The compare-how-big-a-lookup-table-is argument is a bit of a red herring for comparing how complex things are. For example, a 3x3 matrix implements a map from 3 floats to another three floats, a huge space of possibilities (if we have 4-byte floats, this function space has (2^96)^(2^96) elements). From this perspective, representing that map as 9 numbers is an amazing compression ratio. But surely one cannot argue that matrices “have more going on” than arbitrary functions.
It's not just statistics: GPT-4 does reason
41–50 of 101 posts
Re: It's not just statistics: GPT-4 does reason
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
If someone can show GPT-4 is "reasoning" (for some meaningful definition of that) in specific scenarios, surely counter-examples do not disprove this.
If a counterexample to a specific claim doesn't disprove the claim, that sometimes suggests the claim is unfalsifiable and therefore suspect.
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Re: It's not just statistics: GPT-4 does reason
#43It's ontologically impossible. Models bleach reason. Despite reason being a metaphysical property of the training data, the process of optimisation means weights are metaphysically reasonless. Therefore, any output, as it is a product of the weights, is also reasonless. This is exactly the opposite of copyright as described in the What Colour Are Your Bits, essay. https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
> This is exactly the opposite of copyright as described in the What Colour Are Your Bits, essay. Wait, what? "Colour of your bits" doesn't have anything to do with metaphysics. It's about provenance . The colour doesn't exist in the bits, but it exists in the casual history - the chain of events that led you to have a piece of copyrighted (or criminalized) data on your hard drive. You may argue that it's just a big…
You could, I suppose, argue that the causal chains behind an LLM, are simply not the correct causal chains to produce reasoning, but that's a lot more complicated, mainly by the fact that we don't understand exactly what they are, and we don't understand the causal chains that produce human reasoning, so we can't confidently compare them other than on the largest of scales (LLMs are in silica, etc).
That, and it's not obvious why we should make this distinction. A cake that spontaneously assembles itself is still a cake, even if it doesn't have the usual causal history of a cake.
Re: It's not just statistics: GPT-4 does reason
#44The Cabbage, Goat, and Wolf problem intrigued me the other day too... so I did a fantasy world. There aren't incompatible pairs but there are limitations on what can be done. Imagine a universe where there are three types of people: wizards, warriors, and priests. Wizards can open a portal that allows two people to go through at a time, but they cannot go through the portal themselves. Priests can summon people from…
While walking along in desert sand, you suddenly look down and see a tortoise crawling toward you. You reach down and flip it over onto its back. The tortoise lies there, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs, trying to turn itself over, but it cannot do so without your help. You are not helping. Why?
Re: It's not just statistics: GPT-4 does reason
#45The compare-how-big-a-lookup-table-is argument is a bit of a red herring for comparing how complex things are. For example, a 3x3 matrix implements a map from 3 floats to another three floats, a huge space of possibilities (if we have 4-byte floats, this function space has (2^96)^(2^96) elements). From this perspective, representing that map as 9 numbers is an amazing compression ratio. But surely one cannot argue th…
This is kind of like saying a transistor can't make a decision, all it does is pass electrons or not based on inputs.
The decisions happen because of how they're wired.
Re: It's not just statistics: GPT-4 does reason
#46The author could have done far simpler tests to find GPT-4 has lots of trouble reasoning. Forget sorting, GPT4 has trouble counting . Repeat a letter N times and ask it how many there are. It breaks before you hit 20. Or try negating multiple times, since more than twice is rare in natural language, and again it will fall over.
So, I just tried this. I pasted 60 letter A's into GTP4 and asked it to count, it got it wrong, but I repeatedly said "count again" and nothing else, so as to not give it any hints. Here's GTP4's guesses along the way as I repeatedly said "count again".
69, 50, 100, 70, 68, 60, 60, 60, 60 (GTP gathered its own guesses into this list for me BTW)
It seems if GTP is given "attention" enough, it can do the counting. But it cannot direct its attention freely, only as we give it instruction to do so.
I just did it again with 66 letter A's. Guesses were: 100, 100, 98, 67, 66, 66, 66, 66 -- GTP4 again settled on the correct answer. I also burned though my prompt quota for the next 3 hours :(
Also, as a GTP style challenge, how many numbers are in this message? You have half-a-second, go!
Re: It's not just statistics: GPT-4 does reason
#47It's ontologically impossible. Models bleach reason. Despite reason being a metaphysical property of the training data, the process of optimisation means weights are metaphysically reasonless. Therefore, any output, as it is a product of the weights, is also reasonless. This is exactly the opposite of copyright as described in the What Colour Are Your Bits, essay. https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
> This is exactly the opposite of copyright as described in the What Colour Are Your Bits, essay. Wait, what? "Colour of your bits" doesn't have anything to do with metaphysics. It's about provenance . The colour doesn't exist in the bits, but it exists in the casual history - the chain of events that led you to have a piece of copyrighted (or criminalized) data on your hard drive. You may argue that it's just a big…
The property of legal ownership is preserved through the process of training and prediction. Models don't bleach ownership (and therefore copyright).
Re: It's not just statistics: GPT-4 does reason
#48[deleted]
Re: It's not just statistics: GPT-4 does reason
#49One of my favorite GTP4 moments shows good understanding on its part.
I was talking to GTP4 about the Adam optimization algorithm and it was teaching me how it works (this sentence was surreal to type). At one point we were talking about a mathematical term of the form [ A * (B / C) ]. I was casually fishing for it to make a mistake and I said "I see, and the A term can be moved to the denominator, right?" GTP replied "yes" and then gave me [ B / (C / A) ] -- I guess A can go in the denominator after all. :)
Re: It's not just statistics: GPT-4 does reason
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s suspect until it’s demonstrated. Once someone has demonstrated it, counterexamples are meaningless. I claim I can juggle. I pick up three tennis balls and juggle them. You hand me three basketballs. I try and fail. My original claim, that I can juggle, still stands.
That's because > I can juggle is here shorthand for > I can juggle at all; I can juggle at least some things and the basketball case is only a counterexample to the much stronger claim > I can juggle anything But the argument about AIs reasoning has little to do with such examples, because juggling is about the ability to complete the task alone. When it comes to reasoning there are questions about authenticity that…
This thread is exactly such examples.
What would “not alone” mean? Do you think someone is passing it the answers? Of course it was trained, but that’s like cheating on a test by reading the material so you can keep a cheat sheet in your brain.