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Position: LLMs Can't Jump

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Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#81

Post by doginasuit »

quantum_mcts wrote: post #30

The popular retelling of how Einstein created Special Relativity to "Resolve the contradictions of Michelson-Morly experiments" is very reductive to the history of the question. The epitome is the quote from the paper: > From the two postulates, Einstein derived the Lorentz trans- formation ... If Einstein derived them, who is "Lorentz"? The groundwork for Special Relativity was the study of electrodynamics and symme…

This isn't offered as a defense of Einstein since I couldn't speculate on what ideas he must have been consciously aware of, but several times in my life I've thought I had a novel idea only to find a very similar idea was in something I read and had just forgotten about. It's a very human phenomenon.

Science rightfully recognizes the mind that doesn't just first describe the idea but provides a robust framework to test it and communicate it.

Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#84

Post by CyLith »

gus_massa wrote: post #59
defgeneric wrote: post #24

Worth reposting a follow-up tweet from the author Tom Zahavy [1] after this made the rounds on X/Twitter recently: > A few reflections on my "LLMs Can’t Jump" paper: > My position paper recently got some traction here, so I wanted to share a few thoughts and clarify a few things. > First things first: some people are framing this as "DeepMind is throwing cold water on AI for science" or claiming the paper argues LLMs…

>> Specifically, I focused on the equivalence principle—a key axiom that Einstein formulated through thought experiments grounded in his physical intuition. It's weird because the equivalence principle is very unintuitive. Aristotle's Mechanics does not have it. It took almost two thousand years to discover inertia that is the most simple version of the equivalence principle. Einstein understood the idea of the the e…

That’s funny, when I first learned about the equivalence principle, my first thought was “of course!” I have always found it to be very intuitive. The great leap is being able to frame it that way.

Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#87

Post by ambicapter »

the_af wrote: post #50
Tade0 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that how chessboxing was invented? Genuinely asking.

Nope. Chessboxing was the invention of comics book artist Enki Bilal (and he's credited with this in Wikipedia). I first saw it in his Nikopol trilogy. Because life is weird, it then became a real thing. It's unrelated to computers playing chess. It predates Kasparov's first defeat by Deep Blue. I don't remember any mention of computers being good at chess in the trilogy, either. Or any computers, for that matter.

Funny, I knew about chessboxing and Enki Bilal, but had no idea one birthed the other.

Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#88

Post by Synaesthesia »

jimbo808 wrote: post #72
quantum_mcts wrote: post #30

The popular retelling of how Einstein created Special Relativity to "Resolve the contradictions of Michelson-Morly experiments" is very reductive to the history of the question. The epitome is the quote from the paper: > From the two postulates, Einstein derived the Lorentz trans- formation ... If Einstein derived them, who is "Lorentz"? The groundwork for Special Relativity was the study of electrodynamics and symme…

I get really tired of Einstein being portrayed as if he’s the greatest scientist who ever lived, when he doesn’t even belong in that conversation. If Einstein never existed, the fields he was in were already moving strongly in the directions of his conclusions. If Maxwell or Newton had never existed, the world today would be quite different.

Einstein did a lot, he not only published the special and general theories of relativity, he also contributed to quantum physics and was the first to deduce the size of an atom using statistical arguments, essentially proving the existence of atoms.

Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#89

Post by randallsquared »

teleforce wrote: post #79
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was the ethical requirement to discuss and acknowledge predecessors work as developed in Newton's time as in our own? I would naturally expect not because it would seem to me to be the kind of thing that develops over time, but I could be wrong as I am not a historian of science.

It's a not a requirement, it's just a natural to do as a research scientist and a student of knowledge to acknowledge prior contributions if you knew it. The same is true when you are at the time of Aristotle.

"Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!"

Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#90

Post by doginasuit »

bob1029 wrote: post #21

I think this is more of a function of the harness and the environment than the LLM. I've seen some LLM interactions over complex environments like Godot and Unity that challenges the notion that there is no "jumping" going on at all. An LLM in isolation from its environment might as well be a brain in a vat in some dark cave. You need an external environment to sample from and act upon to make forward progress.

I'm also amazed at the degree an LLM can get the drift with a vague or incomplete prompt. The ability to perceive and operate based on patterns that go beyond the language in the text makes it seem like they would be unusually good at taking leaps that haven't occurred to us.
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