5 ms·

Are there any attempts to formalize the concept of “common sense” in the context of AI? What would that look like?

by sssilver 1y ago

falcor84 1y ago
As Voltaire said, "Common sense is not so common" even in humans, so I don't expect this to be solved any time soon.
- krapp 1y ago
  The vast majority of humans would immediately recognize an order for 18,000 waters as BS, or bacon on ice cream as weird. While it may be the case that plugging "common sense" into LLMs may not be solved anytime soon, the canard of "humans are just as bad if not worse" doesn't really apply here.
  - falcor84 1y ago
    As a human, I would not refuse either of these. If someone asked to order 18,000 waters, I would redirect them to our wholesale rep, and if they want bacon on ice cream, who am I to judge; I've seen people eating weirder stuff. If I have something on my menu, I'm ok with people ordering it in any amount and combination as long as they're paying and I'll figure it out. And if I do have a hard limitation on amounts or combination, I'll want to encode it into the ordering system; no common sense needed.
    - krapp 1y ago
      I did say "the vast majority of humans." Obviously there will be exceptions like yourself but luckily for the rest of us such exceptions are rare.
  - Der_Einzige 1y ago
    As usual, what you think is weird is apparently so popular it has its own long Wikipedia article. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon_ice_cream https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon_ice_cream
ToucanLoucan 1y ago
A requisite of common sense is understanding, and LLMs do not possess any sort of understanding. The one in charge of this ordering system doesn't know what a water is. It doesn't know what a beefy 5 layer burrito is, and it certainly doesn't comprehend the majesty of the grilled steak burrito. It doesn't know what they are, why a human would want one, what a human would do with it, nor does it understand why it's absurd to order 18,000 of them. These. Are not. Intelligent. Machines. They are fantastically complex and interesting word generators, and in that capacity, they do well. Anything beyond that and the cracks start showing REALLY quick. The only reason they sound vaguely coherent and respond the way they do is because that is what they were trained to do: to participate in conversations to the best of their ability, and talk like people do. That's a fascinating technology by itself, and it's remarkable that it works as well as it does, including that it manages to get a lot of stuff factually correct; and, to emphasize, this is a tech with real applications; however it's extremely easy to then prescribe knowledge to it based on that ability it does have, and it simply possesses NONE. It doesn't know the first thing about anything it's saying. You're asking a mechanical turk to think. It won't do it.
- DonHopkins 1y ago
  Actually Mechanical Turks do think, because they are human, by definition. Both historically and contemporaneously. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_Turk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_Turk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Mechanical_Turk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Mechanical_Turk And actually you're also wrong about LLMs lacking knowledge of all those things. Go try asking ChatGPT. While you're at it, ask it what a Mechanical Turk is, and see if it aligns with those wikipedia pages. Edit: ToucanLoucan, as someone who doesn't know what a Mechanical Turk is, you do not need to post LLM output that proves my point to someone who already knows quite well what it is and gave you two wikipedia references and a suggestion to ask ChatGPT, but NOT a suggestion to post the response. Most other people than you here are well aware of what a Mechanical Turk is, and you're certainly not advancing your argument that LLMs are not knowledgeable by posting LLM output that's more knowledgeable than yourself, and doesn't in any way prove your point. Even ChatGPT is much better at forming coherent arguments than that. Edit 2: No, you have clearly demonstrated that you don't know what a Mechanical Turk is, and you are spectacularly missing the point and digging in deeper to an ignorant invalid argument. The very definition of the term "Mechanical Turk" is that it's a human being, so your choice of words is terribly unthoughtful and misleading, the opposite of the truth. It's just like the term "Man Behind The Curtain". The whole point of those terms is that it's a human. You are committing the deadly sin of anthropomorphizing AI. The entire point of Amazon Mechanical Turk is that it is HUMANS solving problems machines CAN'T, by THINKING. So when you say "You're asking a mechanical turk to think", that is a completely reasonable and normal thing to ask a Mechanical Turk to do. That is what they are FOR. If it doesn't think, you should ask for your money back. You're not thinking either, so you definitely shouldn't sign up to work for Amazon Mechanical Turk. https://www.mturk.com/ https://www.mturk.com/ Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a crowdsourcing marketplace that makes it easier for individuals and businesses to outsource their processes and jobs to a distributed workforce who can perform these tasks virtually. This could include anything from conducting simple data validation and research to more subjective tasks like survey participation, content moderation, and more. MTurk enables companies to harness the collective intelligence, skills, and insights from a global workforce to streamline business processes, augment data collection and analysis, and accelerate machine learning development. While technology continues to improve, there are still many things that human beings can do much more effectively than computers, such as moderating content, performing data deduplication, or research. Traditionally, tasks like this have been accomplished by hiring a large temporary workforce, which is time consuming, expensive and difficult to scale, or have gone undone. Crowdsourcing is a good way to break down a manual, time-consuming project into smaller, more manageable tasks to be completed by distributed workers over the Internet (also known as ‘microtasks’).
OhMeadhbh 1y ago
In current models? None that I know of. The problem with Transformers and LLMs are they're stochastic... rather like glorified Markov chains that don't understand what they're talking about. Rather, the "understanding" is baked into the syntax of the language. In the old days there was a project called Cyc (later OpenCyc) that tried to build a collection of rules about the real world. If you could somehow marry the "inference about the real world" from Cyc with the plausible text output of transformers, you would probably have something like an AI that had some base level of common sense. I leave it to people smarter than me to figure out how to do this, 'cause I would need a research budget and a couple years just to get to the point where I felt I was asking the right questions.
pluc 1y ago
Sure, you just have to have a human validate everything that comes out of the AI.
DonHopkins 1y ago
Cyc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc Cyc (wikipedia.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21781597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21781597 Doug Lenat has died (garymarcus.substack.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37354000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37354000 Remembering Doug Lenat and his quest to capture the world with logic (stephenwolfram.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37402925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37402925 Cyc: History's Forgotten AI Project (outsiderart.substack.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40069298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40069298 One Genius' Lonely Crusade to Teach a Computer Common Sense (2016) (wired.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41757198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41757198 Obituary for Cyc (yuxi-liu-wired.github.io) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43625474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43625474
Twirrim 1y ago
We sure as hell could do with some more "common sense" at layers above the AI. Maybe we could avoid this parade of absurdity where people use LLMs expecting them to think.

