Live data from Hacker News

Where does next-token prediction leave us?

pop.rdi.sh

21–30 of 221 posts

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#21
Calling this a straw man would be attributing an unnecessarily sturdy construction.

Yes there are people making stupid claims on all sides. Attributing phrasing like solved or cooked is as if it is some sort of fanatic specific jargon simply ignores the terminology of different groups of people. I don't use cooked myself, but I am not so ignorant of the younger generation that is see it is just another in the long line of terms like sick, bogus, hip, radical, macaroni, etc.

The author plays the trick of flipping the situation from stochastic parrots or next token prediction. Those are "taken as pejorative" whereas cooked and solved "to signal"

The flip is done to place the fault on the other party. You could equally uncharitably say that invoking next token prediction or stochastic parrots is signalling, whereas AI skeptics take terms like cooked as pejorative.

Specifically on the topic of next token prediction, we are already past that phase. Even then I don't think that a model trained by prediction has the limitations that people think it does. As a thought terminating cliche it is simply obsolete when models are trained on reinforcement techniques where there is no template next word to predict. Diffusion models don't even have an autoregressive nature.

I am not terribly fond of the claims made by people at the extremes of any particular to issue. We can perhaps try debating the facts of the matter rather than assuming the internal thoughts of people who might disagree with you.

I generally do not attribute malice to people who describe models as next word predictors. Most are simply uninformed and if you query what their understanding is of a model then you see that what they are imagining is a Markov chain. Investigating if their imagined model could correctly use "an" before "alligator" but obviously not choosing an animal beginning with a vowel just because it had just said "an" often leads them to think that there's more going on than just the next word.

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#22

> The compartmentalisation that must be required by the scientists and engineers to reconcile with the fact that their work being used to bomb and kill people must be crazy. I think about a related question pretty often: What proportion of people working at these companies are "true believers", that their work will be a net benefit for humanity? And for those people (if they are at all numerous), how do they plan to…

Honestly, I'm baffled that a software engineer would want to work at those companies. Like, you think they're going to keep you around once their AI is good enough to improve itself? Or are they just holding out hope that they can get their bag before billionaires create a permanent underclass, and they can be a step above the untouchables?

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#23
post #8

> Non-technical middle managers who have not written a line of code in their lives, now feel that the biggest obstacle between them and greatness has lifted. I find it interesting how this is almost the “democratization” you mentioned that AI provides. While AI “democratizes” certain technical ability, in some ways the democratization of things can actually be bad, in that this “democratization” pushes us towards a s…

I hate the term "democratization". It's putting a respectable face on something that shouldn't be respectable at all. In the age of the internet, coding and other creative skills have always been largely democratized to people that care enough to learn. Nothing is being "democratized" by AI, there's simply (an attempt) at driving the value of actual skill to zero so the skill-less and stupid can purchase their way to…

It’s not coding that’s being democratized, it’s the ability to create games, tools, etc, that require coding.

Suppose it became possible to buy a Ferrari (not that new hideous one) for $5k. That would be democratizing Ferrari ownership: far more people could do it. I’m sure there would be investment bankers who would complain it devalues their hard work (I am not a fan of those people, but it is notoriously long hours). Does that make a $5k Ferrari less of a democratization?

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#24

> The compartmentalisation that must be required by the scientists and engineers to reconcile with the fact that their work being used to bomb and kill people must be crazy. I think about a related question pretty often: What proportion of people working at these companies are "true believers", that their work will be a net benefit for humanity? And for those people (if they are at all numerous), how do they plan to…

I’ve wondered about this. If one works for a gun manufacturer, should they feel personally guilty when crimes are committed? What about when police arrest a criminal without injury? Perhaps the balance is determined whether the viewpoint is from one of killing or one of deterrence. If a doctor provides medical care that extends a to-be murder’s lifespan, is that a good thing? Sure, hopefully most patients aren’t and…

> If one works for a gun manufacturer, should they feel personally guilty when crimes are committed?

I don't think this analogy holds. You could use a gun to commit a crime, but you could also use a gun to defend yourself. On the other hand, if your CEO is talking about getting rid of all labor, well, you're kind of complicit in the crime if you keep working there. There's no ambiguity as to "what will this be used for", like there is with a gun.

