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A sleep-like consolidation mechanism for LLMs

arxiv.org

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Re: A sleep-like consolidation mechanism for LLMs

#91

Post by gchamonlive »

pcrh wrote: post #4

I can't pretend to understand how LLMs work, but I can be sure that anthropomorphizing their functions is not helpful to an objective debate over their abilities. Does a motor vehicle get "sleep" when it is serviced? When I reboot a computer, is that equivalent to a nap?

Just like LLM sleep has nothing to do with animal sleep, the neuron in a neural network has nothing to do with an actual neuron, and nobody should pretend they do.

I agree we need to be mindful of our metaphores, but they do help both with inspiration for developing techniques as well as for naming things. The onus of keeping bias in check when using metaphores is on the reader, authors can't really do that for you. However once bias is in check you can have a very productive debate in terms of these namings given that everyone is aware of their ontology.

Re: A sleep-like consolidation mechanism for LLMs

#92

Post by skeledrew »

pcrh wrote: post #4

I can't pretend to understand how LLMs work, but I can be sure that anthropomorphizing their functions is not helpful to an objective debate over their abilities. Does a motor vehicle get "sleep" when it is serviced? When I reboot a computer, is that equivalent to a nap?

How do you concisely describe a low power state of an entity that processes, whereby when in that state it has little to no reaction to input and it may or may not be performing tasks in that state, for a mixed education audience?

Also keep in mind that most if not all devices with a chip have had a function called "sleep" for many years, without this argument.

Re: A sleep-like consolidation mechanism for LLMs

#93

Post by motoxpro »

pcrh wrote: post #4

I can't pretend to understand how LLMs work, but I can be sure that anthropomorphizing their functions is not helpful to an objective debate over their abilities. Does a motor vehicle get "sleep" when it is serviced? When I reboot a computer, is that equivalent to a nap?

One of the most common functions in programming is sleep(ms). There is wake, heartbeat, handshake, orphan, listen, starve, parent/child, etc.

This is not anything new, its just a word that fits the function.

Re: A sleep-like consolidation mechanism for LLMs

#94

Post by [deleted] »

pcrh wrote: post #20
djeastm wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They provide an explanation for using the term "sleep": > In animals, the transfer from short-term memory to long-term memory is thought to be supported by hippocampal replay [33], especially during sleep [41]; in this phase, short-term hippocampal memories are reactivated and consolidated into cortical synaptic weights. Sleep makes animals unable to respond to external stimuli, suggesting that it must provide enough…

The function of sleep in animals is largely obscure. One thing we do know for certain is that it is necessary, it is needed in "dumb" animals as well as in you and I. If an animal can't sleep it will eventually die. I don't think that applies to the activity described in the OP. Does their LLM "die" if it can't perform the function described?

[deleted]

Re: A sleep-like consolidation mechanism for LLMs

#95

Post by godshatter »

pfdietz wrote: post #81
famouswaffles wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anthropomorphization is not inherently wrong, and in some instances, it actually lets you reason better about about complex behavior than whatever convoluted (and often wrong, especially in the case of giant neural networks) mechanistic description one might conjure. Here the analogy isn't without reason.

We shouldn't anthropomorphize LLMs. They hate it when you do that.

[flagged]

Re: A sleep-like consolidation mechanism for LLMs

#96

Post by sonink »

danielrmay wrote: post #80

The "sleep" thing gives me the creeps so in my head I'm just going to think of it as the difference between "response time retrieval" and "background consolidation". I do think it points at something bigger than just attention architecture: "memory" isn't just storage, and merely longer context isn't the same thing as having a better understanding of the source data . I'm looking at this through the "personal AI" len…

I think you are missing the most important part - forgetting. The missing "memory" layers is consolidation, prioritization AND forgetting (what is not important).

Also not too sure about provenance and inspectability - it is part of memory. If the source is deemed 'important' it will survive forgetting. If not, then maybe not. And its ok. I am sure you dont know the exact source who told you that the capital of France is Paris. You forgot, and its no big deal.

Re: A sleep-like consolidation mechanism for LLMs

#97

Post by naasking »

pcrh wrote: post #20
djeastm wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They provide an explanation for using the term "sleep": > In animals, the transfer from short-term memory to long-term memory is thought to be supported by hippocampal replay [33], especially during sleep [41]; in this phase, short-term hippocampal memories are reactivated and consolidated into cortical synaptic weights. Sleep makes animals unable to respond to external stimuli, suggesting that it must provide enough…

The function of sleep in animals is largely obscure. One thing we do know for certain is that it is necessary, it is needed in "dumb" animals as well as in you and I. If an animal can't sleep it will eventually die. I don't think that applies to the activity described in the OP. Does their LLM "die" if it can't perform the function described?

> Does their LLM "die" if it can't perform the function described?

It dies in terms of usefulness if it can't stay up to date with new knowledge. That is, it will no longer be used and thus effectively die off.

Re: A sleep-like consolidation mechanism for LLMs

#98

Post by pcrh »

bayarearefugee wrote: post #27
pcrh wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The function of sleep in animals is largely obscure. One thing we do know for certain is that it is necessary, it is needed in "dumb" animals as well as in you and I. If an animal can't sleep it will eventually die. I don't think that applies to the activity described in the OP. Does their LLM "die" if it can't perform the function described?

> Does their LLM "die" if it can't perform the function described? If you don't periodically clean the context, an LLM effectively goes insane in terms of outputs. If the LLM were fully controlling a physical system (like a robot body) that contained it the resulting insanity of an ever-growing, never cleaned context would likely result in some sort of death-like event.

That's probably the closest analogy posted here.

It's still weak, though. An LLM without constant human input is likely more similar to a bicycle that starts to lose its gyroscopic balance as it moves more slowly, a human can however keep a stationary bicycle upright (while riding it).

Re: A sleep-like consolidation mechanism for LLMs

#99

Post by reaperducer »

pcrh wrote: post #4

I can't pretend to understand how LLMs work, but I can be sure that anthropomorphizing their functions is not helpful to an objective debate over their abilities. Does a motor vehicle get "sleep" when it is serviced? When I reboot a computer, is that equivalent to a nap?

Does a motor vehicle get "sleep" when it is serviced?

One of the mayors of New York in the 80's (Koch?) famously doubled the city's bus fleet for zero cost by running them 24 hours, instead of letting them rest at the end of their shifts, as was the previous policy.

Re: A sleep-like consolidation mechanism for LLMs

#100

Post by IAmGraydon »

The entire industry is so desperate to anthropomorphize. What the paper describes is an offline recurrent consolidation phase: the model runs multiple forward passes over recently accumulated context, updates persistent fast weights in SSM blocks, then clears the KV cache before continuing. It has absolutely nothing to do with sleeping, but I believe the authors had a goal in mind when creating this title, and it was for journalists to pick it up and run with it, further inflating the AI-is-just-like-us hype bubble.
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