Are there any attempts to formalize the concept of “common sense” in the context of AI? What would that look like?

falcor84 1y ago

As Voltaire said, "Common sense is not so common" even in humans, so I don't expect this to be solved any time soon.

krapp 1y ago
The vast majority of humans would immediately recognize an order for 18,000 waters as BS, or bacon on ice cream as weird. While it may be the case that plugging "common sense" into LLMs may not be solved anytime soon, the canard of "humans are just as bad if not worse" doesn't really apply here.
- falcor84 1y ago
  As a human, I would not refuse either of these. If someone asked to order 18,000 waters, I would redirect them to our wholesale rep, and if they want bacon on ice cream, who am I to judge; I've seen people eating weirder stuff. If I have something on my menu, I'm ok with people ordering it in any amount and combination as long as they're paying and I'll figure it out. And if I do have a hard limitation on amounts or combination, I'll want to encode it into the ordering system; no common sense needed.
  - krapp 1y ago
    I did say "the vast majority of humans." Obviously there will be exceptions like yourself but luckily for the rest of us such exceptions are rare.
- Der_Einzige 1y ago
  As usual, what you think is weird is apparently so popular it has its own long Wikipedia article. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon_ice_cream https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon_ice_cream

ToucanLoucan 1y ago

A requisite of common sense is understanding, and LLMs do not possess any sort of understanding. The one in charge of this ordering system doesn't know what a water is. It doesn't know what a beefy 5 layer burrito is, and it certainly doesn't comprehend the majesty of the grilled steak burrito. It doesn't know what they are, why a human would want one, what a human would do with it, nor does it understand why it's absurd to order 18,000 of them. These. Are not. Intelligent. Machines. They are fantastically complex and interesting word generators, and in that capacity, they do well. Anything beyond that and the cracks start showing REALLY quick. The only reason they sound vaguely coherent and respond the way they do is because that is what they were trained to do: to participate in conversations to the best of their ability, and talk like people do. That's a fascinating technology by itself, and it's remarkable that it works as well as it does, including that it manages to get a lot of stuff factually correct; and, to emphasize, this is a tech with real applications; however it's extremely easy to then prescribe knowledge to it based on that ability it does have, and it simply possesses NONE. It doesn't know the first thing about anything it's saying. You're asking a mechanical turk to think. It won't do it.

