4 ms·

I presume that's what the parent post is trying to get at? Seeing if, given the cutting edge scientific knowledge of the day, the LLM is able to synthesis all i

I presume that's what the parent post is trying to get at? Seeing if, given the cutting edge scientific knowledge of the day, the LLM is able to synthesis all it into a workable theory of QM by making the necessary connections and (quantum...) leaps Standing on the shoulders of giants, as it were

actionfromafar 9mo ago
Yeah but... we still might not know if it could do that because we were really close by 1900 or if the LLM is very smart.
- scottlamb 9mo ago
  What's the bar here? Does anyone say "we don't know if Einstein could do this because we were really close or because he was really smart?" I by no means believe LLMs are general intelligence, and I've seen them produce a lot of garbage, but if they could produce these revolutionary theories from only <= year 1900 information and a prompt that is not ridiculously leading, that would be a really compelling demonstration of their power.
  - echoangle 9mo ago
    > Does anyone say "we don't know if Einstein could do this because we were really close or because he was really smart?" Kind of, how long would it have realistically taken for someone else (also really smart) to come up with the same thing if Einstein wouldn't have been there?
    - jaggederest 9mo ago
      Well, we know many watershed moments in history were more a matter of situation than the specific person - an individual genius might move things by a decade or two, but in general the difference is marginal. True bolt-out-of-the-blue developments are uncommon, though all the more impressive for that fact, I think.
    - pegasus 9mo ago
      But you're not actually questioning whether he was "really smart". Which was what GP was questioning. Sure, you can try to quantify the level of smarts, but you can't still call it a "stochastic parrot" anymore, just like you won't respond to Einstein's achievements, "Ah well, in the end I'm still not sure he's actually smart, like I am for example. Could just be that he's just dumbly but systematically going through all options, working it out step by step, nothing I couldn't achieve (or even better, program a computer to do) if I'd put my mind to it." I personally doubt that this would work. I don't think these systems can achieve truly ground-breaking, paradigm-shifting work. The homeworld of these systems is the corpus of text on which it was trained, in the same way as ours is physical reality. Their access to this reality is always secondary, already distorted by the imperfections of human knowledge.
  - bmacho 9mo ago
    > Does anyone say "we don't know if Einstein could do this because we were really close or because he was really smart? Yes. It is certainly a question if Einstein is one of the smartest guy ever lived or all of his discoveries were already in the Zeitgeist, and would have been discovered by someone else in ~5 years.
    - cyberax 9mo ago
      Both can be true? Einstein was smart and put several disjointed things together. It's amazing that one person could do so much, from explaining the Brownian motion to explaining the photoeffect. But I think that all these would have happened within _years_ anyway.
  - emodendroket 9mo ago
    > Does anyone say "we don't know if Einstein could do this because we were really close or because he was really smart?" It turns out my reading is somewhat topical. I've been reading Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" and of the things he takes great pains to argue (I was not quite anticipating how much I'd be trying to recall my high school science classes to make sense of his account of various experiments) is that the development toward the atomic bomb was more or less inexorable and if at any point someone said "this is too far; let's stop here" there would be others to take his place. So, maybe, to answer your question.
    - twoodfin 9mo ago
      It’s been a while since I read it, but I recall Rhodes’ point being that once the fundamentals of fission in heavy elements were validated, making a working bomb was no longer primarily a question of science, but one of engineering.
      - emodendroket 8mo ago
        Engineering began before they were done with the experimentation and theorizing part. But the US, the UK, France, Germany, the Soviets, and Japan all had nuclear weapons programs with different degrees of success.
- sleet_spotter 9mo ago
  Well, if one had enough time and resources, this would make for an interesting metric. Could it figure it out with cut-off of 1900? If so, what about 1899? 1898? What context from the marginal year was key to the change in outcome?
palmotea 9mo ago
But that's not the OP's challenge, he said "if the model comes up with anything even remotely correct." The point is there were things already "remotely correct" out there in 1900. If the LLM finds them, it wouldn't "be quite a strong evidence that LLMs are a path to something bigger."
- pegasus 9mo ago
  It's not the comment which is illogical, it's your (mis)interpretation of it. What I (and seemingly others) took it to mean is basically could an LLM do Einstein's job? Could it weave together all those loose threads into a coherent new way of understanding the physical world? If so, AGI can't be far behind.
  - feanaro 9mo ago
    This alone still wouldn't be a clear demonstration that AGI is around the corner. It's quite possible a LLM could've done Einstein's job, if Einstein's job was truly just synthesising already available information into a coherent new whole. (I couldn't say, I don't know enough of the physics landscape of the day to claim either way.) It's still unclear whether this process could be merely continued, seeded only with new physical data, in order to keep progressing beyond that point, "forever", or at least for as long as we imagine humans will continue to go on making scientific progress.
    - pegasus 9mo ago
      Einstein is chosen in such contexts because he's the paradigmatic paradigm-shifter. Basically, what you're saying is: "I don't know enough history of science to confirm this incredibly high opinion on Einstein's achievements. It could just be that everyone's been wrong about him, and if I'd really get down and dirty, and learn the facts at hand, I might even prove it." Einstein is chosen to avoid exactly this kind of nit-picking.
      - Shorel 9mo ago
        They can also choose Euler or Gauss. These two are so above everyone else in the mathematical world that most people would struggle for weeks or even months to understand something they did in a couple of minutes. There's no "get down and dirty" shortcut with them =)
golem14 9mo ago
I think it's not productive to just have the LLM site like Mycroft in his armchair and from there, return you an excellent expert opinion. THat's not how science works. The LLM would have to propose experiments (which would have to be simulated), and then develop its theories from that. Maybe there had been enough facts around to suggest a number of hypotheses, but the LLM in its curent form won't be able to confirm them.

