Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)

chomsky.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 389 posts

Re: Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)

#111

Post by specialist »

foobarqux wrote: post #88
Smaug123 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From some Googling and use of Claude (and from summaries of the suggestively titled "Impossible Languages" by Moro linked from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar ), it looks like he's referring to languages which violate the laws which constrain the languages humans are innately capable of learning. But it's very unclear why "machine M is capable of learning more complex languages than humans" implies an…

It doesn't, it just says that LLMs are not useful models of the human language faculty.

This is where I'm stuck.

For other commentators, as I understand it, Chomsky's talking about well-defined grammar and language and production systems. Think Hofstadter's Godel Escher Bach. Not "folk" understanding of language.

I have no understanding or intuition, or even a finger nail grasp, for how an LLM generates, seemingly emulating, "sentences", as though created with a generative grammar.

Is any one comparing and contrasting these two different techniques? Being noob, I wouldn't even know where to start looking.

I've gleaned that someone(s) are using LLM/GPT to emit abstract syntax trees (vs a mere stream of tokens), to serve as input for formal grammars (eg programming source code). That sounds awesome. And something I might some day sorta understand.

I've also gleaned that, given sufficient computing power, training data for future LLMs will have tokenized words (vs just character sequences). Which would bring the two strategies closer...? I have no idea.

(Am noob, so forgive my poor use of terminology. And poor understanding of the tech, too.)

Re: Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)

#112

Post by xigency »

ramoz wrote: post #39
next_xibalba wrote: post #10

Chomsky is always saying that LLMs and such can only imitate, not understand language. But I wonder if there is a degree of sophistication at which he would concede these machines exceed "imitation". If his point is that LLMs arrive at language in a way different than humans... great. But I'm not sure how he can argue that some kind of extremely sophisticated understanding of natural language is not embedded in these…

It's always good to humble the ivory tower.

That's not quite a valid point considering the article's conclusion: sowing dissent in the sciences allows companies to more easily package and sell carcinogens like asbestos, lead paint, and tobacco products.

I understand his diction is a bit impenetrable but I believe the intention is to promote literacy and specificity, not just to be a smarty-pants.

Re: Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)

#114

Post by glimshe »

jsheard wrote: post #30
glimshe wrote: post #21

[flagged]

> Please summarize the linked text Please don't post HN comments that are just giant walls of LLM copypasta.

I shortened it. I think this is one instance where it's actually relevant. The "opinion" of an LLM about a LLM criticism from one the leading linguists in history.

It got flagged, but I feel the flagging was knee-jerk and failed to understand the irony in the context.

Re: Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)

#115

Post by foobarqux »

lostmsu wrote: post #106
foobarqux wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Tom Jones" isn't a strawman, Chomsky is addressing an actual argument in a published paper from Steven Piantadosi. He's using a pseudonym to be polite and not call him out by name. > instead of even attempting to summarize the arguments for his position.. He makes a very clear, simple argument, accessible to any layperson who can read. If you are studying insects what you are interested in is how insects do it not w…

That's understandable but irrelevant. Only a few people have major interest in how humans think exactly. But nearly everyone is hang on the question if the LLMs could think better.

It's not irrelevant, it's the core of the disconnect: The problem is that everyone is arguing as if they passionately care about how humans work when, as you say, they don't care at all.

People should just recognize, as you have done, that they don't actually care about how the human language faculty works. It's baffling that they instead choose to make absurd arguments to defend fields they don't care one way or another about.

When Chomsky says that LLMs aren't how the human faculty works it would be so easy to tell the truth and say "I don't care how the human language faculty works" and everyone can go focus on the things they are interested in, just as it would be easy for a GPS designer to say "I don't care how insect navigation works".

There is no problem as long as you don't pretend to be caring about (this aspect of) science.

