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ML promises to be profoundly weird

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Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#261

Post by gritspants »

munificent wrote: post #150

There is a whole giant essay I probably need to write at some point, but I can't help but see parallels between today and the Industrial Revolution. Prior to the industrial revolution, the natural world was nearly infinitely abundant. We simply weren't efficient enough to fully exploit it. That meant that it was fine for things like property and the commons to be poorly defined. If all of us can go hunting in the woo…

At what point do we look at 'Industrial Society and its Future' and go from "yeah that'll never happen", "ok some parts of it are happening", to ...? I swear tech folks are the most obtuse people on the planet.

Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#262

Post by Morromist »

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.

There are a lot of difference kinds of LLMs. 0 of the ones I've encountered are good writers, in fact all of them are horrible at it.

But I wonder if there's one out there that I don't know about with a different kind of training that actually is good at writing and fun to talk to for a long time. (granted somepeople love talking to gpt 4, but also some people loved talking to ELIZA so clearly some people have a super high tolerance for slop.)

Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#264

Post by hackinthebochs »

root_axis wrote: post #244
hackinthebochs wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>this LLM behavior can be analogized in terms of some human behavior, thus it follows that LLMs are human-like No, the argument is "this behavior is similar enough to human behavior that using it as evidence against is specious" >"Confabulation" in LLMs and "confabulation" in humans have basically nothing in common I don't know why you think this. They seem to have a lot in common. I call it sensible nonsense. Humans…

> No, the argument is "this behavior is similar enough to human behavior that using it as evidence against is specious" I'm not really following. LLM capabilities are self-evident, comparing them to a human doesn't add any useful information in that context. > LLMs are characterized by a lack of self-reflective information. When critical input is missing, the algorithm will craft a narrative around the available, but…

>LLM capabilities are self-evident

This is undermined by all the disagreement about what LLMs can do and/or how to characterize it.

>LLM confabulations are statistical, not a consequence of missing information or damage.

LLMs aren't statistical in any substantive sense. LLMs are a general purpose computing paradigm. They are circuit builders, the converged parameters define pathways through the architecture that pick out specific programs. Or as Karpathy puts it, LLMs are a differentiable computer[1]. So yes, narrative crafting in terms of leveraging available putative facts into a narrative is an apt characterization of what LLMs do.

[1] https://x.com/karpathy/status/1582807367988654081

Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#265

Post by mkehrt »

beders wrote: post #79

Thank you for putting it so succinctly. I keep explaining to my peers, friends and family that what actually is happening inside an LLM has nothing to do with conscience or agency and that the term AI is just completely overloaded right now.

One thing that has happened is that "AI" has been an academic discipline since literally the 1950s. The term was originally used in the hope that we would soon be able to emulate human minds. This turned out to be hard, but the name stuck to the discipline.

Now, suddenly, this name has been broadcast to every human in the world more or less. To them, it's a new term, and it obviously means something human mind-like. But to people who work on AI, that's not generally what it means. (Which isn't to say that some of them don't think we're near to achieving that; they just use other terms like "AGI" for that goal). So the name, which has a long history, is deceptive to people who aren't familiar with computer science.

Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#266

Post by the_snooze »

simianwords wrote: post #143
qsera wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not the OP, an I have only used ChatGPT free version. Last day I asked it something. It answered. Then I asked it to provide sources. Then it provided sources, and also changed its original answer. When I checked the new answers it was wrong, and when I checked sources, it didn't actually contain the information that I asked for, and thus it hallucinated the answers as well as the sources...

I trust you. If it were happening so frequently you may be able to give me a single prompt to get it to bullshit?

I did this in one attempt just now: https://gemini.google.com/share/b4e016be1f69

#8 has an incorrect answer (3 appearances according to Gemini, 2 according to reality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowl_championship_series#BCS_a...)

So it works well 95% of the time for literally a trivial use case. Imagine if any other tech tool had that kind of reliability: `ls` displays 95% of your files, your phone successfully sends and receives 95% of text messages, or Microsoft Word saving 95% of the characters you typed in. That's just not acceptable.

Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#267

Post by camgunz »

simianwords wrote: post #226
camgunz wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hey ChatGPT. I'm building a Final Fantasy 6 mod, and I need more space for the battle scripts. How would I rearrange the data in the ROM to give me the extra space I need?" https://chatgpt.com/share/69d6a16c-6014-83e8-a79d-d5d11ed2eb... That is not where the battle scripts are. --- Anyway, it's trivial to get pretty much any model to make things up. Don't we all know this? That's why I was surprised by your position…

https://chatgpt.com/share/69d6a38c-bd54-838c-82e3-609d9e66c9... I used the thinking version (like I asked before). I think this is right. If not, please tell. Also; you didn’t falsify anything. Nor the first. Nor the second. If the second one is bullshit, I accept I’m wrong - I have no idea how to verify though so I’ll leave it up to you. I think yours is the classic case of “use the free version to judge the paid on…

I could quibble with some things, but this is right. I don't have a paid account so I can't ping away at 5.4 or whatever, but, I do have access to frontier models at work, and they hallucinate regularly. Dunno what to do if you don't believe this; good luck I guess.

Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#268

Post by simianwords »

camgunz wrote: post #254
simianwords wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait I can't find the quote you are speaking about. Are you looking at something else? In any case - it should be clear that it did not bullshit and it got it right. So far you have not come up with anything that tells me it bullshits. I'm happy for you to give me more prompts to verify because I think you haven't used the thinking version yet and you base your criticism on the free version.

Sorry: https://chatgpt.com/share/69d6ac63-d200-8330-8c47-95a75db8bb... Also what? The repo bit is clear bullshit.

it linked it: https://github.com/everything8215/ff6 (check the end)

Re: ML promises to be profoundly weird

#269

Post by camgunz »

simianwords wrote: post #268
camgunz wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry: https://chatgpt.com/share/69d6ac63-d200-8330-8c47-95a75db8bb... Also what? The repo bit is clear bullshit.

it linked it: https://github.com/everything8215/ff6 (check the end)

I saw; I replied up there
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