5 ms·

Is this unsurprising? It's a fancy markov chain. It's like using a slot machine to diagnose medical conditions. I guess it's a slot machine with really good mar

Is this unsurprising? It's a fancy markov chain. It's like using a slot machine to diagnose medical conditions. I guess it's a slot machine with really good marketing.

slopinthebag 7mo ago
People are reading way too much into it, talking about "emergence" and anthropomorphizing it to insane degrees.
atleastoptimal 7mo ago
Hey, 2021 called, they want their knee-jerk criticisms of LLMs back
- andersmurphy 7mo ago
  Ask your LLM for a random number between 1 and 10. What do you get? Let me guess you got 7?
  - cloud-oak 7mo ago
    Picking up your original comment - Markov chains are much better at generating random numbers than either humans or LLMs!
  - atleastoptimal 7mo ago
    You're doing the common thing where multiple criticisms you have of LLM's are individually valid but mutually incompatible. If the point was that an AI is a fancy Markov chain, then it would produce a more uniformly random distribution of random numbers (perhaps with 7 more often due to humans preferring that as it feels "more random") However the idea that it's an issue that it always produces 7 implies that LLM's are not random enough, and rather have collapsed to a definite mode of thought which restricts stochastic variation. Both cases taken together, you are claiming that LLM's are too random to be truly "intelligent", but also not random enough. All of this is a distraction from the fact that LLM's can write thousands of lines of genuinely useful, novel code. I feel the only way to reasonably reconcile this with their varying failure cases is to entertain the notion that LLM's not "unintelligent", but merely a different kind of intelligence than humans, and will have distinct deficits and distinct aptitudes. (This isn't a comprehensive assessment, but it, as a general description, has more predictive power than claiming that LLM's are just a "slot machine")

Is this unsurprising? It's a fancy markov chain. It's like using a slot machine to diagnose medical conditions. I guess it's a slot machine with really good marketing.

slopinthebag 7mo ago

People are reading way too much into it, talking about "emergence" and anthropomorphizing it to insane degrees.

atleastoptimal 7mo ago

Hey, 2021 called, they want their knee-jerk criticisms of LLMs back

andersmurphy 7mo ago
Ask your LLM for a random number between 1 and 10. What do you get? Let me guess you got 7?
- cloud-oak 7mo ago
  Picking up your original comment - Markov chains are much better at generating random numbers than either humans or LLMs!
- atleastoptimal 7mo ago
  You're doing the common thing where multiple criticisms you have of LLM's are individually valid but mutually incompatible. If the point was that an AI is a fancy Markov chain, then it would produce a more uniformly random distribution of random numbers (perhaps with 7 more often due to humans preferring that as it feels "more random") However the idea that it's an issue that it always produces 7 implies that LLM's are not random enough, and rather have collapsed to a definite mode of thought which restricts stochastic variation. Both cases taken together, you are claiming that LLM's are too random to be truly "intelligent", but also not random enough. All of this is a distraction from the fact that LLM's can write thousands of lines of genuinely useful, novel code. I feel the only way to reasonably reconcile this with their varying failure cases is to entertain the notion that LLM's not "unintelligent", but merely a different kind of intelligence than humans, and will have distinct deficits and distinct aptitudes. (This isn't a comprehensive assessment, but it, as a general description, has more predictive power than claiming that LLM's are just a "slot machine")