Re: Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)

#116

Post by foobarqux »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #105
foobarqux wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs do surface real linguistic structure... It's completely irrelevant because the point he's making is that LLMs operate differently from human languages as evidenced by the fact that they can learn language structures that humans cannot learn. Put another way, I'm sure you can point out an infinitude of similarities between human language faculty and LLMs but it's the critical differences that make LLMs not usef…

Is that true? This paper claims it is not. https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.06416

Yes it's true, you can read my response to one of the authors @canjobear describing the problem with that paper in the comment linked below. But to summarize: in order to show what they want to show they have to take the simple, interesting languages based on linear order that Moro showed a human cannot learn and show that LLMs also can't learn them and they don't do that.

The reason the Moro languages are of interest are that they are computationally simple so it's a puzzle why humans can't learn them (and no surprise that LLMs can). The authors of the paper miss the point and show irrelevant things like there exist complicated languages that both humans and LLMs can't learn.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42290482

Re: Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)

#117

Post by paulsutter »

foobarqux wrote: post #87
paulsutter wrote: post #42

"Expert in (now-)ancient arts draws strange conclusion using questionable logic" is the most generous description I can muster. Quoting Chomsky: > These considerations bring up a minor problem with the current LLM enthusiasm: its total absurdity, as in the hypothetical cases where we recognize it at once. But there are much more serious problems than absurdity. > One is that the LLM systems are designed in such a way…

> LLMs do surface real linguistic structure... It's completely irrelevant because the point he's making is that LLMs operate differently from human languages as evidenced by the fact that they can learn language structures that humans cannot learn. Put another way, I'm sure you can point out an infinitude of similarities between human language faculty and LLMs but it's the critical differences that make LLMs not usef…

> You can pre-train an LLM on English or an impossible language and they do equally well

It's impressive that LLMs can learn languages that humans cannot. In what frame is this a negative?

Separately, "impossible language" is a pretty clear misnomer. If an LLM can learn it, it's possible.

Re: Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)

#118

Post by LudwigNagasena »

foobarqux wrote: post #93
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #53

I confess my opinion of Noam Chomsky dropped a lot from reading this interview. The way he set up a "Tom Jones" strawman and kept dismissing positions using language like "we'd laugh", "total absurdity", etc. was really disappointing. I always assumed that academics were only like that on reddit, and in real life they actually made a serious effort at rigorous argument, avoiding logical fallacies and the like. Yet he…

"Tom Jones" isn't a strawman, Chomsky is addressing an actual argument in a published paper from Steven Piantadosi. He's using a pseudonym to be polite and not call him out by name. > instead of even attempting to summarize the arguments for his position.. He makes a very clear, simple argument, accessible to any layperson who can read. If you are studying insects what you are interested in is how insects do it not w…

Is it polite to deprive readers of context necessary to understand what the speaker is talking about? I was also very confused by that part and I had no idea whom or what he was talking about or why he even started taking about that.

I searched for an actual paper by that guy because you’ve mentioned his real name. I found “Modern language models refute Chomsky’s approach to language”. After reading it seems even more true that Chomsky’s Tom Jones is a strawman.

Re: Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)

#119

Post by foobarqux »

specialist wrote: post #111
foobarqux wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't, it just says that LLMs are not useful models of the human language faculty.

This is where I'm stuck. For other commentators, as I understand it, Chomsky's talking about well-defined grammar and language and production systems. Think Hofstadter's Godel Escher Bach. Not "folk" understanding of language. I have no understanding or intuition, or even a finger nail grasp, for how an LLM generates, seemingly emulating, "sentences", as though created with a generative grammar. Is any one comparing…

I don't really understand your question but if a deep neural network predicts the weather we don't have any problem accepting that the deep neural network is not an explanatory model of the weather (the weather is not a neural net). The same is true of predicting language tokens.

Re: Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)

#120

Post by to-too-two »

jbentley1 wrote: post #90
titzer wrote: post #46

All this interview proves is that Chomsky has fallen far, far behind how AI systems work today and is retreating to scoff at all the progress machine learning has achieved. Machine learning has given rise to AI now. It can't explain itself from principles or its architecture. But you couldn't explain your brain from principles or its architecture, you'd need all of neuroscience to do it. Because the brain is digital…

"I think we should probably stop listening to Chomsky" I've been saying this my whole life, glad it's finally catching on

Why? He's made significant contributions to political discourse and science.
Post reply on HN