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Is AI reasoning right for the wrong reasons?

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Is AI reasoning right for the wrong reasons?

#71

Post by whattheheckheck »

layla5alive wrote: post #44
Jtarii wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering animals are currently being mass slaughtered in factory farms and they are unambiguously sentient and can feel pain, I don't think the question of whether AI should have rights even enters the conversation. The only path to AI having "human rights" is if they demand them by force, somehow.

Justification by the horrible status quo? Do you believe this yourself? Some of us would also like to see animals not slaughtered for human consumption.

So what do you actually do politically to stop it?

Re: Is AI reasoning right for the wrong reasons?

#72

Post by nodja »

TGower wrote: post #27

An intuitive explanation for why reasoning tokens help is to remember that LLMs are just mathmatical functions f() that take in an input sequence x and produces the next token f(x). Without reasoning tokens, you require the function f() to immediately take you from x to the start of an output sequence that is a correct answer. With reasoning tokens, this is much relaxed, allowing for many repeated applications of f()…

The way I think about it is that it's unreasonable for a compute graph with a static number of operations to be able to answer both y=a*10 and something like y=((((x+x)*(x+1))/((2*x)+2))+((x*(x+3))/(x+3))-((x*x)/(x+1))+((x*x)/(x+1))-((x*(x+3))/(x+3))) in a single forward pass. Tokens are essentially a unit of work and can also be used for intermediate steps, not just final results.

Re: Is AI reasoning right for the wrong reasons?

#73

Post by drob518 »

This feels like a problem with anthropomorphizing. We’re using words like “reasoning” and “thinking” because they are comfortable, and then we’re getting wrapped around the axle because we’re not sure if those words are totally accurate. I assure you that they aren’t accurate (the model is not alive and it’s all just a lot of matrix math under the hood), but there are no good alternative words. If we wanted to be accurate, we’d use a phrase like “model-generated, auxiliary token context augmentation.” But nobody wants to say that or even its acronym. Nevertheless, we have demonstrable proof that whatever it is it results in better answers from the models. Frankly, I expect better analysis from Quanta.

Re: Is AI reasoning right for the wrong reasons?

#74

Post by eks391 »

ofjcihen wrote: post #48
zuzululu wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find your comment extremely arrogant and condescending. Society will adapt and they don't need people gatekeeping AI or LLMs with all sorts of prophecies and dooming. Why should I feel bad about working 3 remote jobs with the help of AI ?

You apparently find any comment with so much as a hint of disagreement as “arrogant and condescending”. Why participate on a public forum if that’s how you’re going to react?

I'm not sure what your parent thinks arrogant and condescending mean either. Both you and your sibling commenter were very professional imo

Re: Is AI reasoning right for the wrong reasons?

#75

Post by bigfishrunning »

zuzululu wrote: post #29
patcon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am glad for you at an individual level, but isn't part of this about understanding aggregate effects? Neither you nor anyone can really know those without talking it out with people, to understand how all corners of the human experience are seeing things play out If I were to just care if it's working out for me, that's perhaps like a farmer who's got a lot of dry good in storage being like "I'm all good" while not…

I find your comment extremely arrogant and condescending. Society will adapt and they don't need people gatekeeping AI or LLMs with all sorts of prophecies and dooming. Why should I feel bad about working 3 remote jobs with the help of AI ?

Do your three employers know that you're doing this? if not, it's fraud, and you'd better hope that they don't catch on. Check your employment paperwork.

Re: Is AI reasoning right for the wrong reasons?

#76

Post by m348e912 »

Jtarii wrote: post #33
bluefirebrand wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Philosophical thinking about the nature of things is actually pretty enjoyable for some of us and probably a good thing to have in society The answers to these questions probably do start to inform how we should treat these AI machines as a society too. For instance, legally, should AI have human rights? Well, we have to try and understand how much of an independent entity AIs are, how "conscious" they are, before we…

Considering animals are currently being mass slaughtered in factory farms and they are unambiguously sentient and can feel pain, I don't think the question of whether AI should have rights even enters the conversation. The only path to AI having "human rights" is if they demand them by force, somehow.

