Large Language Models Are Neurosymbolic Reasoners • Hacker News Board

Re: Large Language Models Are Neurosymbolic Reasoners

#101

Post by calf » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 1:25 PM UTC

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #95

clooper wrote: post #5

I was recently thinking how every neural network is equivalent to a lookup table where the input is all numbers up to what can be expressed within the context window and the output is the result of the arithmetic operations applied to that number. So every neural network is equivalent to T = {(i, f(i)) : i The main practical issue is the size of the table but I don't see any theoretical reasons why this is incorrect.…

This whole thread on lookup tables seems to be confused. Isn't this purely math, the equivalence of a function to a lookup table is well studied. And NN as comprised of functions, can be boiled down to table as posted. How do we get from this math concept of function=table, and get to arguments about consciousness and free-will and state space of the universe... The table-NN equivalence doesn't seem to help peoples u…

People are just outright abusing the terminology. OP's argument would also conclude that a sorting algorithm is not a "real" algorithm because it too can be done by an infinite lookup table.

That said, the general debate is a valid one. Are LLMs just doing fancy statistical compression of data, or are they doing "reasoning" in some important sense, be that merely mechanistic logical reasoning, or "human-level intelligent reasoning"?

For that matter, did the paper authors ever define "Reasoners" in their title, or leave it to the reader?

Re: Large Language Models Are Neurosymbolic Reasoners

#102

Post by calf » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 1:48 PM UTC

clooper wrote: post #5

I was recently thinking how every neural network is equivalent to a lookup table where the input is all numbers up to what can be expressed within the context window and the output is the result of the arithmetic operations applied to that number. So every neural network is equivalent to T = {(i, f(i)) : i The main practical issue is the size of the table but I don't see any theoretical reasons why this is incorrect.…

Every program is a compressed representation of its output. This is from Kolmogorov complexity, which you learn this in any CS complexity theory course.

So, a neural network being a compressor/decompressor is nothing special.

Note, however, that supposing a context window of 1000 units, then we are looking at K = 2^1000 = 10^300 different entries in the truth table. Somehow, your LLM neural network is the result of compressing a 10^300 exponential scale amount of possible information, which of course could never be seen at all -- to compress a JPEG at least you have access to the original image, not just two pixels in it.

Anyways, the philosophical debate is whether you believe programs can think, whether machine intelligence is meaningful at all by definition. Some say yes, others say no. When humans think, are not our abstractions and ideas a kind of compression?

Re: Large Language Models Are Neurosymbolic Reasoners

#103

Post by optimalsolver » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 1:51 PM UTC

still_grokking wrote: post #77

neurallambda wrote: post #65

I'm trying to tackle this problem more head-on, by outfitting LLMs with lambda calculus, stacks, queues, etc. directly in their internals, operating over their latent space. [1] I'll read your paper, but, LLMs famously fail horribly at "multi jump" reasoning, which to me means they can't reason at all. They can merely output a reflection of the human reasoning that was baked into the training data, and they can also…

May I ask why there are NNs in your project at all? Just to heat up the planet and make Nvidia share holders even more happy? :-) I mean, what I've seen in the Readme makes sense. But doing basic computer stuff with NNs just makes the resource usage go brr by astronomical factors, for imho no reason, while making the results brittle, random, and often just completely made up. Also: Do you know about the (already 40 y…

Well with 40 years of work, I’m sure Cyc have had some really mind blowing results.

Re: Large Language Models Are Neurosymbolic Reasoners

#104

Post by mistermann » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 2:22 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #66

mistermann wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What theories are you using to solve for: - consciousness? - the unknown? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_and_sufficiency - the misunderstood? https://plato.stanford.edu/Entries/perception-problem/ The Science of the Gaps will do I suppose? Culture could do it though I think.

Can you rephrase that? It currently reads like shifting goalposts, and I'd like to guess that was not your intention…

Any theory that asserts exhaustive coverage of people would need to take all relevant aspects of reality into consideration, so I suggested some of the trickiest things that are relevant.

Unfortunately for me, they are so tricky that they "don't count" (try, genuinely, to model the reality bending capability of people in a theory, I would love to see that!).

Re: Large Language Models Are Neurosymbolic Reasoners

#105

Post by ashz8888 » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 2:27 PM UTC

I did something similar [1], where the text based game being a Text Interface (TI) that provides model a view and a set of actions. The model repeatedly interacts with TI to achieve a goal.

In the current implementation, Text Interface allows the model to list files, open a file, and search within a file to find what it needs to satisfy the goal.

With my current set of prompts, the model is able to backtrack when it fails to find relevant info in the current file. However, I couldn't get it work with GPT-3.5. Only GPT-4 is capable to reason its way through the Text Interface.

[1] https://github.com/ash80/backtracking_gpt

Re: Large Language Models Are Neurosymbolic Reasoners

#106

Post by FrustratedMonky » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 2:30 PM UTC

mjburgess wrote: post #98

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I am not synthesising text" Then what are you doing? I think you are falling for the same arguments as 'mystics'. Somehow your inner thoughts are un-explainable. But nothing in your argument explains it, you are just taking your own inner experience itself as the mystical explanation. The old 'I think therefore I am' argument. And where did the 'thinking' come from?

It's entirely explainable, I just explained it in the other comment, "Somatosenstory representations are built by the sensory-motor system." Do you really think the meat of my body is growing so as to record every symbol i've seen, or even an induction across them? I find this inability to think outside of the switching frequencies of a silicon chip as they model the patterns of text tokens on reddit, absolutely biza…

My view is opposite.

