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ML promises to be profoundly weird

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Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#81

Post by ajross »

nyeah wrote: post #20
ajross wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's reductive to just call LLMs "bullshit machines" as if the models are not improving This is true, but I prefer to think of it as "It's delusional to pretend as if human beings are not bullshit machines too". Lies are all we have. Our internal monologue is almost 100% fantasy. Even in serious pursuits, that's how it works. We make shit up and lie to ourselves, and then only later apply our hard-earned[1] skill p…

"Lies are all we have." If so, how do we distinguish between code that works and code that doesn't work? Why should we even care?

> If so, how do we distinguish between code that works and code that doesn't work?

Hilariously, not by using our brains, that's for sure. You have to have an external machine. We all understand that "testing" and "code review" are different processes, and that's why.

Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#83

Post by nine_k »

criley2 wrote: post #68
stickfigure wrote: post #44

I think it's too early to declare the Turing test passed. You just need to have a conversation long enough to exhaust the context window. Less than that, since response quality degrades long before you hit hard window limits. Even with compaction. Neuroplasticity is hard to simulate in a few hundred thousand tokens.

For as rigorous of a Turing test as you present, I believe many (or even most) humans would also fail it. How many humans seriously have the attention span to have a million "token" conversation with someone else and get every detail perfect without misremembering a single thing?

But context window exhaustion does not look like mere forgetfulness, but more like loss of general coherence, like getting drunk.

Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#84

Post by ajross »

nothinkjustai wrote: post #65
ajross wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's reductive to just call LLMs "bullshit machines" as if the models are not improving This is true, but I prefer to think of it as "It's delusional to pretend as if human beings are not bullshit machines too". Lies are all we have. Our internal monologue is almost 100% fantasy. Even in serious pursuits, that's how it works. We make shit up and lie to ourselves, and then only later apply our hard-earned[1] skill p…

So your logic is humans and LLMs are the same because humans are wrong sometimes?

Pretty much, yeah. Or rather, the fact that we're both reliably wrong in identifiably similar ways makes "we're more alike than different" an attractive prior to me.

Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#85

Post by senko »

danieltanfh95 wrote: post #71

I think the discussion has to be more nuanced than this. "LLMs still can't do X so it's an idiot" is a bad line of thought. LLMs with harnesses are clearly capable of engaging with logical problems that only need text. LLMs are not there yet with images, but we are improving with UI and access to tools like figma. LLMs are clearly unable to propose new, creative solutions for problems it has never seen before.

> LLMs are not there yet with images

https://genai-showdown.specr.net/image-editing

There's been a lot of progress there, it's just that an LLM that's best for, say coding, isn't going to be also the best for image edit.

Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#86

Post by __alexs »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #75
danieltanfh95 wrote: post #71

I think the discussion has to be more nuanced than this. "LLMs still can't do X so it's an idiot" is a bad line of thought. LLMs with harnesses are clearly capable of engaging with logical problems that only need text. LLMs are not there yet with images, but we are improving with UI and access to tools like figma. LLMs are clearly unable to propose new, creative solutions for problems it has never seen before.

> LLMs with harnesses are clearly capable of engaging with logical problems that only need text. To some extent. It's not clear where specifically the boundaries are, but it seems to fail to approach problems in ways that aren't embedded in the training set. I certainly would not put money on it solving an arbitrary logical problem.

Solving arbitrary logical problems seems to be equivalent to solving the halting problem so you are probably wise not to make that bet.

Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#87

Post by ajross »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #30
ajross wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's reductive to just call LLMs "bullshit machines" as if the models are not improving This is true, but I prefer to think of it as "It's delusional to pretend as if human beings are not bullshit machines too". Lies are all we have. Our internal monologue is almost 100% fantasy. Even in serious pursuits, that's how it works. We make shit up and lie to ourselves, and then only later apply our hard-earned[1] skill p…

Humans are different. Humans - at least thoughtful humans - know the difference between knowing something and not knowing something. Humans are capable of saying "I don't know" - not just as a stream of tokens, but really understanding what that means.

> Humans - at least thoughtful humans - know the difference between knowing something and not knowing something.

Your no-true-scotsman clause basically falsifies that statement for me. Fine, LLMs are, at worst I guess, "non-thoughtful humans". But obviously LLMs are right an awful lot (more so than a typical human, even), and even the thoughtful make mistakes.

So yeah, to my eyes "Humans are NOT different" fits your argument better than your hypothesis.

(Also, just to be clear: LLMs also say "I don't know", all the time. They're just prompted to phrase it as a criticism of the question instead.)

Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#88

Post by stavros »

masfuerte wrote: post #61
perching_aix wrote: post #42

This is like all the usual anti-LLM talking points and sentiments fused together. Doesn't it get boring? I like using these models a lot more than I stand hearing people talk about them, pro or contra. Just slop about slop. And the discussions being artisanal slop really doesn't make them any better. Every time I hear some variation of bullshitting or plagiarizing machines, my eyes roll over. Do these people think th…

Why do you insist on reading and commenting on these articles that bore you so much?

Because saying "this is boring, let's stop talking about it" is an opinion worthwhile of expression.

Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#89

Post by NiloCK »

n4r9 wrote: post #40
dwallin wrote: post #28

Some people point at LLMs confabulating, as if this wasn’t something humans are already widely known for doing. I consider it highly plausible that confabulation is inherent to scaling intelligence. In order to run computation on data that due to dimensionality is computationally infeasible, you will most likely need to create a lower dimensional representation and do the computation on that. Collapsing the dimension…

The concern for me about LLMs confabulating is not that humans don't do it. It's that the massive scale at which LLMs will inevitably be deployed makes even the smallest confabulation extremely risky.

I don't understand this. Many small errors distributed across a large deployment sounds a lot like normal mode of error prone humans / cogs / whatevers distributed over a wide deployment.

Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#90

Post by stavros »

perching_aix wrote: post #42

This is like all the usual anti-LLM talking points and sentiments fused together. Doesn't it get boring? I like using these models a lot more than I stand hearing people talk about them, pro or contra. Just slop about slop. And the discussions being artisanal slop really doesn't make them any better. Every time I hear some variation of bullshitting or plagiarizing machines, my eyes roll over. Do these people think th…

Yeah, it gets really boring. Whenever I see "slot machines" or "bullshit machines" or whatever, I just ignore the comment and move on, because it signals that it's someone in such deep denial that they've turned their brain off.

I'd much rather read articles about what LLMs can/can't do, or stuff people have built with LLMs, than read how everything LLMs touch turns to shit.

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