121–130 of 157 posts
I asked Grok, o3-pro, and Claude a question about piezoelectric effects. They all got it "right", but Claude called out a second order effect that arose from the use case that the other two missed. I get it, they might all be exploring the same space, but Claude went an extra, important, hop.
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You also can't translate "Mage (foaled April 18, 2020) is an American Thoroughbred racehorse who won the 2023 Kentucky Derby" into Hellenistic Greek or some modern indigenous languages because there isn't enough shared context; you'd need to give humans speaking those languages a glossary for any of the translation to make sense, or allow them to interrogate an LLM to act as the glossary. I'd say our current largest…
Why QCD? Quantum chromodynamics, the quantized theory of the nuclear strong force? There is also QED, quantum electrodynamics, which is the quantized field theory for electrodynamics, and then also QFD (quantum flavordynamics) for the weak force. Do you seriously mean to imply that the quantum field theory corresponding to ONLY the strong force, plus gravity, explains every emergent phenomena from there to culture? F…
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I think it would be extremely surprising for Universal Grammar to be proven false. We have not had any shortage of opportunity to teach animals structured language, and yet we have nothing to show for it. It seems pretty likely that a key factor in our fitness as a species was having the right hardware for grammar.
“Universal grammar” is a placeholder for the innate, domain-specific features of linguistic ability... --— After looking up “Universal Grammar,” here are my thoughts: --— Until we identify these features and prove that other species lack them, the concept of Universal Grammar remains uncertain. Only if we pinpoint what’s unique to humans and fail to help other species develop it can we confidently claim Universal Gra…
The thing that makes humans nearly unique in the animal kingdom is structured language. I don't need separate words for "leopard in the bush", "snake in the bush", "leopard in the tree", and "snake in the tree", because we have grammar rules that allow me to combine the words for "leopard" and "tree" with a distinction of how the leopard relates to the tree.
I say nearly unique, because there is some evidence that whale songs are structured.
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"I mean, what are we, to believe that this is some sort of a, a magic xylophone or something? Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder"[1] Just replace QCD with "known/understood quantum theories" and move on with your life. Thats not the important part of the comment you're replying to. [1]: https://youtu.be/pYrRqMHQY7o
No, it actually is kind of important. Because he obviously does not understand what he's talking about, nor does he apparently have a good mental model of the standard model and its relation to prior work. He is just using buzzwords and leaning on that for sloppily gesturing at his imagination saying "look at all of our treasures, we can already solve all the most fundamental issues! We already have all of the pieces…
I mean expressing the relationships and abstractions between the different levels at which we model the world. If you need to explain horses to whales, you probably need to drop down to a biological level to at least explain keratin for hooves to e.g. the baleen whales. Other than that, common experiences of mammals probably suffices to explain social and mating differences (assuming sufficient abstractions in this hypothetical whale languages)
If you need to explain horses to aliens, you'd drop all the way down to mathematics and logic and go back up through particle physics to make sure both parties were grounded in the way we talk about objects and systems before explaining Earth biology and evolutionary history. Behavioral biology would have to be the base for introducing cultural topics and expressing any differences in where we lump behaviors in biology vs. culture, etc.
My basic claim is that if we had a pretrained model over human languages and one hypothetical alien language then either a human or an alien could learn to speak the other's language and understand the internal world model used by the other, because the amount of information contained in large LLMs covers enough of our human world model that it can translate between human languages and also answer questions about how our world-models at various levels of abstraction are related to and built upon each other via definitions.
I am less certain if that same hypothetical LLM could accurately translate between an alien language and human language; I think that the depth required to translate across potentially several layers of abstractions might not fit in the context windows and attention-span of LLMs. I think ~current LLMs will be able to accurately translate inter-species on earth if we can get enough animal language+behavior data into them.
I think what this might be trying to say is something more like: ...there are many ways in which things can be related, but those relationships come from the underlying world we live in.
I.e. there are obviously many ways in which things can be related, but if we assume the quote is not entirely counterfactual, then it must be getting at something else. I suppose "way" here is being used in a different sense, but it isn't clear.
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LLMs don't think, nor are they intelligent or exhibiting intelligence. Language does have constraints, yet it evolves via its users to encompass new meanings. Thus those constraints are artificial, unless you artificially enforce static language use. And of course, for an LLM to use those new concepts, it needs to be retokenized by being trained on new data. For example, if we trained LLMs only on books, encyclopedia…
You made a lot of bold assertions there. It's as if you have a complete and definitive theory of human intelligence to compare it against. Which if true, would be incredible, because there isn't a scientifically accepted theory, nor is there consensus from a philosophical standpoint. I can't say that you are wrong, you might be right, especially about AGI. And I think it's unlikely that LLMs are the direct path to AG…
> An individual neuron doesn't "think" or "understand" anything. It's a biological cell that simply fires an electrochemical signal when its input threshold is met.
is a wildly oversimplified representation of what a neuron is and how it interacts with the rest of the brain. Even what we know is far beyond this description and there's a vast amount more that we don't know.
One of the assumptions that people make (with or without realising they are making it) is that the brain is a componentised information processing device, that you can break it down into units that effectively communicate in a digital way. This may be true, but it may not. It may not be possible to decompose a mind into parts communicating via digital signals without sacrificing conscious experience.
Personally, I think it's likely that it isn't possible to do that, but I don't know for sure. Others clearly think it's likely that it is possible, which is a perfectly valid opinion. Neither should pretend that science has yet given us an unambiguous answer on the question.
Is it closer to Mussolini or bread? Mussolini. Is it closer to Mussolini or David Beckham? Uhh, I guess Mussolini. (Ok, they’re definitely thinking of a person.) That reasoning doesn't follow. Many things besides people would have the same answers, for instance any animal that seems more like Mussolini than Beckham.
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> But Lion is not just animal, it is not just mammal, it is something more. Are you saying "lion" is a stand-in for "an arbitrary creature"? If so, yes, that is how I understand Wittgenstein and it doesn't change my comment.
No. I'm saying the areas you point out that you feel you could communicate, are ones in which you share a lived experience with the lion. You are both animals, you are both mammals. You get cold, hungry, thirsty, etc. But lions, and us, are not just animals + mammals. Being a lion or a human means more. Ultimately, there is a uniquely human or lion element. Wittgenstein is saying we cannot communicate this.
This phenomenon appears to occur for LLM learning as well, though it is less remarkable due to the fact that LLMs likely have significant overlap in their training data.
I believe this is good news for Alignment, because, as Plato pointed out, one of the most important forms is the Form of the Good - a (theoretical) universal human ideal containing notions of justice, virtue, compassion, excellence, etc. If this Form truly exists, and LLMs can learn it, it may be possible to train them to pursue it (or refuse requests that are opposed to it).