DonHopkins 1y ago
Actually Mechanical Turks do think, because they are human, by definition. Both historically and contemporaneously. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_Turk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_Turk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Mechanical_Turk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Mechanical_Turk And actually you're also wrong about LLMs lacking knowledge of all those things. Go try asking ChatGPT. While you're at it, ask it what a Mechanical Turk is, and see if it aligns with those wikipedia pages. Edit: ToucanLoucan, as someone who doesn't know what a Mechanical Turk is, you do not need to post LLM output that proves my point to someone who already knows quite well what it is and gave you two wikipedia references and a suggestion to ask ChatGPT, but NOT a suggestion to post the response. Most other people than you here are well aware of what a Mechanical Turk is, and you're certainly not advancing your argument that LLMs are not knowledgeable by posting LLM output that's more knowledgeable than yourself, and doesn't in any way prove your point. Even ChatGPT is much better at forming coherent arguments than that. Edit 2: No, you have clearly demonstrated that you don't know what a Mechanical Turk is, and you are spectacularly missing the point and digging in deeper to an ignorant invalid argument. The very definition of the term "Mechanical Turk" is that it's a human being, so your choice of words is terribly unthoughtful and misleading, the opposite of the truth. It's just like the term "Man Behind The Curtain". The whole point of those terms is that it's a human. You are committing the deadly sin of anthropomorphizing AI. The entire point of Amazon Mechanical Turk is that it is HUMANS solving problems machines CAN'T, by THINKING. So when you say "You're asking a mechanical turk to think", that is a completely reasonable and normal thing to ask a Mechanical Turk to do. That is what they are FOR. If it doesn't think, you should ask for your money back. You're not thinking either, so you definitely shouldn't sign up to work for Amazon Mechanical Turk. https://www.mturk.com/ https://www.mturk.com/ Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a crowdsourcing marketplace that makes it easier for individuals and businesses to outsource their processes and jobs to a distributed workforce who can perform these tasks virtually. This could include anything from conducting simple data validation and research to more subjective tasks like survey participation, content moderation, and more. MTurk enables companies to harness the collective intelligence, skills, and insights from a global workforce to streamline business processes, augment data collection and analysis, and accelerate machine learning development. While technology continues to improve, there are still many things that human beings can do much more effectively than computers, such as moderating content, performing data deduplication, or research. Traditionally, tasks like this have been accomplished by hiring a large temporary workforce, which is time consuming, expensive and difficult to scale, or have gone undone. Crowdsourcing is a good way to break down a manual, time-consuming project into smaller, more manageable tasks to be completed by distributed workers over the Internet (also known as ‘microtasks’).

OhMeadhbh 1y ago

In current models? None that I know of. The problem with Transformers and LLMs are they're stochastic... rather like glorified Markov chains that don't understand what they're talking about. Rather, the "understanding" is baked into the syntax of the language. In the old days there was a project called Cyc (later OpenCyc) that tried to build a collection of rules about the real world. If you could somehow marry the "inference about the real world" from Cyc with the plausible text output of transformers, you would probably have something like an AI that had some base level of common sense. I leave it to people smarter than me to figure out how to do this, 'cause I would need a research budget and a couple years just to get to the point where I felt I was asking the right questions.

pluc 1y ago

Sure, you just have to have a human validate everything that comes out of the AI.

DonHopkins 1y ago

Cyc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc Cyc (wikipedia.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21781597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21781597 Doug Lenat has died (garymarcus.substack.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37354000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37354000 Remembering Doug Lenat and his quest to capture the world with logic (stephenwolfram.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37402925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37402925 Cyc: History's Forgotten AI Project (outsiderart.substack.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40069298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40069298 One Genius' Lonely Crusade to Teach a Computer Common Sense (2016) (wired.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41757198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41757198 Obituary for Cyc (yuxi-liu-wired.github.io) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43625474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43625474

Twirrim 1y ago

We sure as hell could do with some more "common sense" at layers above the AI. Maybe we could avoid this parade of absurdity where people use LLMs expecting them to think.