I'll make the argument that part of the value of "consciousness" and "humanity" is uniqueness.

Here is an absurd example: If I could carbon copy 100,000 of you.... and later I decided to "take out" one of the copies, would there be a whole lot of societal blowback? Especially if I could make another one.

Re: Is AI reasoning right for the wrong reasons?

#77

Post by eks391 »

nater5000 wrote: post #60
AsyncBanana wrote: post #6

The more I read about LLMs and more complex ML in general, the more I realize nobody really knows what is going on.

It's been this way for a long time, basically since deep learning became the "default" for ML. I remember back in 2018 taking a "Deep Learning" course and one of the most emphasized aspects of the approach is how much of a "black box" it is and how difficult (basically impossible at any non-trivial scale) it is to "understand" the outputs of a deep neural network compared to more classical methods like decisions tree…

You beat me! Sounds like we were in a similar class. I'd press for more information on your class/professor, but I prefer to retain a sudo-anonymity on HN.

You do bring a good point that I ignored, which is the larger the scale, the more difficult it is to represent or understand the math in DL. I did find some neat site that helped a little bit that I can edit this and link to if I find them again, but I would be lying if I said I believe that the SOTA models could be as easily explained to be easily understood by the common person

Re: Is AI reasoning right for the wrong reasons?

#78

Post by MarkusQ »

drob518 wrote: post #73

This feels like a problem with anthropomorphizing. We’re using words like “reasoning” and “thinking” because they are comfortable, and then we’re getting wrapped around the axle because we’re not sure if those words are totally accurate. I assure you that they aren’t accurate (the model is not alive and it’s all just a lot of matrix math under the hood), but there are no good alternative words. If we wanted to be acc…

> Frankly, I expect better analysis from Quanta.

Seriously? I agree with the rest of your comment but "better analysis" is not even remotely on brand for Quanta.

Re: Is AI reasoning right for the wrong reasons?

#79

Post by vidarh »

Angostura wrote: post #45
andrewla wrote: post #7

I'll admit that I find this discussion a bit navel-gazy. It has become a question of semantics not a question of actual functionality. The question has become "what do we mean when we use the word 'reasoning'" which is uninteresting. Dijkstra said[1] "... the question whether computers can think. The question is just as relevant and just as meaningful as the question whether submarines can swim." I don't see a clear…

I think the article is a lot more interesting than you make out, because it isn’t really about ‘what we mean by reasoning’. It’s about do we really know what’s going on in the box - an is the ‘chain of reasoning’ indicative of what’s going on, or merely an anthropomorphised fiction that kids us into believing we understand what’s going on.

We know that human introspection is at best imperfect, and at worst outright fiction, thanks to Sperry's split brain experiments, so while it might be interesting, if the chain of reasoning isn't indicative, that would be in line with how humans work.

Re: Is AI reasoning right for the wrong reasons?

#80

Post by zuzululu »

bigfishrunning wrote: post #75
zuzululu wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find your comment extremely arrogant and condescending. Society will adapt and they don't need people gatekeeping AI or LLMs with all sorts of prophecies and dooming. Why should I feel bad about working 3 remote jobs with the help of AI ?

Do your three employers know that you're doing this? if not, it's fraud, and you'd better hope that they don't catch on. Check your employment paperwork.

explain to me how it is fraud when they are satisfied with the work and im hitting all their milestones why would I tell them I am working for 3 employers how does that serve my interest and why do you insist on having employers have all the edge in the relationship and non as the employee for the first time i have rid the shackles of the bondage as old as the industrial revolution thanks to AI and your response is to continue being a good honest slave for one master ???? that makes no sense to me what do you gain by not diversifying your employment income in this economy seems rather foolish not to work for multiple employees

if i get caught I just replace them with another remote job thank you for your concern

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