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Natural language instructions induce generalization in networks of neurons

nature.com

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Re: Natural language instructions induce generalization in networks of neurons

#81

Post by godelski »

nyrikki wrote: post #6

>Tasks that are instructed using conditional clauses also require a simple form of deductive reasoning (if p then q else s) > Our models ofer several experimentally testable predictions outlining how linguistic information must be represented to facilitate flexible and general cognition in the human brain. Aren't those claims falsified by more recent studies that show that even in flys, preferred direction to a movin…

There's also many issues with just interpreting the results of the work.

  Our best models can perform a previously unseen task with an average performance of 83% correct based solely on linguistic instructions (that is, **zero-shot learning**).
They used GPT-2 from HuggingFace. I'm unsure what data this model is trained on. If it is the original GPT-2 checkpoint then that data is unknown. I just refuse to let anyone casually claim "zero-shot" when the training data is unknown. GPT-2 was trained on 40GB of text data (which is A LOT! It includes 8 million documents and 45 million web pages). This may not be the crazy sizes we see today, but even then the community was concerned about accurately stating what was in distribution and out of distribution. You can't know if you don't know what it was trained on AND how it was trained (since the mathematics can also put pressure on certain things that may not be realized at first).

In addition to this, their efforts look to be mainly using clustering techniques. CLIP itself is a clustering algorithm. ANNs frequently do clustering as well, but you know, there's some black box nature to them (but not entirely opaque either).

It is very hard to draw causal conclusions when you use either of these two things. Not to mention the fact that causality itself is difficult given that different graphs can be indistinguishable.

Re: Natural language instructions induce generalization in networks of neurons

#82

Post by razodactyl »

riwsky wrote: post #61
AlecSchueler wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the real hero here is not the LLM, but the training set. And in the case of windmills the hero is the wind. But the mill is still a fantastic achievement.

And if you rearrange the letters in “mill”? “I, LLM.” qed

Correlation checks out.

Re: Natural language instructions induce generalization in networks of neurons

#83

Post by tsimionescu »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #38
lo_zamoyski wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distinction between language and "thought" to me is odd. Language and "thought" are the same thing . The mouth sounds or hand scribbles aren't the language, but expressions of it.

You don't need language to catch a ball, but clearly thinking is required to intercept its trajectory correctly. Language is about communication .

The idea that language is about thought is only referring to the kind of higher level thinking specific to humans. Any animal can catch a tennis ball, but only humans can construct and then execute complex plans of actions.

This line of thought stems mostly from two observations: one, that the vast majority of language you use is your internal monologue; and two, that this internal monologue would have been extremely helpful for the hominids that would have first developed it even while the rest of the population had not developed language (in contrast, if language is about communication, then it's only useful to a hominid if the whole population speaks language, but then it's hard for it to spread initially).

Re: Natural language instructions induce generalization in networks of neurons

#84

Post by tsimionescu »

mrblah wrote: post #36
kevindamm wrote: post #2

It's as if language is itself the latent space for these psychophysical tasks, especially compositional instruction. Their description of it as a scaffolding also seems apt.

i've always assumed that language was required to give your brain the abstractions needed to reference things in the past compared to your current perception (aka now), like an index. if you think about your earliest memories, they almost certainly came after language. i'd be interested to know if any of the documented 'wild child' cases (infants 'raised by wolves') ever delved into what the children remembered befor…

There were efforts to teach them language as adolescents, but they didn't acquire it - as far as we know, it's not possible to acquire language if you don't do it as an infant.

This is similar to other brain functions that aren't present at birth and require stimulation, such as sight. That is, if your eyes are forced closed for the first few months of your life, you will never be able to see, even if later they are uncovered, and keep working perfectly. The brain functions responsible for interpreting visual signals can only develop if they get visual signals in a (quite short) developmental window - and we know this with quite a bit of certainty from quite cruel animal studies.

Language acquisition is not proven to be the same, as the required studies would be deeply unethical, but the few experiences with feral children are highly suggestive that the same applies.

