3 ms·

Emergence in the context of LLMs is really just us learning that "hey, you don't actually need intelligence to do <task>, turns out it can be done using a good

by andy99 1y ago

Emergence in the context of LLMs is really just us learning that "hey, you don't actually need intelligence to do <task>, turns out it can be done using a good enough next token predictor. We're basically learning what intelligence isn't as we see some of the things these models can do. I always understood this to be the initial framing, e.g. in the Language Models are Few Shot Learners paper but then it got flipped around.

dmd 1y ago
Or maybe you need intelligence to be a good enough next token predictor. Maybe the thing that “just” predicts the next token can be called “intelligence”.
- bunderbunder 1y ago
  Maybe? Mostly I just think that "Intelligence" and "AI" go together like "life, the universe and everything" and "42".
HPsquared 1y ago
Or more generally "fitting a model to data".
Workaccount2 1y ago
The challenge there would be showing that humans have this thing called intelligence. You yourself are just outputting ephemeral actions that rise out of your subconscious. We have no idea what that system feeding our output looks like (except it's some kind of organic neural net) and hence there isn't really a basis for discriminating what is and isn't intelligent besides "if it solves problems, it has some degree of intelligence"
- PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
  To return an old but still good analogy ... If you want to understand how birds fly, the fact that planes also fly is near useless. While a few common aerodynamic principles apply, both types of flight are so different from each other that you do not learn very much about one from the other. On the other hand, if your goal is just "humans moving through the air for extended distances", it doesn't matter at all that airplanes do not fly the way birds do. And then, on the generated third hand, if you need the kind of tight quarters maneuverability that birds can do in forests and other tangled spaces, then the way our current airplanes fly is of little to no use at all, and you're going to need a very different sort of technology than the one used in current aircraft. And on the accidentally generated fourth hand, if your goal is "moving very large mass over very long distance", the the mechanisms of bird flight are likely to be of little utility. The fact that two different systems can be described in a similar way (e.g. "flying") doesn't by itself tell you that they are working in remotely the same way or capable of the same sorts of things.
  - Workaccount2 1y ago
    I think that many birds gets too sensitive when discussing what "flight" means, heh
  - andy99 1y ago
    A better bird analogy would be if we didn't understand at all how flight worked, and then started throwing rocks and had pseudo-intellectuals saying "how do we know that isn't all that flight is, we've clearly invented artificial flight".
    - Jensson 1y ago
      > "we've clearly invented artificial flight" Scaling laws shows that the harder we throw the rock the further we fly, we just have to throw them hard enough and we have invented flying rocks! And for the naysayers out there, lemme throw this rock at your head and then tell me it isn't real!
      - unsupp0rted 1y ago
        If your goal is to get to stable orbit, even never having learned to fly, then the brute force approach works too
  - pixl97 1y ago
    doesn't by itself tell you that they are working in remotely the same way or capable of the same sorts of things. I believe any intelligence that reaches 'human level' should be capable of nearly the same things with tool use, the fact it accomplishes the goal in a different way doesn't matter because the systems behavior is generalized. Hence the term (artificial) general intelligence. Two different general intelligences built on different architectures should be able to converge on similar solutions (for example solutions based on lowest energy states) because they are operating in the same physical realm. An AGI and an HGI should be able to have convergent solutions for fast air travel, ornithopters, and drones.
    - 1y ago
prats226 1y ago
If we use some metric as proxy for intelligence, emergence simply means a non-linear sudden change in that metric?

by andy99 1y ago

dmd 1y ago

Or maybe you need intelligence to be a good enough next token predictor. Maybe the thing that “just” predicts the next token can be called “intelligence”.

bunderbunder 1y ago
Maybe? Mostly I just think that "Intelligence" and "AI" go together like "life, the universe and everything" and "42".

HPsquared 1y ago

Or more generally "fitting a model to data".

Workaccount2 1y ago

The challenge there would be showing that humans have this thing called intelligence. You yourself are just outputting ephemeral actions that rise out of your subconscious. We have no idea what that system feeding our output looks like (except it's some kind of organic neural net) and hence there isn't really a basis for discriminating what is and isn't intelligent besides "if it solves problems, it has some degree of intelligence"

PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
To return an old but still good analogy ... If you want to understand how birds fly, the fact that planes also fly is near useless. While a few common aerodynamic principles apply, both types of flight are so different from each other that you do not learn very much about one from the other. On the other hand, if your goal is just "humans moving through the air for extended distances", it doesn't matter at all that airplanes do not fly the way birds do. And then, on the generated third hand, if you need the kind of tight quarters maneuverability that birds can do in forests and other tangled spaces, then the way our current airplanes fly is of little to no use at all, and you're going to need a very different sort of technology than the one used in current aircraft. And on the accidentally generated fourth hand, if your goal is "moving very large mass over very long distance", the the mechanisms of bird flight are likely to be of little utility. The fact that two different systems can be described in a similar way (e.g. "flying") doesn't by itself tell you that they are working in remotely the same way or capable of the same sorts of things.
- Workaccount2 1y ago
  I think that many birds gets too sensitive when discussing what "flight" means, heh
- andy99 1y ago
  A better bird analogy would be if we didn't understand at all how flight worked, and then started throwing rocks and had pseudo-intellectuals saying "how do we know that isn't all that flight is, we've clearly invented artificial flight".
  - Jensson 1y ago
    > "we've clearly invented artificial flight" Scaling laws shows that the harder we throw the rock the further we fly, we just have to throw them hard enough and we have invented flying rocks! And for the naysayers out there, lemme throw this rock at your head and then tell me it isn't real!
    - unsupp0rted 1y ago
      If your goal is to get to stable orbit, even never having learned to fly, then the brute force approach works too
- pixl97 1y ago
  doesn't by itself tell you that they are working in remotely the same way or capable of the same sorts of things. I believe any intelligence that reaches 'human level' should be capable of nearly the same things with tool use, the fact it accomplishes the goal in a different way doesn't matter because the systems behavior is generalized. Hence the term (artificial) general intelligence. Two different general intelligences built on different architectures should be able to converge on similar solutions (for example solutions based on lowest energy states) because they are operating in the same physical realm. An AGI and an HGI should be able to have convergent solutions for fast air travel, ornithopters, and drones.
  - 1y ago

prats226 1y ago

If we use some metric as proxy for intelligence, emergence simply means a non-linear sudden change in that metric?