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Can language models serve as text-based world simulators?

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Re: Can language models serve as text-based world simulators?

#51

Post by crooked-v »

skybrian wrote: post #6

Maybe they can, but they’re trained on conversation and stories (among other things) rather than simulations. These are more general than the log of a simulation run in how they use time. Stories can be chronological, but they can also fill in the details in any order using things like flashbacks. Or they can get really complicated with time travel stories. So it seems like to understand a story well, an LLM would ne…

Now I wonder what one would get from an LLM trained entirely on several bajillion text logs of people playing text games like Zork.

Re: Can language models serve as text-based world simulators?

#52

Post by immibis »

sbotzek wrote: post #15

I tried for a few months getting ChatGPT4 to work with a MUD. In my experience it's not very good at that particular task. One problem I ran into was its ability to logically connect rooms. In a MUD you navigate by going north, south, east, west, up, or down. Not every room lets you go any direction. And usually, if you go east, in your new room, you can go west. Rarely a level creator will make this not be true. Cha…

Did you try AI Dungeon 2, in 2020 when it was a thing?

Re: Can language models serve as text-based world simulators?

#53

Post by Falkon1313 »

Folcon wrote: post #25
danjc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat related, Yann LeCun posted a few months back about how many concepts aren't understood through language and therefore can't be modeled through it (which is why LLM's are terrible with things like position and direction). https://x.com/ylecun/status/1768353714794901530?s=46

To people who claim that "thinking and reasoning require language", here is a problem: Imagine standing at the North Pole of the Earth. Walk in any direction, in a straight line, for 1 km. Now turn 90 degrees to the left. Walk for as long as it takes to pass your starting point. Have you walked: 1. More than 2xPi km 2. Exactly 2xPi km 3. Less than 2xPi km 4. I never came close to my starting point. Think about how yo…

I would agree with you, except that I would say the reasoning problem itself not only utilizes language, but in fact hinges entirely on the language.

There's a bit of spatial knowledge involved to understand that you're walking in a circle around the north pole. But the reasoning needed to get the answer to the question is based on the language.

Specifically, the language tells us that our starting point is at the north pole. Then the language of the 4th point states "to pass your starting point", which has two meanings - to cross over the starting point (as in passing the finish line in a race) or to pass by it off to the side (as in passing a store as you're traveling along a road). But since we're walking in a circle around it, we'll never pass it in either sense of the word.

Had it used different language like "How far did you have to walk to complete a circle around your starting point?" then the answer would be quite different, as would the reasoning.

But that wasn't the language used. So the language completely determines the answer and the reasoning involved, including whether you even need to think about distance.

One could also argue that all four of the answer options are wrong, partly since 1km is not a very far distance, and therefore you were always close to your starting point, depending on your ideal of 'close'. But more specifically simply because the language saying you "never came close" to it would be nonsense because you started right at your starting point, and of course can't get much closer than that. So again you don't even really need to account for distance. The language alone determines it.

Re: Can language models serve as text-based world simulators?

#54

Post by Folcon »

bottom999mottob wrote: post #39
Folcon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, I'm not sure if that holds? Just because you use a mechanism for expressing your ideas and reasoning, doesn't mean that underlying reality has to confirm in any way to it? We invent new symbols and terms all the time as we experience new phenomena. A universal grammar may still be possible, barring incompleteness anyway, we may just be lacking a whole bunch of ideas still...

@erik_seaberg the lack of success in finding a universal grammar is a logical leap. The failure to find something does not necessarily mean it doesn't exist. Language is powerful for expressing abstract ideas without explicitly saying them, which suggests language more than "lossy" compression because it's more similar to Shannon's lossless compression with prefix codes. I see where you're coming from though. @Felcon…

Firstly I meant conform btw, not confirm... Unfortunately it's too late to edit!

> Are our cognitive processes not included in reality?

Ah, this may not be productive, but I'm really just trying to tease apart different things.

Of course our cognitive processes exist in reality, however I would say there's nothing that requires that what they produce must materially map to reality.

We do not for example treat dreams as evidence, even though they run on our cognitive processes.

> It's tiring to hear Chomsky's ideas parroted despite no empirical framework to stand on.

To be honest, I had no idea I was doing that...

> What ideas could we be lacking?