Re: Natural language instructions induce generalization in networks of neurons

#85

Post by red75prime »

coldtea wrote: post #71
Jensson wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that would be an impossibility if understanding requires expressing it in language.

The thinking language doesn't have to be the same thing as the expression language. It can still have a language form (manipulation of groups of symbolic structures, terms, and associations), but doesn't have to be English, or even at the conscious "internal monologue" level.

How can you know that it's symbolic if you have no conscious access to it? Processes happen in the brain, some results in explicit symbolic representation, others not so much. Bringing "language" into this does not achieve much besides the fact that language we use to communicate plays some role in internal monologue.

Re: Natural language instructions induce generalization in networks of neurons

#86

Post by red75prime »

a_gnostic wrote: post #22
jameshart wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong Sapir-Whorf (linguistic determinism - language constrains thought) became pretty much seen as a joke by the 1980s. Linguistic relativism (weak Sapir-Whorf - language shapes thought) is still respectable (because, I mean, of course it does). Actually, this research might just as well be evidence for linguistic universalism (Chomsky - language enables thought). In general linguistic philosophers have been coming…

Oftentimes I find myself understanding complex concepts before I can describe them, even internally . I am sure everyone has this, as I often read comments praising others' submissions for formulating their thoughts efficiently. So thoughts occur independent of language, but need it to be expressed and shared, even if through pictures and sounds.

I a programmer I have to make a sharp distinction between "feeling of understanding" and understanding. The former can easily dissolve when you try to operationalize it, that is to make something that works based on the feeling that you understand it as opposed to producing a string of words based on that feeling.

Re: Natural language instructions induce generalization in networks of neurons

#87

Post by barrenko »

nyrikki wrote: post #6

>Tasks that are instructed using conditional clauses also require a simple form of deductive reasoning (if p then q else s) > Our models ofer several experimentally testable predictions outlining how linguistic information must be represented to facilitate flexible and general cognition in the human brain. Aren't those claims falsified by more recent studies that show that even in flys, preferred direction to a movin…

I'm early, so to say, in biochemistry, but could any of this relate to the level "below" neurons - to ion channels?

Re: Natural language instructions induce generalization in networks of neurons

#88

Post by mewpmewp2 »

coldtea wrote: post #68
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But can mills easily move? No, people can, so people are still viable.

> But can mills easily move? Yes, that's their whole thing: moving when the air blows.

But can they relocate?

Re: Natural language instructions induce generalization in networks of neurons

#89

Post by actionfromafar »

ben_w wrote: post #40
orbifold wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.aax6239

Thanks :)

It's a similar situation to terminology for the atom.

It originally in Greek meant "the smallest indivisible unit of matter".

Scientists then took the name and named various elements (hydrogen, gold, etc) as various atoms.

So, this is like when computing took the idea of a neuron as "the smallest indivisible unit of memory and calculation" and ran with it.

Fast forward to now, when we know that each "atom" has a bunch of smaller stuff internally, but by now it's too late to change the terminology.

And now we also know that a biological "neuron" is something more like an embedded CPU or FPGA in its own right, each with a bunch of computing and storage capability and modes.

Re: Natural language instructions induce generalization in networks of neurons

#90

Post by coldtea »

red75prime wrote: post #85
coldtea wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thinking language doesn't have to be the same thing as the expression language. It can still have a language form (manipulation of groups of symbolic structures, terms, and associations), but doesn't have to be English, or even at the conscious "internal monologue" level.

How can you know that it's symbolic if you have no conscious access to it? Processes happen in the brain, some results in explicit symbolic representation, others not so much. Bringing "language" into this does not achieve much besides the fact that language we use to communicate plays some role in internal monologue.

>How can you know that it's symbolic if you have no conscious access to it?

Well, it has to be able refer to things (it can't include the actual objects), not to mention handle abstractions and concepts.

An animal can do that with direct response/manipulation/pointing etc, humans must do it at a symbolic level to handle the world at the level we do.

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