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Want to get started with LLMs? Here's what you need to know

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Re: Want to get started with LLMs? Here's what you need to know

#11

> GPT-4 boasts 100 trillion parameters Source? I’ve never heard this. I’ve heard 1 trillion and that it’s a 8 x 175B ensemble.

OpenAI hasn't confirmed it yet, so as of now, there are no reliable sources to rely on for this information. I just removed that part.

Re: Want to get started with LLMs? Here's what you need to know

#12
post #3

I don't think it's particularly helpful to dive into transformer models, positional encodings and self-attention at the very start of an introduction to LLMs. Understanding how those works does little to help explain what LLMs can do and how you can use them. I tend to stick with the higher level explanation that they can predict the next word (or next sentence) based on their training text, and then emphasize that w…

any recommendations for explainers that operate on this level of abstraction?

Re: Want to get started with LLMs? Here's what you need to know

#13
post #3

I don't think it's particularly helpful to dive into transformer models, positional encodings and self-attention at the very start of an introduction to LLMs. Understanding how those works does little to help explain what LLMs can do and how you can use them. I tend to stick with the higher level explanation that they can predict the next word (or next sentence) based on their training text, and then emphasize that w…

any recommendations for explainers that operate on this level of abstraction?

Here's my most recent attempt at this: https://simonwillison.net/2023/Aug/27/wordcamp-llms/#what-th...

Re: Want to get started with LLMs? Here's what you need to know

#15
post #9
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it's even helpful to talk about transformer at all[0]. Modern LLMs are different than the pure transformer architecture in many detailed aspects. The elephant in the room being that they're not even full transformer—only the decoder part. [0]: One reason: Never once did I need to know the transformer architecture in order to be able to use these models (prompt engineering, chaining, working with local mo…

>I think we need something that at least captures the general mechanism by which LLMs predict the next token. This bit varies a lot since the capabilities involved in prediction depend on the data. If the text is a math book and the prompt is "... three plus five apples is a total of " the crucial capability is arithmetic (plus of course NL capabilities). On the other hand, if you're completing a post from /r/relatio…

"three plus five apples is a total of..." is a really interesting example, because it doesn't actually require arithmetic at all.

A language model trained on enough text will be able to complete this just based on having encountered the pattern "three plus five SOMETHING is a total of..." enough times in its training data.

This becomes even more apparent when you work with smaller models - the 7B etc models which can run on a laptop. They can often solve small arithmetic problems like this while having no chance at all of working with larger numbers that they haven't ever encountered in their training data.

I really like using those smaller models as tools to better understand how this technology works.

Re: Want to get started with LLMs? Here's what you need to know

#16
post #3

I don't think it's particularly helpful to dive into transformer models, positional encodings and self-attention at the very start of an introduction to LLMs. Understanding how those works does little to help explain what LLMs can do and how you can use them. I tend to stick with the higher level explanation that they can predict the next word (or next sentence) based on their training text, and then emphasize that w…

I wanted to talk about what powers LLMs, which I believe is important. The answer to that is transformers. While I may not have delved deeper into how a transformer actually works, I tried to explain the concepts in the simplest way possible.

In that case I'd suggest moving this material towards the end. It's a big distraction putting it up front like this.

Re: Want to get started with LLMs? Here's what you need to know

#17
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

any recommendations for explainers that operate on this level of abstraction?

Here's my most recent attempt at this: https://simonwillison.net/2023/Aug/27/wordcamp-llms/#what-th...

thank you!

Re: Want to get started with LLMs? Here's what you need to know

#18
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost like an AI written article

We have many existing sources on LLMs. I referenced a couple of them that I find great. Repeating the same content doesn't offer much value. :) And I wrote the entire content myself.

My observation from this is that the process by which humans assemble and summarize information, at least at a somewhat high level, is pretty darn close to the way that LLMs do it. I think that falls apart when you want to talk about deeper learning, drawing inferences and so on but if you are just trying to pull together an executive summary on XYZ, an LLM with some fact checking gets you pretty far IMHO.

Re: Want to get started with LLMs? Here's what you need to know

#19
post #4
post #3

I don't think it's particularly helpful to dive into transformer models, positional encodings and self-attention at the very start of an introduction to LLMs. Understanding how those works does little to help explain what LLMs can do and how you can use them. I tend to stick with the higher level explanation that they can predict the next word (or next sentence) based on their training text, and then emphasize that w…

I'm not sure it's even helpful to talk about transformer at all[0]. Modern LLMs are different than the pure transformer architecture in many detailed aspects. The elephant in the room being that they're not even full transformer—only the decoder part. [0]: One reason: Never once did I need to know the transformer architecture in order to be able to use these models (prompt engineering, chaining, working with local mo…

It's adorable to see how many intro writings on the subject throw up the famous "Attention Is All You Need" diagram as if that explains anything whatsoever.

Re: Want to get started with LLMs? Here's what you need to know

#20

> GPT-4 boasts 100 trillion parameters Source? I’ve never heard this. I’ve heard 1 trillion and that it’s a 8 x 175B ensemble.

I believe it's actually 8 x 220B. Just want to make it clear it's not simply a MOE GPT-3.5.
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