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Everything around LLMs is still magical and wishful thinking

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Re: Everything around LLMs is still magical and wishful thinking

#371

Post by TeMPOraL »

alganet wrote: post #363
ben_w wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahem, you previously: Remember, the claim I challenged is that LLMs know culture and can handle talking about them. You need to focus. Anyway: > The marketing is telling everyone that they're amazing PhD level geniuses. I just demonstrated that they resemble more an average internet idiot than a specialist. First, you didn't. Average internet idiot doesn't know jack about either Western New Age ancient aliens culture…

I stand by my claim. I pretended to be less knowledgeable than I currently am about the egyptologists vs. ancient aliens public debate. Then I reported my results, together with the opinion of specialists from trusted sources (what actual egyptologists say). There is _plenty_ of debate on the internet about this. It is a popular subject, approached by many average internet idiots in many ways. Anyone reading this rig…

The video seems to be an animated retelling of a 2021 blog post, so I'll just link to the post itself:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PZtsoaoSLpKjjbMqM/the-case-f...

There's some extra commentary from the reviewers of earlier drafts here:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/AyfDnnAdjG7HHeD3d/miri-comme...

I've skimmed both of these - this is some substantial and pretty insightful reading (though 2021 was ages ago - especially now that AI safety stopped being a purely theoretical field). However, as of now, I can't really see the connections between the points being discussed there, and anything you tried to explain or communicate. Could you spell out the connection for us please?

Re: Everything around LLMs is still magical and wishful thinking

#372

Post by TeMPOraL »

bobbob27 wrote: post #361
TeMPOraL wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it just means that the big players have to keep advancing SOTA to make money; Llama lagging ~6 months behind just means there's only so much they can charge for access to the bleeding edge. Short-term, it's a normal dynamics for a growing/evolving market. Long-term, the Sun will burn out and consume the Earth.

The cost to improve training increases exponentially for every milestone. No vendor is even coming close to recouping the costs now . Not to mention quality data to feed the training. The R&D is running on hopes that increasing the magnitude (yes, actual magnitudes) of their models will eventually hit a miracle that makes their company explode in value and power. They can't explain what that could even look like... b…

Nah, the vendors have generally been open about the limits of scaling. The bet isn't on that one last order of magnitude increase will hit a miracle - the bet is on R&D figuring out a new way to get better model performance before the last one hits diminishing returns. Which, for now, is what's been consistently happening.

There's risk to that assumption, but it's also a reasonable one - let's not forget the whole field is both new and has seen stupid amounts of money being pumped into it over the last few years; this is an inflationary period, there's tons of people researching every possible angle, but that research takes time. It's a safe bet that there are still major breakthroughs ahead us, to be achieved within the next couple years.

The risky part for the vendors is whether they'll happen soon enough so they can capitalize on them and keep their lead (and profits) for another year or so until the next breakthrough hits, and so on.

Re: Everything around LLMs is still magical and wishful thinking

#373

Post by alganet »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #370
alganet wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you wanted it to act like a real Egyptologist I don't care about LLMs. I'm pretending to be a gullable customer, not being myself. Companies and individuals are buying LLMs expecting them to be real developers, and real writers, and real risk analysts... but they'll get average dumb-as-they-come internet commenter. It's fraud. It doesn't matter if you explain to me the obvious thing that I already know (they suc…

'ben_w addressed other points, but it would be amiss not to comment on this too: > The marketing is telling everyone that they're amazing PhD level geniuses. No it is not . LLM vendors are, and have always been, open about the limits of the models, and I'm yet to see a major provider claiming their models are geniuses, PhD-level or otherwise. Nothing of the sort is happening - on the contrary, the vendors are avoidin…

Me:

> > Companies and individuals are buying LLMs expecting them to be real developers

You:

> Yes, many companies and individuals have overinflated expectations

> LLMs actually are at the level of real developers

Ok then.

Re: Everything around LLMs is still magical and wishful thinking

#374

Post by alganet »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #371
alganet wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stand by my claim. I pretended to be less knowledgeable than I currently am about the egyptologists vs. ancient aliens public debate. Then I reported my results, together with the opinion of specialists from trusted sources (what actual egyptologists say). There is _plenty_ of debate on the internet about this. It is a popular subject, approached by many average internet idiots in many ways. Anyone reading this rig…

The video seems to be an animated retelling of a 2021 blog post, so I'll just link to the post itself: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PZtsoaoSLpKjjbMqM/the-case-f... There's some extra commentary from the reviewers of earlier drafts here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/AyfDnnAdjG7HHeD3d/miri-comme... I've skimmed both of these - this is some substantial and pretty insightful reading (though 2021 was ages ago - espe…

I just did.