actionfromafar 9mo ago

Yeah but... we still might not know if it could do that because we were really close by 1900 or if the LLM is very smart.

scottlamb 9mo ago
What's the bar here? Does anyone say "we don't know if Einstein could do this because we were really close or because he was really smart?" I by no means believe LLMs are general intelligence, and I've seen them produce a lot of garbage, but if they could produce these revolutionary theories from only <= year 1900 information and a prompt that is not ridiculously leading, that would be a really compelling demonstration of their power.
- echoangle 9mo ago
  > Does anyone say "we don't know if Einstein could do this because we were really close or because he was really smart?" Kind of, how long would it have realistically taken for someone else (also really smart) to come up with the same thing if Einstein wouldn't have been there?
  - jaggederest 9mo ago
    Well, we know many watershed moments in history were more a matter of situation than the specific person - an individual genius might move things by a decade or two, but in general the difference is marginal. True bolt-out-of-the-blue developments are uncommon, though all the more impressive for that fact, I think.
  - pegasus 9mo ago
    But you're not actually questioning whether he was "really smart". Which was what GP was questioning. Sure, you can try to quantify the level of smarts, but you can't still call it a "stochastic parrot" anymore, just like you won't respond to Einstein's achievements, "Ah well, in the end I'm still not sure he's actually smart, like I am for example. Could just be that he's just dumbly but systematically going through all options, working it out step by step, nothing I couldn't achieve (or even better, program a computer to do) if I'd put my mind to it." I personally doubt that this would work. I don't think these systems can achieve truly ground-breaking, paradigm-shifting work. The homeworld of these systems is the corpus of text on which it was trained, in the same way as ours is physical reality. Their access to this reality is always secondary, already distorted by the imperfections of human knowledge.
- bmacho 9mo ago
  > Does anyone say "we don't know if Einstein could do this because we were really close or because he was really smart? Yes. It is certainly a question if Einstein is one of the smartest guy ever lived or all of his discoveries were already in the Zeitgeist, and would have been discovered by someone else in ~5 years.
  - cyberax 9mo ago
    Both can be true? Einstein was smart and put several disjointed things together. It's amazing that one person could do so much, from explaining the Brownian motion to explaining the photoeffect. But I think that all these would have happened within _years_ anyway.
- emodendroket 9mo ago
  > Does anyone say "we don't know if Einstein could do this because we were really close or because he was really smart?" It turns out my reading is somewhat topical. I've been reading Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" and of the things he takes great pains to argue (I was not quite anticipating how much I'd be trying to recall my high school science classes to make sense of his account of various experiments) is that the development toward the atomic bomb was more or less inexorable and if at any point someone said "this is too far; let's stop here" there would be others to take his place. So, maybe, to answer your question.
  - twoodfin 9mo ago
    It’s been a while since I read it, but I recall Rhodes’ point being that once the fundamentals of fission in heavy elements were validated, making a working bomb was no longer primarily a question of science, but one of engineering.
    - emodendroket 8mo ago
      Engineering began before they were done with the experimentation and theorizing part. But the US, the UK, France, Germany, the Soviets, and Japan all had nuclear weapons programs with different degrees of success.
sleet_spotter 9mo ago
Well, if one had enough time and resources, this would make for an interesting metric. Could it figure it out with cut-off of 1900? If so, what about 1899? 1898? What context from the marginal year was key to the change in outcome?

palmotea 9mo ago

But that's not the OP's challenge, he said "if the model comes up with anything even remotely correct." The point is there were things already "remotely correct" out there in 1900. If the LLM finds them, it wouldn't "be quite a strong evidence that LLMs are a path to something bigger."

pegasus 9mo ago
It's not the comment which is illogical, it's your (mis)interpretation of it. What I (and seemingly others) took it to mean is basically could an LLM do Einstein's job? Could it weave together all those loose threads into a coherent new way of understanding the physical world? If so, AGI can't be far behind.
- feanaro 9mo ago
  This alone still wouldn't be a clear demonstration that AGI is around the corner. It's quite possible a LLM could've done Einstein's job, if Einstein's job was truly just synthesising already available information into a coherent new whole. (I couldn't say, I don't know enough of the physics landscape of the day to claim either way.) It's still unclear whether this process could be merely continued, seeded only with new physical data, in order to keep progressing beyond that point, "forever", or at least for as long as we imagine humans will continue to go on making scientific progress.
  - pegasus 9mo ago
    Einstein is chosen in such contexts because he's the paradigmatic paradigm-shifter. Basically, what you're saying is: "I don't know enough history of science to confirm this incredibly high opinion on Einstein's achievements. It could just be that everyone's been wrong about him, and if I'd really get down and dirty, and learn the facts at hand, I might even prove it." Einstein is chosen to avoid exactly this kind of nit-picking.
    - Shorel 9mo ago
      They can also choose Euler or Gauss. These two are so above everyone else in the mathematical world that most people would struggle for weeks or even months to understand something they did in a couple of minutes. There's no "get down and dirty" shortcut with them =)

golem14 9mo ago

I think it's not productive to just have the LLM site like Mycroft in his armchair and from there, return you an excellent expert opinion. THat's not how science works. The LLM would have to propose experiments (which would have to be simulated), and then develop its theories from that. Maybe there had been enough facts around to suggest a number of hypotheses, but the LLM in its curent form won't be able to confirm them.