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TimeCapsuleLLM: LLM trained only on data from 1800-1875

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Re: TimeCapsuleLLM: LLM trained only on data from 1800-1875

#151
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And no, the "brain is a computer" is not a scientific description, it's a metaphor. Disagree. A brain is turing complete, no? Isn't that the definition of a computer? Sure, it may be reductive to say "the brain is just a computer".

Not even close. Turing complete does not apply to the brain plain and simple. That's something to do with algorithms and your brain is not a computer as I have mentioned. It does not store information. It doesn't process information. It just doesn't work that way. https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-informati...

A human is effectively turning complete if you give the person paper and pen and the ruleset, and a brain clearly stores information and processes it to some extent, so this is pretty unconvincing. The article is nonsense and badly written.

> But here is what we are not born with: information, data, rules, software, knowledge, lexicons, representations, algorithms, programs, models, memories, images, processors, subroutines, encoders, decoders, symbols, or buffers – design elements that allow digital computers to behave somewhat intelligently. Not only are we not born with such things, we also don’t develop them – ever.

Really? Humans don't ever develop memories? Humans don't gain information?

Re: TimeCapsuleLLM: LLM trained only on data from 1800-1875

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the comment which is illogical, it's your (mis)interpretation of it. What I (and seemingly others) took it to mean is basically could an LLM do Einstein's job ? Could it weave together all those loose threads into a coherent new way of understanding the physical world? If so, AGI can't be far behind.

This alone still wouldn't be a clear demonstration that AGI is around the corner. It's quite possible a LLM could've done Einstein's job, if Einstein's job was truly just synthesising already available information into a coherent new whole. (I couldn't say, I don't know enough of the physics landscape of the day to claim either way.) It's still unclear whether this process could be merely continued, seeded only with…

This does make me think about Kuhn's concept of scientific revolutions and paradigms, and that paradigms are incommensurate with one another. Since new paradigms can't be proven or disproven by the rules of the old paradigm, if an LLM could independently discover paradigm shifts similar to moving from Newtonian gravity to general relativity, then we have empirical evidence of an LLM performing a feature of general intelligence.

However, you could also argue that it's actually empirical evidence that general relativity and 19th century physics wasn't truly a paradigm shift -- you could have 'derived' it from previous data -- that the LLM has actually proven something about structurally similarities between those paradigms, not that it's demonstrating general intelligence...

Re: TimeCapsuleLLM: LLM trained only on data from 1800-1875

#154

Very interesting but the slight issue I see here is one of data: the information that is recorded and in the training data here is heavily skewed to those intelligent/recognized enough to have recorded it and had it preserved - much less than the current status quo of "everyone can trivially document their thoughts and life" diorama of information we have today to train LLMs on. I suspect that a frontier model today…

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Re: TimeCapsuleLLM: LLM trained only on data from 1800-1875

#155
Heh, at least this wouldn't spread emojis all over my readmes. Hm, come to think of it I wonder how much tokenization is affected.

Another thought, just occurred when thinking about readmes and coding LLMs: obviously this model wouldn't have any coding knowledge, but I wonder if it could be possible to combine this somehow with a modern LLM in such a way that it does have coding knowledge, but it renders out all the text in the style / knowledge level of the 1800's model.

Offhand I can't think of a non-fine-tuning trick that would achieve this. I'm thinking back to how the old style transfer models used to work, where they would swap layers between models to get different stylistic effects applied. I don't know if that's doable with an LLM.

Re: TimeCapsuleLLM: LLM trained only on data from 1800-1875

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the comment which is illogical, it's your (mis)interpretation of it. What I (and seemingly others) took it to mean is basically could an LLM do Einstein's job ? Could it weave together all those loose threads into a coherent new way of understanding the physical world? If so, AGI can't be far behind.

This alone still wouldn't be a clear demonstration that AGI is around the corner. It's quite possible a LLM could've done Einstein's job, if Einstein's job was truly just synthesising already available information into a coherent new whole. (I couldn't say, I don't know enough of the physics landscape of the day to claim either way.) It's still unclear whether this process could be merely continued, seeded only with…

[deleted]

Re: TimeCapsuleLLM: LLM trained only on data from 1800-1875

#158

Would be interesting to train a cutting edge model with a cut off date of say 1900 and then prompt it about QM and relativity with some added context. If the model comes up with anything even remotely correct it would be quite a strong evidence that LLMs are a path to something bigger if not then I think it is time to go back to the drawing board.

The development of QM was so closely connected to experiments that it's highly unlikely, even despite some of the experiments having been performed prior to 1900.

Special relativity however seems possible.

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