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They’re made out of weights

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Re: They’re made out of weights

#661

Post by f_klem »

ACCount37 wrote: post #652
f_klem wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, formatting was kind of f , but there is no need to be rude. I wasn't saying there was any difference. All I'm saying is that the claimings the AI research field does are based on false assumptions. And from false assumptions, you cannot reach a proper conclusion. Whether an AI system can reason and think like if it where a human being, or not, I don't care. I'm fine with either: it is just technological advan…

A lot of people who "know how technology works" just went looking for copium, and found some. Now, they "know" a comforting lie - something like "it's just next token prediction". Very comforting, that, but actively harmful to understanding. The understanding starts with: we don't actually know how LLMs do what they do. They're more grown than designed. And it only gets worse from there. Very little comfort to be fou…

There are two things here: one is how an LLM is fundamentally structured and designed, the other is how an LLM distributes and 'lays out' the relationship between inputs and outputs through layers and weights.

We might not know how the actual distribution works, but we do know how it i s fundamentally structured and designed -- because we did it. We also know that there is something like a representation system inside them. And we also know that human beings do not hold 'internal representations' like any AI system needs to. So there isn't any 'intrinsically magical' in modern AI systems.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#662

Post by [deleted] »

jrahmy wrote: post #619
davrosthedalek wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it could be. It's just less efficient.

I don't see how. You could ask a neural network to do the tokenization I suppose, but in doing so you'd have to convert the prompt into tokens via the same deterministic process the network was trained on, essentially just moving the exact same process up one layer.

[deleted]

Re: They’re made out of weights

#663

Post by brainwad »

bwest87 wrote: post #412

He forgot the tokens! It's not simple weights and numbers all the way down. The available output is pre-set by the tokens we allow it to predict. There was a whole bit in there about not having a language module or using words. But it does. We tell it. Humans do not come pre programmed with a set of possible "tokens". We just figure it out and I believe that fact captures something very essential. Maybe the missing p…

LLMs can work without tokens: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.09871. Tokens are more or less a performance optimisation.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#664

Post by chengyongru »

simpaticoder wrote: post #481
mjg2 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your point. I don't understand why half these comments are taking this blog post seriously when it ends with "Weights helped me draft and proof this story." > Weights helped me draft and proof this story. Any HN reader here now, I encourage you to read the original ( https://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/TheyMade.s... ) in one sitting, go about your day, then read it again. Maybe make some n…

We humans tend to chauvinism in all things (e.g. we're special, the center of the Universe, God made the universe for us, etc), no less when it comes to judging intelligence. The original story about thinking meat was written to help us out of our chauvinism; this derived story was written about weights for the same reason. Which is quite valid. The actual counterpoint is demonstrated in _Blindsight_ Peter Watts. He…

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Re: They’re made out of weights

#665

Post by runeks »

layer8 wrote: post #277
runeks wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We literally spend almost all day, every day, thinking about ourselves, in terms of our inner self. > That is consciousness. So thinking is consciousness? Can there be consciousness without content? E.g. can I just be conscious of being conscious? If so, consciousness cannot be defined as the thing(s) we're conscious of.

> Can there be consciousness without content? E.g. can I just be conscious of being conscious? Being conscious of being conscious means that there is content. You are conscious of something. It’s a bit like a Gödel statement that quotes itself, that is a statement about itself. It doesn’t mean that it has no content. Thinking isn’t consciousness. Consciousness doesn’t require thinking, it only requires perception. Th…

> Consciousness doesn’t require thinking, it only requires perception.

Could we imagine a human being that is conscious but has no sensory input nor any occurring thoughts but is still conscious?

Re: They’re made out of weights

#666

Post by Lplololopo »

yencabulator wrote: post #436
Lplololopo wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The matrix multilication underneath a large language model is the hardware but the data and the forming weights is not. A quick sort sorts a list. A LLM depends on its learning data. You train a model and then you use the model.