I'm not claiming a lack of any specific ideas, I'm merely pointing out that considering that we do know that we invent terms for phenomena that we experience and I doubt that we have been exposed to even the majority of all phenomena, it seems unlikely that we can casually refute the existence of a universal grammar.

Absolutely, proving it does require evidence, which is in short supply and if I was pressed, I would suspect that it's existence is unlikely, but not impossible.

Now just to be clear, I don't mean that this is kind of reasoning can be useful for much else, but with regards to attempts to find some complete unification such as a universal grammar. In those specific cases things become a little fuzzier and reasonable people can disagree.

Re: Can language models serve as text-based world simulators?

#55

Post by ninetyninenine »

danjc wrote: post #18
sbotzek wrote: post #15

I tried for a few months getting ChatGPT4 to work with a MUD. In my experience it's not very good at that particular task. One problem I ran into was its ability to logically connect rooms. In a MUD you navigate by going north, south, east, west, up, or down. Not every room lets you go any direction. And usually, if you go east, in your new room, you can go west. Rarely a level creator will make this not be true. Cha…

Somewhat related, Yann LeCun posted a few months back about how many concepts aren't understood through language and therefore can't be modeled through it (which is why LLM's are terrible with things like position and direction). https://x.com/ylecun/status/1768353714794901530?s=46

It’s all about the training. Llms can have better understanding of space then humans to the point where they can draw things better than us.

Don’t restrict LLMs to text. If you train one with images and text you’ll get one that understands position.

Re: Can language models serve as text-based world simulators?

#56

Post by binary132 »

moritzwarhier wrote: post #48
echelon wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There exists at least one headline written in the interrogative case that can be answered in the affirmative.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160410022155/http://ccdb5fs.ke...

genius!

Re: Can language models serve as text-based world simulators?

#57

Post by lolinder »

immibis wrote: post #52
sbotzek wrote: post #15

I tried for a few months getting ChatGPT4 to work with a MUD. In my experience it's not very good at that particular task. One problem I ran into was its ability to logically connect rooms. In a MUD you navigate by going north, south, east, west, up, or down. Not every room lets you go any direction. And usually, if you go east, in your new room, you can go west. Rarely a level creator will make this not be true. Cha…

Did you try AI Dungeon 2, in 2020 when it was a thing?

It's still running now:

https://aidungeon.com/

Re: Can language models serve as text-based world simulators?

#58

Post by immibis »

lolinder wrote: post #57
immibis wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you try AI Dungeon 2, in 2020 when it was a thing?

It's still running now: https://aidungeon.com/

Apparently still with a version of the NSFW filter that made everyone abandon it in 2020.

Re: Can language models serve as text-based world simulators?

#59

Post by salamo »

sk11001 wrote: post #17

Recently I'm getting some strange behavior from ChatGPT (with GPT-4) where it outputs a code snippet in which it declares a variable, and then on the very next line it forgets the name of the variable and refers to it as something else. Or it refers to the variable but it makes a typo in the name. If that's the behavior by one of the best models on a few lines of code, I'm not hopeful for a world simulator any time s…

Yes, I've noticed it this week as well. Simple errors like misspelling variable names.

Re: Can language models serve as text-based world simulators?

#60

Post by error_logic »

Falkon1313 wrote: post #53
Folcon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To people who claim that "thinking and reasoning require language", here is a problem: Imagine standing at the North Pole of the Earth. Walk in any direction, in a straight line, for 1 km. Now turn 90 degrees to the left. Walk for as long as it takes to pass your starting point. Have you walked: 1. More than 2xPi km 2. Exactly 2xPi km 3. Less than 2xPi km 4. I never came close to my starting point. Think about how yo…

I would agree with you, except that I would say the reasoning problem itself not only utilizes language, but in fact hinges entirely on the language. There's a bit of spatial knowledge involved to understand that you're walking in a circle around the north pole. But the reasoning needed to get the answer to the question is based on the language. Specifically, the language tells us that our starting point is at the no…

> But since we're walking in a circle around it, we'll never pass it in either sense of the word.

Are we, though? Or did we start on a great circle around the Earth from the random point 1km from the north pole?

It depends on whether you assume someone has in mind a "straight line" following a map, or what they'd actually experience as a straight line given the scale of the Earth.

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