5 ms·
It seems like alot of scientific advancements occurred by someone applying technique X from one field to problem Y in another. I feel like LLMs are much better
by shybear 6mo ago
It seems like alot of scientific advancements occurred by someone applying technique X from one field to problem Y in another. I feel like LLMs are much better at making these types of connections than humans because they 1) know about many more theories/approaches than a single human can 2) don't need to worry about looking silly in front of their peers.
- bojo 6mo agoThis is what I have been doing. I don't think I've made any amazing breakthroughs, but at the same time I can't help but feel like I've come across some white paper-worthy realizations. Being able to correlate across a lot of domains I feel like I intuitively understand but have no depth of knowledge has been a fun exercise in LLM experimentation.
- freakynit 6mo agoThis is what I personally consider as "reasoning" ... knowledge generalization and application across domains.
- jdub 6mo agoLess reasoning than a dimension of brute force unfamiliar to human brains.
- worldsavior 6mo agoFamiliar but isn't effective enough for surviving.
- squidbeak 6mo agoTrying to diminish this as brute force (something by the way that is categorically not 'unfamiliar to human brains' - as anyone who has every worked on complex slippery problems will tell you) is foolish, when the models hypothesize along the way to their solutions. That's reasoning.
- jdub 6mo agoThe dimension of brute force unfamiliar to human brains is "well-read with zero judgement", where connections can be made even if they're not thought through. Grinding through completions isn't reasoning.
- some_furry 6mo ago> It seems like alot of scientific advancements occurred by someone applying technique X from one field to problem Y in another. Yeah, you should look into the Langlands project sometime
- pfdietz 6mo agoI'm thinking once we have much of the math literature formalized it's going to be possible to mine commonalities like that. Think of it as automated refactoring, applied to math.
- trhway 6mo agoAs a civilization we went the left-brained/sequential/language based way of thinking (with computers and AI being the crown achievement of it). Personally i for example remember like around 3rd grade i switched from the whole-page-at-once reading mode into the word by word line by line mode and that mode stuck with me since then (at some point while at the University i had for some period of time, probably it was the peak of my abilities, some more deep/wide/non-linear perception into at least my area of math specialization, though not sure whether it was a mastery by the left brain or the right brain got plugged in too) LLMs will definitely beat us in that sequential way of thinking. That makes me wonder whether we will have to push into our whatever is still left there right-brainness, and whether AI will get there faster too. May be we'll abandon the left-brain completely leaving it to AI.
- kbrkbr 6mo agoIf that is your hope you are probably in for a rude awakening. Left brained/right brained is a wooden exaggeration according to more recent research [1]. [1] e.g. https://www.sciencenewstoday.org/left-brain-vs-right-brain-truth-or-myth https://www.sciencenewstoday.org/left-brain-vs-right-brain-t...
- chrisweekly 6mo agoWell, maybe. The poster you replied to wasn't discussing literal neuroanatomy, they were using "left/right-brained" in the colloquial, metaphorical sense.
- esjeon 6mo agoExactly. Much of the intellectual work is, in fact, intellectual labor. It’s mostly about combining various information in one place — the exact task that LLM far outperforms human. People traditionally misclassified this class of work as “creative”. It’s not really.
- gardenhedge 6mo agoIsn't that science too?
- locknitpicker 6mo ago> Much of the intellectual work is, in fact, intellectual labor. That's a great point. It's in line with research being carried on the backs of graduate students, whose work is to hyperfocus on areas.
- dorgo 6mo agoMaybe all intellectual work is intellectual labor?
- _Microft 6mo agoWhat is your idea of "creative"/"creativity" then?
- moffkalast 6mo agoComing up with said novel techniques in the first place. Arguably something that most humans can't really do reliably or at all.
- pelasaco 6mo agoaccuracy and creativity are often quite difficult to achieve at the same time. Looks like LLM can do it, even though one can question how creative it really is...
- squidbeak 6mo agoAs I understand it, models form connections (weak or strong) between everything in their training sets, even the smallest details. They've already made other breakthroughs directly because of this ability and this line of research is likely to be incredibly fruitful.
- aaron695 6mo ago[dead]
- renticulous 6mo ago> someone applying technique X from one field to problem Y in another Witten is the canonical example of someone taking mathematics techniques and applying them to physics problems, but what made him legendary was the opposite direction: he used physical intuition and string theory to solve open problems in pure mathematics.
- instakill 6mo agoIsn't this just how Von Neumann would innovate?