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Position: LLMs Can't Jump

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Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#111

Post by seemaze »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #75
teleforce wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Einstein seems to be so conveniently dismissive that he knew about the seminal Michelson-Morley experiments but he probably knew about it too well [1]. Einstein is not the first great scientist who are in denial of other important prior contributions, and he also not the last one. Newton also probably knew too well about Al-Haytham (Alhazen), arguably the father of modern science, and his breakthrough experiments but…

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.

John Maynard Keynes is famously quoted as stating:

    “[Newton] was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians.”

Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#113

Post by inigyou »

smusamashah wrote: post #57
inigyou wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why couldn't an LLM, if it was smart enough, generate and consume its own data? I know the answer: because it leads to model collapse. But why is that? Wouldn't a smart model not collapse? It's seeming like they keep getting smarter because we keep pouring more of our own knowledge into them, not because they are actually getting smarter. And yes, sometimes a dumb but persistent bruteforcer can make new discoveries.

If it is smart enough to generate data it can consume to train itself better, it is already smart enough to not need to do that.

If a human is smart enough to do the Michelson-Morley experiment, they are smart enough to not need to do that.

Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#114

Post by zamalek »

Maybe modulating temperature can help here: have the LLM come up with ideas at high temperature, and then critique them at low.

This is also tied to halucinations: it is something that humans do (for writing fiction, and for "jumps") - but what LLMs currently lack is intellectual honesty. Coming up with bullshit is fine (and in this context valuable) - the important bit is putting those ideas through some form of rigor, or just immediately turn around and admit to talking shit.

So I'd arge that hallucinations are what prevent LLMs from doing this in a useful way.

Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#115

Post by kskdkwkdjw »

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.

Oh boy. I just cannot believe we have reached a point where someone would find it acceptable to have a temper tantrum over Einstein’s fame.

What a depressingly peculiar time to be alive.

Reddit is over that way, my friend. You might find the crowd there more amenable to this nonsense.

Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#116

Post by kskdkwkdjw »

inerte wrote: post #96

Maybe LLMs can't, but another form of AI will. I hope nobody is interpreting this as "nothing will never be as good as us". I see similar thinking in stories of how humanity got here. Religion has thousands of years adapting to this problem, every time we explain something, the goal post moves. Catholics today accept evolution (or least the church does), but it is the "jump" from monkeys to humans where God is the on…

> Just 5 years ago we didn't have a technology that knows more about everything than even most experts.

And we still don’t. What we have are simply very advanced search results aggregators with delusions of personality. Just because your fridge says “I” doesn’t mean it is a person.

Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#117

Post by km3r »

zamalek wrote: post #114

Maybe modulating temperature can help here: have the LLM come up with ideas at high temperature, and then critique them at low. This is also tied to halucinations: it is something that humans do (for writing fiction, and for "jumps") - but what LLMs currently lack is intellectual honesty. Coming up with bullshit is fine (and in this context valuable) - the important bit is putting those ideas through some form of rig…

I wonder if giving the models context of the temperature of its past generations would help here. Like a thinking mode that deliberately has a section that is high temperature, while the rest is lower.

Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#118

Post by kskdkwkdjw »

ACCount37 wrote: post #110
vatsachak wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay here's something LLMs can't. They can't solve problems that are longer than ~10 pages of math. They also can't maintain codebases without supervision. It's because they are have no memory and use various tricks to supplant that fact.

Now, how long before someone rolls out some sort of 10M context hybrid attention active context management monstrosity and ruins this guy's "can't"? Start the clock. My opinion of claims like "LLMs need memory to manage codebases" has also hit the dumpster bin a while ago. Why would knowing how to make a maintainable change to a codebase require any more "memory" than knowing how to play an optimal chess move? The co…

> The codebase is the memory.

Were that the case LLMs would’ve been phenomenal code monkeys from the get go. They were not. They still are not.

Re: Position: LLMs Can't Jump

#119

Post by Plasmoid »

inigyou wrote: post #52
elar_verole wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this can't work because an LLM needs too much data, and before the internet there probably just wasn't enough to get close to what we have now

Why couldn't an LLM, if it was smart enough, generate and consume its own data? I know the answer: because it leads to model collapse. But why is that? Wouldn't a smart model not collapse? It's seeming like they keep getting smarter because we keep pouring more of our own knowledge into them, not because they are actually getting smarter. And yes, sometimes a dumb but persistent bruteforcer can make new discoveries.

It's because LLMs are entropy generators. That's not a bad thing for what people are doing.

But to prevent model collapse you need a way to pump down the entropy. Much like in thermo, it's an expensive and slow process.

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