"inability to think outside of the switching frequencies of a silicon chip"

Why can't you "think outside", and conceptualize that this 'internal subjective experience' we are having, is not unique, and could be taking place inside a silicon based NN?

It helps to meditate and observe your own thoughts, and how they arise. You can begin to realize that you don't 'think'. You don't think about what to think and thus think it. Thoughts just become un-bidden.

Its back to the Schopenhauer quote "“A man can do as he will, but not will as he will.”

Then, when you begin to notice the mechanistic nature of your own mind, you will have less resistance to how 'silicon' is also reacting. Silicon and Carbon both reacting to inputs, processing.

Re: Large Language Models Are Neurosymbolic Reasoners

#107

Post by FrustratedMonky » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 2:34 PM UTC

calf wrote: post #101

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole thread on lookup tables seems to be confused. Isn't this purely math, the equivalence of a function to a lookup table is well studied. And NN as comprised of functions, can be boiled down to table as posted. How do we get from this math concept of function=table, and get to arguments about consciousness and free-will and state space of the universe... The table-NN equivalence doesn't seem to help peoples u…

People are just outright abusing the terminology. OP's argument would also conclude that a sorting algorithm is not a "real" algorithm because it too can be done by an infinite lookup table. That said, the general debate is a valid one. Are LLMs just doing fancy statistical compression of data, or are they doing "reasoning" in some important sense, be that merely mechanistic logical reasoning, or "human-level intelli…

Sure. I agree.

The debate is good. I just don't see how the 'table-lookup' analogy is helping.

Except maybe by helping people see the non-free-will nature of the universe. But seems like people that reject this, are also ones rejecting the 'table-function' equivalence.

Re: Large Language Models Are Neurosymbolic Reasoners

#108

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 2:56 PM UTC

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #106

mjburgess wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's entirely explainable, I just explained it in the other comment, "Somatosenstory representations are built by the sensory-motor system." Do you really think the meat of my body is growing so as to record every symbol i've seen, or even an induction across them? I find this inability to think outside of the switching frequencies of a silicon chip as they model the patterns of text tokens on reddit, absolutely biza…

My view is opposite. "inability to think outside of the switching frequencies of a silicon chip" Why can't you "think outside", and conceptualize that this 'internal subjective experience' we are having, is not unique, and could be taking place inside a silicon based NN? It helps to meditate and observe your own thoughts, and how they arise. You can begin to realize that you don't 'think'. You don't think about what…

[deleted]

Re: Large Language Models Are Neurosymbolic Reasoners

#109

Post by mjburgess » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 2:56 PM UTC

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #106

mjburgess wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's entirely explainable, I just explained it in the other comment, "Somatosenstory representations are built by the sensory-motor system." Do you really think the meat of my body is growing so as to record every symbol i've seen, or even an induction across them? I find this inability to think outside of the switching frequencies of a silicon chip as they model the patterns of text tokens on reddit, absolutely biza…

My view is opposite. "inability to think outside of the switching frequencies of a silicon chip" Why can't you "think outside", and conceptualize that this 'internal subjective experience' we are having, is not unique, and could be taking place inside a silicon based NN? It helps to meditate and observe your own thoughts, and how they arise. You can begin to realize that you don't 'think'. You don't think about what…

Organisms are mechanistic, there's nothing "not mechanistic" about the mind.

Its insane to suppose that somatosensory representation building, which requires organic neruoplasticity to be connected to the organically adaptive neuromotor system, etc. etc. etc. can just be instantiated in a bit of sand.

This is deeply mystical, pseudoscience.

You're credulously throwing away any kind of empirical analysis of the world in terms of it's properties and their mechanisms for the deeply mystical view that, unique in amongst all properties of the world, consciousness needs no empirical analysis of the properties of the systems which have it.

Of gold we ask: what makes it shine; of fire: what makes it hot.. and so on for everything empirical in the world.

But with the mind we must stop! No! No! do not do any science! please that might mean we can't be scammed by a VC out of our investment money; i cannot babble endlessly about scifi star treck episodes! no no! please do not rob me of my scifi religion! please please, do not ruin commander data for me!

Well there is no commander data. And the properties of gold are not those of sand, nor those of animals. And just as no bit of silicon will be trasumted into gold by the running of an NN on its electric field; likewise, no bit of silicon will desire or wish or conceive of anything.

We are biological organisms; we do not have souls, even if in your religion, the soul is "a pattern". Your consciousness will not be uploaded; commander data will never visit; and your local VC shyster is on a stock manipulation grift to bamboozle you out of money.

Re: Large Language Models Are Neurosymbolic Reasoners

#110

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 3:21 PM UTC

mjburgess wrote: post #97

bubblyworld wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, I don't really understand what you mean by Hilbert spaces being computable, and what that has to do with the linearity of QM, determinism of classical mechanics, universe being geometrical and not computational etc. I'm familiar with all of those concepts, but not sure how they tie together here. If you have resources you could share I would appreciate it (I had little success with google).

computable = expressible as Int -> Int Hilbert space = set of functions in Real -> Real geometrical & non-computable = Reals determinism = g(x, t_future) fully set by g(x, t_now) and g if you model a geometric, g : Real -> Real with computable, c : Int -> Int then there are gaps at arbitrarily high precisions, say p (eg., p = delta(g, c) at (x, t)) construct a classical system of arbitrarily complexity (eg., 10^BIG i…

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