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Yeah all of these attempts to try and control AI outputs by using language fail to grasp that language is itself the problem. It is a closed system with no grou
by tonic_note 16d ago
Yeah all of these attempts to try and control AI outputs by using language fail to grasp that language is itself the problem. It is a closed system with no ground truth. Words only point to other words in an endless self-referential chain. There is no "closure" in language, ambiguity cannot be erased.
Imo LLM researchers would benefit a lot by reading what continental philosophers have said on the topic of language. Barthes, Sarte, Deluze, Derrida, et. Al have a lot to say that explains why we're running into the same problems over and over.
- fortzi 16d agoNatural language is ambiguous. Specifying exactly what you want in a way that is truly verifiable is the act of coding.
- frank00001 16d agoStart printing the t-shirts!
- shakna 16d agoYou mean t-shirts of this comic, from 2016? [0] https://www.commitstrip.com/en/2016/08/25/a-very-comprehensive-and-precise-spec/ https://www.commitstrip.com/en/2016/08/25/a-very-comprehensi...
- krapp 16d agoI think LLM researchers understand how LLMs work and what the limits of using natural language as an interface are. The problem is everyone else thinks they're basically magic, expecting them to be infinitely intuitive but also strictly deterministic, like the computer from Star Trek.
- actionfromafar 16d agoThe computer from Star Trek sounds like it could entirely plausibly have been made with LLM components and a century of harness tweaking piled on.
- krapp 15d agoPlausibly based on what? The computer from Star Trek wasn't real. It was Majel Barrett talking into a microphone. You can no more extrapolate any real world computer architecture from that than you can determine amphibian evolution from Kermit the Frog.
- hannasanarion 15d agoIt's a thing you can talk to that does stuff for you. What other "architecture" do you need to know?
- krapp 15d agoFair enough. Your logic is unassailable. There is literally no difference between fiction and reality and no need to understand anything beyond "LLM talk therefore Star Trek real."
- hannasanarion 15d agoLiterally not what the comment you were replying to was saying even remotely, but ok.
- actionfromafar 15d agoRight. Feel free to extrapolate a reading like "I think LLM tech and a century of tinkering could achieve computer performance similar to what it appears the entirely fictional, voiced by Majel Barrett, Star Trek computers has".
- krapp 15d ago>Feel free to extrapolate a reading like "I think LLM tech and a century of tinkering could achieve computer performance similar to what it appears the entirely fictional, voiced by Majel Barrett, Star Trek computers has". But that doesn't mean anything. "Similar to" is vague enough that it could include video game NPC dialogue.
- cindyllm 16d ago[dead]
- corv 16d agoBend would make Dijkstra happy even when proof checking can’t verify if the laws are what was actually meant. I actually think Asimov is more instructive here, while Gödel and Tarski tell us the tool can’t prove itself… Nonetheless, it is a worthwhile endeavor and I hope more rigorous practices like this catch on.