I would prefer to view code this way - a flow of data between things... a project I'd really like to work on. Has anyone done anything similar?
How I use LLMs to learn complex topics
391–400 of 574 posts
Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics
#392His other project, https://aivestor.tech/ , seems like a huge grift.
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Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because you can successfully use it to communicate with other people. That's the grounding truth. If you'd only ever read about it and never actually employed it then yes, you would not be able to make that claim.
That's exactly what OP was doing, or does teaching kids not qualify somehow?
It's not the same thing. A language is a closed system, it just requires that the participants agree on the rules in order to be successful. Biology is not a language, it's a field of study of phenomena that exist independently of minds. If you read a biology textbook (or an LLM's output about biology) and then relate to someone else what you've read, you and the other person can discuss the topic, and be no closer to ascertain whether what you two understand has any basis in reality.
Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics
#394This is, without exaggeration, probably the fiftieth blog post or long-form comment about how someone is using an LLM for "complex learning", and I'd just really like to see at least one of these to be accompanied by a statement saying what are the kinds of problems the author can now confidently solve that they couldn't before. In my experience, LLMs are really good for taking up your time and making you feel like y…
> I'd just really like to see at least one of these to be accompanied by a statement saying what are the kinds of problems the author can now confidently solve that they couldn't before. I've spent a lot of time with LLMs for the last two years. Something I've tried, almost for decades, is to learn enough CUDA programming to be productive with it when needed. About 6 months ago, after again banging my head against it…
To be fair the entry barrier got a lot lower over the past ~5 years. Now you can write very good CUDA kernels with just a few lines of python DSL code. Zero cpp boilerplate and zero explicit compiler calls.
Stuff like Triton, nvidia warp (the language), numba, cupy jax/pallas and so many others really paved the way. You can start out really high-level, run a profiler and then dive deep into the bottlenecks.
TL,DR: Keep going, it's a great time to have fun with GPUs.
Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics
#395[flagged]
Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics
#396[dead]
Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'd just really like to see at least one of these to be accompanied by a statement saying what are the kinds of problems the author can now confidently solve that they couldn't before. I've spent a lot of time with LLMs for the last two years. Something I've tried, almost for decades, is to learn enough CUDA programming to be productive with it when needed. About 6 months ago, after again banging my head against it…
To be fair the entry barrier got a lot lower over the past ~5 years. Now you can write very good CUDA kernels with just a few lines of python DSL code. Zero cpp boilerplate and zero explicit compiler calls. Stuff like Triton, nvidia warp (the language), numba, cupy jax/pallas and so many others really paved the way. You can start out really high-level, run a profiler and then dive deep into the bottlenecks. TL,DR: Ke…
> To be fair the entry barrier got a lot lower over the past ~5 years. Now you can write very good CUDA kernels with just a few lines of python DSL code. Zero cpp boilerplate and zero explicit compiler calls.
Well, yeah, but what I've being doing is learning proper CUDA, not "Python-compiled-to-CUDA" (otherwise it'd take like a just a week to understand enough :P ) and that's looking more or less the same today (although bunch of more complicated stuff piled on top of the fundamentals) as it used to, AFAIK.
With that said, the environment is a lot simpler to setup today at least :)
Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's exactly what OP was doing, or does teaching kids not qualify somehow?
It's not the same thing. A language is a closed system, it just requires that the participants agree on the rules in order to be successful. Biology is not a language, it's a field of study of phenomena that exist independently of minds. If you read a biology textbook (or an LLM's output about biology) and then relate to someone else what you've read, you and the other person can discuss the topic, and be no closer t…
Biology is in some sense a language, how do we even agree on what the boundaries of biology vs other domains of science are without participants agreeing on the rules?
In any case I think you have an overly narrow definition of learning that we're unlikely to come to terms over.
Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it depends on what you want to learn and what your definition of "learnt" is. The other day I realised I had no idea how DNA and life works. I guess I studied it at high school (25 years ago), but maybe it didn't go into much detail or it just didn't click. So I asked ChatGPT to explain it to me, I came up with my own mental model from it's explanation, told it that, then it corrected me where I misunderstood…
>So I asked ChatGPT to explain it to me, I came up with my own mental model from it's explanation, told it that, then it corrected me where I misunderstood things. We went backwards and forwards for an hour, me asking questions, it correcting me, until I felt like I understood the whole picture. If you're only checking your understanding against the one source you used to obtain it, how can you tell whether your unde…
Concrete high-profile example: in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", Feynman told of a ball which, in a Brazilian college-level physics book, was described as having a 40% higher acceleration that it would actually have in practice.
Turns out that the author had done a thought experiment but neglected to factor in the rotational inertia.
Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not the same thing. A language is a closed system, it just requires that the participants agree on the rules in order to be successful. Biology is not a language, it's a field of study of phenomena that exist independently of minds. If you read a biology textbook (or an LLM's output about biology) and then relate to someone else what you've read, you and the other person can discuss the topic, and be no closer t…
Biology is in some sense a language, how do we even agree on what the boundaries of biology vs other domains of science are without participants agreeing on the rules? In any case I think you have an overly narrow definition of learning that we're unlikely to come to terms over.
>how do we even agree on what the boundaries of biology vs other domains of science are without participants agreeing on the rules?
Those boundaries are completely imaginary and don't exist in reality. In reality there's no biology, there's only elementary particles interacting physically. Whether you agree with someone else to classify a phenomenon as biological or chemical, you're not refining your knowledge of the real world, you're just performing an organizational task.
But, say, how many times the tympanic ear evolved independently is a real phenomenon that can be investigated, and it's something that you're either correct, incorrect, or ignorant about. If I tell you it evolved five times, what more can either of us gleam about the real facts by just discussing this factoid back and forth, if neither of us has access to any additional knowledge or way to put this datum to the test?