What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?
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What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?
1–10 of 155 posts
Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?
#2This answer is amazing and classically Alan Kay! There's so much here to unpack because of all the different areas Alan draws from in his work (he's like a computing philosopher).
All I will say is that for people who want to understand his perspective, there's a large epistemological load to overcome. Sampling his talks is a good starting point though: https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Talks_by_Alan_Kay
Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?
#3This answer is amazing and classically Alan Kay! There's so much here to unpack because of all the different areas Alan draws from in his work (he's like a computing philosopher ). All I will say is that for people who want to understand his perspective, there's a large epistemological load to overcome. Sampling his talks is a good starting point though: https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Talks_by_Alan_Kay
wow this list is super useful, thanks for sharing!
Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?
#4There is a lot in here, various paths to venture off, but the bottom line seems to be trust is important when running commands on a machine, and LLMs are not trustable. What else?
Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?
#5This answer is amazing and classically Alan Kay! There's so much here to unpack because of all the different areas Alan draws from in his work (he's like a computing philosopher ). All I will say is that for people who want to understand his perspective, there's a large epistemological load to overcome. Sampling his talks is a good starting point though: https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Talks_by_Alan_Kay
He always criticizes how everyone got computing wrong (fair enough), but never offers anything but the most vague suggestions of how to do things differently.
Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?
#6This answer is amazing and classically Alan Kay! There's so much here to unpack because of all the different areas Alan draws from in his work (he's like a computing philosopher ). All I will say is that for people who want to understand his perspective, there's a large epistemological load to overcome. Sampling his talks is a good starting point though: https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Talks_by_Alan_Kay
He always criticizes how everyone got computing wrong (fair enough), but never offers anything but the most vague suggestions of how to do things differently.
I think trustability is pretty specific and without a foundation of trust the rest of the effort”s value is unknowable.
Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?
#7There is a lot in here, various paths to venture off, but the bottom line seems to be trust is important when running commands on a machine, and LLMs are not trustable. What else?
what would be required for trusting an LLM?
1: 100% transparency. Open Source code, fully (and correctly) attributed training data.
2: A predictable model of what these models are actually encoding (so that hypothetical new models (or modifications) can be reasoned about).
Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?
#8This answer is amazing and classically Alan Kay! There's so much here to unpack because of all the different areas Alan draws from in his work (he's like a computing philosopher ). All I will say is that for people who want to understand his perspective, there's a large epistemological load to overcome. Sampling his talks is a good starting point though: https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Talks_by_Alan_Kay
He always criticizes how everyone got computing wrong (fair enough), but never offers anything but the most vague suggestions of how to do things differently.
True message passing is one of the key ideas behind smalltalk which would improve computer security considerably. This is analogous to the design of the internet that he references. The internet scales well. So imagine building entire computing systems this way.
Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?
#9There is a lot in here, various paths to venture off, but the bottom line seems to be trust is important when running commands on a machine, and LLMs are not trustable. What else?
what would be required for trusting an LLM? 1: 100% transparency. Open Source code, fully (and correctly) attributed training data. 2: A predictable model of what these models are actually encoding (so that hypothetical new models (or modifications) can be reasoned about).
I think I have to know what chain of reasoning is behind this or that fact and/or deduction. i would like to be able to verify that.
For example, the proof of the absence of solution in SAT should be accompanied with the easily verifiable chain of reasoning. This shows the absence of incorrect deductions and missing assignments. Another example is autovectorization in contemporary compilers, they can show you why parts of your loops are not eligible for vectoriztion.
All LM's can do is to show me that these parts of those inputs are important for that output, but nothing else. Thus, they cannot be trusted even for minimally critical tasks.
Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?
#10This answer is amazing and classically Alan Kay! There's so much here to unpack because of all the different areas Alan draws from in his work (he's like a computing philosopher ). All I will say is that for people who want to understand his perspective, there's a large epistemological load to overcome. Sampling his talks is a good starting point though: https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Talks_by_Alan_Kay
He always criticizes how everyone got computing wrong (fair enough), but never offers anything but the most vague suggestions of how to do things differently.
He did tho. He mentioned more than once that OOP was more about message passing than behavior + state.