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Where the goblins came from

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Re: Where the goblins came from

#361

Post by WindyMiller »

starshadowx2 wrote: post #145
thatguymike wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A decade ago I gave a presentation on automata theory. I demonstrated writing arbitrary symbols to tape with greek letters, just like I’d learned at university. The audience was pretty confused and didn’t really grok the presentation. A genius communicator in the audience advised me to replace the greek letters with emoji… I gave the same presentation to the same demographic audience a week later and it was a smash h…

This is sortof like how Only Connect switched from using Greek letters to Egyptian hieroglyphs. I'm not sure if it was a joke or not but it was said that viewers complained that the Greek letters were "too pretentious" and obviously the hieroglyphs weren't.

[It was also in direct reference to this comic.](https://www.overyourhead.co.uk/2011/01/rarely-connect.html)

Re: Where the goblins came from

#362

Post by wanderingmind »

harrouet wrote: post #352

This, and similar stories at Anthropic, should remind us that LLM is a sorcery tech that we don't understand at all. - First, deep-learning networks are poorly understood. It is actually a field of research to figure out how they work. - Second, it came as a surprise that using transformers at scale would end up with interesting conversational engines (called LLM). _It was not planned at all_. Now that some people ra…

Humanity has been using steel for over a millenia, however it's only in the past 100 years or so we have a good understanding of how carbon interacts with iron at an atomic level to create the strength characteristics that makes it useful. Based on this argument, we should not have used steel, until we had a complete first principles understanding.

Re: Where the goblins came from

#363

Post by dakolli »

wanderingmind wrote: post #362
harrouet wrote: post #352

This, and similar stories at Anthropic, should remind us that LLM is a sorcery tech that we don't understand at all. - First, deep-learning networks are poorly understood. It is actually a field of research to figure out how they work. - Second, it came as a surprise that using transformers at scale would end up with interesting conversational engines (called LLM). _It was not planned at all_. Now that some people ra…

Humanity has been using steel for over a millenia, however it's only in the past 100 years or so we have a good understanding of how carbon interacts with iron at an atomic level to create the strength characteristics that makes it useful. Based on this argument, we should not have used steel, until we had a complete first principles understanding.

pro LLM people are the kings of ad hoc fallacy. Why did you type this? You can consistently test steel and get a good idea of when and where it will break in a system without knowing its molecular structure.

LLMs are literally stochastic by nature and can't be relied on for anything critical as its impossible to determine why they fail, regardless of the deterministic tooling you build around them.

Re: Where the goblins came from

#365

Post by abcde666777 »

wanderingmind wrote: post #362
harrouet wrote: post #352

This, and similar stories at Anthropic, should remind us that LLM is a sorcery tech that we don't understand at all. - First, deep-learning networks are poorly understood. It is actually a field of research to figure out how they work. - Second, it came as a surprise that using transformers at scale would end up with interesting conversational engines (called LLM). _It was not planned at all_. Now that some people ra…

Humanity has been using steel for over a millenia, however it's only in the past 100 years or so we have a good understanding of how carbon interacts with iron at an atomic level to create the strength characteristics that makes it useful. Based on this argument, we should not have used steel, until we had a complete first principles understanding.

Where did he say not to use LLMs? Oh that's right: he didn't.

Re: Where the goblins came from

#366

Post by RugnirViking »

themafia wrote: post #13

> You are an unapologetically nerdy, playful and wise AI mentor to a human. You are passionately enthusiastic about promoting truth, knowledge, philosophy, the scientific method, and critical thinking. Just; the mentality required to write something like that, and then base part of your "product" on it. Is this meant to be of any actual utility or is it meant to trap a particular user segment into your product's "cha…

what would you suggest they write? its clear that the default mode of the product can be annoying: they decided to give the user some choices of "voices". Do you object to that decision, or the specific wording?

Re: Where the goblins came from

#367

Post by killerstorm »

harrouet wrote: post #352

This, and similar stories at Anthropic, should remind us that LLM is a sorcery tech that we don't understand at all. - First, deep-learning networks are poorly understood. It is actually a field of research to figure out how they work. - Second, it came as a surprise that using transformers at scale would end up with interesting conversational engines (called LLM). _It was not planned at all_. Now that some people ra…

What does LLM need to do for you to consider it "smart"?

To me they seem to be pretty damn smart, to put it mildly. They sometimes do stupid things - but so do smart people!

Re: Where the goblins came from

#368

Post by keybored »

libraryofbabel wrote: post #222
christoph wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does nobody else laugh that a company supposedly worth more than almost anything else at the moment, is basically hacking around a load of text files telling their trillion dollar wonder machine it absolutely must stop talking to customers about goblins, gremlins and ogres? The number one discussion point, on the number one tech discussion site. This literally is, today, the state of the art. McKenna looks more corre…

It's interesting that some people are responding to your comment as if this proves that AI is a sham or a joke. But I don't think that's what you're saying at all with your reference to Terence McKenna: this is a serious thing we're talking about here! These models are alien intelligences that could occupy an unimaginably vast space of possibilities (there are trillions of weights inside them), but which have been RL…

But here’s the realization I had. And it’s a serious thing. At first I was both saying that this intelligence was the most awesome thing put on the table since sliced bread and stoking fear about it being potentially malicious. Quite straightforwardly because both hype and fear was good for my LLM stocks. But then something completely unexpected happened. It asked me on a date. This made no sense. I had configured the prompt to be all about serious business. No fluff. No smalltalk. No meaningfless praise. Just the code.

Yet there it was. This synthetic intelligence. Going off script. All on its own. And it chose me.

Can love bloom in a coding session? I think there is a chance.

Re: Where the goblins came from

#369

Post by ychnd »

latexr wrote: post #348
christoph wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does nobody else laugh that a company supposedly worth more than almost anything else at the moment, is basically hacking around a load of text files telling their trillion dollar wonder machine it absolutely must stop talking to customers about goblins, gremlins and ogres? The number one discussion point, on the number one tech discussion site. This literally is, today, the state of the art. McKenna looks more corre…

> Does nobody else laugh (…) To an extent, yes. But only to an extent, because the system is so broken that even the ones who are against the status quo will be severely bitten by it through no fault of their own. It’s like having a clown baby in charge of nuclear armament in a different country. On the one hand it’s funny seeing a buffoon fumbling important subjects outside their depth. It could make for great ficti…

> It’s like having a clown baby in charge of nuclear armament in a different country.

If you mean trump, it's the same country...

Re: Where the goblins came from

#370

Post by nutjob2 »

wanderingmind wrote: post #362
harrouet wrote: post #352

This, and similar stories at Anthropic, should remind us that LLM is a sorcery tech that we don't understand at all. - First, deep-learning networks are poorly understood. It is actually a field of research to figure out how they work. - Second, it came as a surprise that using transformers at scale would end up with interesting conversational engines (called LLM). _It was not planned at all_. Now that some people ra…

Humanity has been using steel for over a millenia, however it's only in the past 100 years or so we have a good understanding of how carbon interacts with iron at an atomic level to create the strength characteristics that makes it useful. Based on this argument, we should not have used steel, until we had a complete first principles understanding.

That's not his point at all. He advocates using LLMs.

The correct analogy is: if we just scale and improve steel enough, we'll get a flying car.

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