The LLM is still a "normal algorithm", just one with a fairly large dataset to use. Assigning the algorithm part of LLMs magical properties hinders understanding. The work needed to pick the next output token is very much a classical algorithm. Algorithms can be based on training and/or use data just fine, too. https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.01208 (Now, the weights used, those we kinda really don't understand the same wa…

Anthropic has a blog article on how they analyse their LLM to understand better how the LLM is doing math and estimates.

For this they needed extra tools to do so.

This 'algorithm' of how the lLM does that, was unknown before their research.

Our brains are not that chaotic though. They have even more complexity to size for sure and the issue that its hard to look into a humans brain.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#667

Post by Lplololopo »

thegrimmest wrote: post #609
Lplololopo wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already live in a world of abundance. No one has to work on a field for their food. Its a capitalism problem we have, not a resource one.

It’s not a capitalism problem, it’s an ecosystem. Wherever living things compete for finite resources and opportunities, certain properties emerge from the system. And make no mistake we live in a crowded world full of fierce competition. Among these properties are optimum behaviours such as hoarding the maximum you can defend (rather than the minimum you comfortably need) and using your power to forestall the growth…

The US American system is more capitalistic than the german one and the scissor between poor and rich is higher.

Thats definitly an indication that this plays a role in it.

And we do not have a problem of resources today, we have so much food, that its sometimes just spoils and no one cares and sometimes it even spoils in huge warehouses due to neglect or because a person decided not to sell it under a certain price.

Capitalism also sets priorities for resources. So instead of making sure everyone is fed properly, we also spend time and energy to diverge resource types like different plants, exotic plants etc.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#668

Post by Lplololopo »

mandymoorefan wrote: post #648
Lplololopo wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard of property tax? We have that here. I also do not earn currently a farm, im planing to buy one, i'm still 100k short though. Its not me creating the misery, its our capitalistic system.

Good luck in life.

Dude, not sure what you mean by this, if this is condesending because you think its stupid, i'm relativly well off.

I'm not advocating for a better life because only of me but primarily for everyone around us.

We could come all together and start working together how we use our resources more fair for everyone.

Re: They’re made out of weights

#669

Post by tasuki »

layer8 wrote: post #266
tasuki wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the original story contained in it the whole point of this one, and then some. This did not add anything, just rephrased it so rather than humans viewed through the pov of aliens it's LLMs viewed through the pov of humans. Well, we are the humans, so surely we do not need to learn about this point of view?

It lets us consider the relativity of viewpoints. The point of the original isn’t just how humans might be viewed from the perspective of aliens. It’s that the apparent strangeness of something depends on the viewpoint and on expectations. The present story is not supposed to stand on its own like the original, it’s supposed to be considered in light of the original. In the original, thinking meat appears strange to…

The relativity of viewpoints was already fully presented by the original story.

If one has read and understood the "They're made out of meat" story, they already fully understood the point made by "They're made out of weights".

Re: They’re made out of weights

#670

Post by reverius42 »

Lplololopo wrote: post #605
monknomo wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

right, these knowledge work and coding jobs are, by my lights, about the best possible job. From my perspective we've invented a machine that does the fun parts while leaving me the less fun parts (review, various hard-to-claude janitorial tasks, etc). I might like woodworking as a hobby (for example), but I sure as heck don't want to be a carpenter or to depend on my ability to hand craft enough widgets people like…

Be more critical, we do our jobs because of capitalism, not because every single company needs an hr department or the next crud application or the 1000th webshop. No one of us is working on the field to get food.

You have in several places repeated that "no one is working on the field to get food", but that's not actually true. While most people in modern society don't work on fields to feed themselves (and others), a small fraction actually do! They feed not only themselves, but all of us.

In this future utopia where everyone gets to be a mediocre handmade-furniture maker, who exactly will be the 1-2% needed to work the fields to feed us all?

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