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Yann LeCun on GPT-3

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Re: Yann LeCun on GPT-3

#51
post #6

For anyone else who doesn’t want to deal with Facebook, here’s the post: Some people have completely unrealistic expectations about what large-scale language models such as GPT-3 can do. This simple explanatory study by my friends at Nabla debunks some of those expectations for people who think massive language models can be used in healthcare. GPT-3 is a language model, which means that you feed it a text and ask it…

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Re: Yann LeCun on GPT-3

#52

Reading this is really interesting: > GPT-3 doesn't have any knowledge of how the world actually works. I think this is a philosophical question. There is a view that, basically, there is no such thing as knowledge, just language (or, at least, there is no distinction between knowledge and language). In this view, all there really is is language, which is mostly composed of metaphors and, ultimately, metaphors only r…

I think an important distinction to make is your use of the word "language", and how we think of language as it concerns human minds, and as it concerns GPT-3.

In our heads, language is a combination of words and concepts, and knowledge can be encoded by making connections between concepts, not simply words. If there is no concept or idea backing up the words, it can hardly be called knowledge. Consider the case of the man who did not speak French, yet memorised a French dictionary, and subsequently went on to win a Scrabble competition. Just because he knows the words, would you say he knows the language?

A language model such as GPT-3 operates only on words, not concepts. It can make connections between words on the basis of statistical correlations, but has no capacity for encoding concepts, and therefore cannot "know" anything.

Re: Yann LeCun on GPT-3

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been using that analogy to explain why Tesla is many years away from a self driving car. Several others are building something that is fundamentally different.

Aren't they rolling out a beta of FSD literally as we speak?

No.

Re: Yann LeCun on GPT-3

#54
post #6

For anyone else who doesn’t want to deal with Facebook, here’s the post: Some people have completely unrealistic expectations about what large-scale language models such as GPT-3 can do. This simple explanatory study by my friends at Nabla debunks some of those expectations for people who think massive language models can be used in healthcare. GPT-3 is a language model, which means that you feed it a text and ask it…

High altitude planes going to the moon is a beautiful analogy. I think this is what I’ll use to explain to less technical friends why I think we’re still many years from self driving cars.

> I think this is what I’ll use to explain to less technical friends why I think we’re still many years from self driving cars.

Explain to them also that you think one highly specialized skill (driving) is the same as the sum of all human knowledge.

Re: Yann LeCun on GPT-3

#55
post #2

It's nice to hear from someone who knows what they're talking about that GPT-3 is just a fancy and expensive autocomplete. The hype in some circles about it went as far as comparing it to AGI at some point which is just ridiculous.

You are just a fancy and efficient autocomplete too. When you speak or write, some words have a higher probability than others. You pick alternatives, but they are limited. Of course there are more layers in the human mind, but GPT-3 is a really impressive milestone towards AGI.

It's so easy to downplay every advanced tech, it's actually fun.

Planes? Just a flying metal tube.

Self landing rockets? Just applied physics.

Smartphones? Just really good fab processes.

The internet? Just a bunch of computers.

CRISPR? Just a molecular scissor.

Re: Yann LeCun on GPT-3

#56
post #6

For anyone else who doesn’t want to deal with Facebook, here’s the post: Some people have completely unrealistic expectations about what large-scale language models such as GPT-3 can do. This simple explanatory study by my friends at Nabla debunks some of those expectations for people who think massive language models can be used in healthcare. GPT-3 is a language model, which means that you feed it a text and ask it…

> GPT-3 doesn't have any knowledge of how the world actually works. It only appears to have some level of background knowledge, to the extent that this knowledge is present in the statistics of text. But this knowledge is very shallow and disconnected from the underlying reality.

Without excessive effort, humans don't have any knowledge of how the world actually works. They only appear to have some level of background knowledge, to the extent that this knowledge is present in their faint memories. But this knowledge is very shallow and disconnected from the underlying reality.

Re: Yann LeCun on GPT-3

#57
post #6

For anyone else who doesn’t want to deal with Facebook, here’s the post: Some people have completely unrealistic expectations about what large-scale language models such as GPT-3 can do. This simple explanatory study by my friends at Nabla debunks some of those expectations for people who think massive language models can be used in healthcare. GPT-3 is a language model, which means that you feed it a text and ask it…

Appreciated, thank you!

(feel free to off-topic downvote this troops, just wanted to make it known it was appreciated. Anonymous upvotes can only convey so much gratitude)

Re: Yann LeCun on GPT-3

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been using that analogy to explain why Tesla is many years away from a self driving car. Several others are building something that is fundamentally different.

Aren't they rolling out a beta of FSD literally as we speak?

And that is why i dislike the term "self-driving".

It makes people think "driverless", which "full self-driving" is not.

Re: Yann LeCun on GPT-3

#59
post #2

It's nice to hear from someone who knows what they're talking about that GPT-3 is just a fancy and expensive autocomplete. The hype in some circles about it went as far as comparing it to AGI at some point which is just ridiculous.

> just a fancy and expensive autocomplete

It may be, but there's a lot in that fancy. If it were 'just' an autocomplete we'd all be using markov chains for our dumb chatbots like we were in the 2000s

Re: Yann LeCun on GPT-3

#60
post #6

For anyone else who doesn’t want to deal with Facebook, here’s the post: Some people have completely unrealistic expectations about what large-scale language models such as GPT-3 can do. This simple explanatory study by my friends at Nabla debunks some of those expectations for people who think massive language models can be used in healthcare. GPT-3 is a language model, which means that you feed it a text and ask it…

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