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#25
post #13

I tuned out when I came across this: > Science and technology, I feel, has always had a certain apathy towards the plight [of] the people at the bottom rungs. Does that apply to medical advances too? e.g. antibiotics, vaccines, etc. too? We are living longer today thanks to advances in science and technology. Not just the people at the top; but also the peopl at the bottom rungs. Most scientific research does not tak…

do people at the bottom have access to medical advances or are they in lifelong debt in the unfortunate case when they need those medical advances?

How accessible were covid vaccines?

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#26
post #2

>But lately I’ve been thinking if it is just a class issue? This cohort of people likely have a cushion that softens the concussive blows they are doling out right now. They perhaps have the luxury of a somewhat functioning government and a social safety net that they are witness to in all walks of life. Over half the world does not. Science and technology, I feel, has always had a certain apathy towards the plight t…

One large part of this is that all the heads of AI companies and business leaders in the US and Europe keep talking about how AI is going to take jobs away and displace "lower-value human capital", while we see power shortages and higher energy rates in areas where AI datacenters are built. Meanwhile, China's 15th 5 year plan involves integrating AI across the whole economy while expanding vocational retraining programs, and building out new renewable infrastructure to power datacenters. The Chinese Human Resources Ministry expects AI to create 6-10 million new jobs in the short term, and the Chinese government plans to use it in the long term to fill in gaps in the labor force caused by its demographic shortages.

I think this is a big reason why the Chinese have a more positive view of AI than the West: their leaders have a clear plan to mitigate the negative externalities of introducing AI, and ours don't.

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#28
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate the term "democratization". It's putting a respectable face on something that shouldn't be respectable at all. In the age of the internet, coding and other creative skills have always been largely democratized to people that care enough to learn. Nothing is being "democratized" by AI, there's simply (an attempt) at driving the value of actual skill to zero so the skill-less and stupid can purchase their way to…

It’s not coding that’s being democratized, it’s the ability to create games, tools, etc, that require coding. Suppose it became possible to buy a Ferrari (not that new hideous one) for $5k. That would be democratizing Ferrari ownership: far more people could do it. I’m sure there would be investment bankers who would complain it devalues their hard work (I am not a fan of those people, but it is notoriously long hour…

That's a product, not a skill. We're not talking about people getting cheap cars, we're talking about nobody being able to make a living anymore. And no, this isn't like other revolutions, because there's no "upskilling" into it when it threatens all white collar work. (I'm sorry but I don't think prompting AI is going to be some amazing new profession, it'll be at best a transitory phase). Best case is to buy some durable jeans and learn a trade?

Of course, I don't think this is happening any time soon because I don't believe the hype machine. But if you do believe the hype machine, you should be honest about what you're facing.

Also, for what it's worth as a person that's written (and will continue to write) games and tools etc., there were already plenty of forces democratizing that (free engines, asset stores with reusable code and art, etc.) The difference was that there was still skill involved, and at the end of the day you were paying another human being for their effort if you bought or used pre-existing components. There's no skill in AI, not really.

Also, I'm really not that interested in playing a game created by AI, and judging from the reaction gamers and game developers have had to this technology, I don't think many people are. So, yay, you can make a game that has a tiny audience with zero satisfaction from having done something hard and learned something? Also it's likely going to be extremely derivative, because the AI can only really work with what it's been trained on.

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#29
post #21

Calling this a straw man would be attributing an unnecessarily sturdy construction. Yes there are people making stupid claims on all sides. Attributing phrasing like solved or cooked is as if it is some sort of fanatic specific jargon simply ignores the terminology of different groups of people. I don't use cooked myself, but I am not so ignorant of the younger generation that is see it is just another in the long li…

> Specifically on the topic of next token prediction, we are already past that phase.

We really aren't past that phase at all. Reasoning models are just next-token prediction trained in a way where it thinks out loud, essentially. (Source: books on how LLMs actually work, and asking ChatGPT directly!) Harnesses and tool use help a little bit, but it doesn't change fundamentally what an LLM is.

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#30
post #8

> Non-technical middle managers who have not written a line of code in their lives, now feel that the biggest obstacle between them and greatness has lifted. I find it interesting how this is almost the “democratization” you mentioned that AI provides. While AI “democratizes” certain technical ability, in some ways the democratization of things can actually be bad, in that this “democratization” pushes us towards a s…

> in that this “democratization” pushes us towards a system in which people are completely fungible, and so lose their individual bargaining capability.

Hasn't this been the case since the power loom put hand weavers out of a job?

Post reply on HN