty imagining programming without something at least resembling natural language. The closest my imagination gets is Scratch/Blockly, but even then you're essentially creating an AST composed out of statements and expressions, even if they're pictorial. Can you imagine the (intentional) creation of a program entirely without language? Or, I suppose, if you're ok with it not being intentional, you can program via an evolutionary algorithm - is that what you have in mind?
  - yencabulator 2y ago
    I think you're the kind of person who has an internal voice talking in their head, and can't imagine any other kind of thought? Math is all about abstract shapes and properties, for me. So is much of programming.
    - toasterlovin 2y ago
      Yeah, just chiming in to say the same. Essentially all of my thinking is geometric in nature. The only time I have any internal monologue is as a mnemonic device to remember a sequence.
    - falcor84 2y ago
      Yeah, I suppose you're right and I'd love to understand more. Do you imagine a modality of programming a computer in an abstract (pictorial? diagrammatic?) way that fully bypasses the current need to form statements?
      - yencabulator 2y ago

jasode 2y ago

>It's from the idea in your head into natural language. Getting that step right in a way that a computer could hope to turn into a useful thing is hard. The "inside the head" conversion step would be more relevant in the reply to the gp if the hypothetical AI computer would be hooked up directly to brain implants like neuralink, functional MRI scans, etc to translate brain activity to natural language or programming language code. But today, human developers who are paid to code for business people are not translating brain implant output signals. (E.g. Javascript programmers are not translating raw electrical waveforms[1] into React code.) Instead, they translate from "natural language" specifications of businesspeople to computer code. This layer of translation is more tractable for future AI computers even though natural language is more fuzzy and ambiguous. The language ambiguity in business requirements is unavoidable but it still hasn't stopped developers from somehow converting it into concrete non-ambiguous code. [1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/06/844908/a-new-implant-for-blind-people-jacks-directly-into-the-brain/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/06/844908/a-new-imp...