By pretending to know less of egyptian culture and the academic consensus around it, I played the role of a typical human (not trained to prompt, not smart enough to catch bullshit from the LLM).

I then compared the LLM output with real information from specialists, and pointed out the mistakes.

Your attempt at discrediting me revolves around trying to estabilish that my specialist information is not good, that ancient aliens is actually fine. I think that's hilarious.

More importantly, I recognize the LLMs failing, you don't. I don't consider them to be good enough for a gullable audience. That should be a big sign of what's going on here, but you're ignoring it.

Re: Everything around LLMs is still magical and wishful thinking

#375

Post by abletonlive »

mattmanser wrote: post #137
abletonlive wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a tech lead and I have maybe 5X output now compared to everybody else under me. Quantified by scoring tickets at a team level. I also have more responsibilities outside of IC work compared to the people under me. At this point I’m asking my manager to fire people that still think llms are just toys because I’m tired of working with people with this poor mindset. A pragmatic engineer continually reevaluates what t…

You've been doing the big I am about LLMs on HN for most of your last comments. Everyone else who raises any doubts about LLMs is an idiot and you're 10,000x better than everyone else and all your co-workers should be fired. But what's absent from all your comments is what you make. Can you tell us what you actually do in your >500k job? Are you, by any chance, a front-end developer? Also, a team-lead that can't fire…

I’m a tech lead and if you think it’s a managerial role then that’s funny and you have no idea how tech companies are structured. My input is of course heavily considered but a tech lead is not in the business of firing people.

No I’m not a front end developer

Re: Everything around LLMs is still magical and wishful thinking

#376

Post by ben_w »

alganet wrote: post #369
TeMPOraL wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An LLM that offends people and entire nations is what many would classify as _misaligned_. This highlights a major aspect of the core challenge of alignment: you can't have it both ways. > Let's say I have a company, and my company needs to comply to government policy regarding communication. I cannot trust LLMs then, they will either fail to follow policy, or acquiesce to any group that tries to game it. This work…

> follows policy of the owner The owner is us, humans. I want it to follow reasonable, kind humans. I don't want it to follow scam artists, charlatans, assassins. > be prepared for it to call you on your bullshit Right now, I am calling on their bullshit. When that changes, I'll be honest about it.

> The owner is us, humans. I want it to follow reasonable, kind humans. I don't want it to follow scam artists, charlatans, assassins.

Bad news: the actual owner isn't "us" in the general sense of humanity, and even if it was humanity includes scam artists and charlatans.

Also, while "AI owners" is a very small group and hard to do meaningful stats on, corporate executives in general have a statistically noticeable bias towards more psychopaths than the rest of us.

> Right now, I am calling on their bullshit. When that changes, I'll be honest about it.

So are both me and TeMPOraL — hence e.g. why I only compare recent models to someone fresh from uni and not very much above that.

But you wrote "No, it does not know culture. And no, it can't handle talking about it.", when it has been demonstrated to you that it can and does in exactly the way you claim it can't.

I wouldn't put a junior into the kind of role you're adamant AI can't do. And I'm even agreeing with you that AI is a bad choice for many roles — I'm just saying it's behaving like an easily pressured recent graduate, in that it has merely-OK-not-expert opinion-shaped responses that are also easily twisted and cajoled into business-inappropriate ways.

Re: Everything around LLMs is still magical and wishful thinking

#377

Post by alganet »

ben_w wrote: post #376
alganet wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> follows policy of the owner The owner is us, humans. I want it to follow reasonable, kind humans. I don't want it to follow scam artists, charlatans, assassins. > be prepared for it to call you on your bullshit Right now, I am calling on their bullshit. When that changes, I'll be honest about it.

> The owner is us, humans. I want it to follow reasonable, kind humans. I don't want it to follow scam artists, charlatans, assassins. Bad news: the actual owner isn't "us" in the general sense of humanity, and even if it was humanity includes scam artists and charlatans. Also, while "AI owners" is a very small group and hard to do meaningful stats on, corporate executives in general have a statistically noticeable b…

"follows humans" was in your comment related to the definition of alignment. Somehow, you now disagree with yourself?

Alignment is a problem of AI serving humanity for good.

You can't even demonstrate that you are able to argue, nor displayed any LLM example whatsoever.

You need to seriously step up your ability to carry on a conversation, or just leave discussions to people more prepared to do them in a reasonable way.

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