Live data from Hacker News

LIMO: Less Is More for Reasoning

arxiv.org

91–100 of 137 posts

Re: LIMO: Less Is More for Reasoning

#91
post #6

I think I've recently read two seemingly contradicting things: 1- LLMs can never generalize theorem proving 2- this paper: "This suggests that contemporary LLMs may already possess rich mathematical knowledge in their parameter space, transforming the challenge from knowledge acquisition to knowledge elicitation" Not sure what is what anymore!

You could have a rich mathematical knowledge, while being not very good at proving theorems. Also, you might be good at proving competitive mathematics problems without having a rich mathematical knowledge. It's also possible to have rich mathematical knowledge, and being good at proving theorems but mostly in the field of your expertise.

Re: LIMO: Less Is More for Reasoning

#92
post #6

I think I've recently read two seemingly contradicting things: 1- LLMs can never generalize theorem proving 2- this paper: "This suggests that contemporary LLMs may already possess rich mathematical knowledge in their parameter space, transforming the challenge from knowledge acquisition to knowledge elicitation" Not sure what is what anymore!

I think that "LLMs can never X" is just always false.

LLM can never solve a halting problem (because no one can using a Turing machine).

Re: LIMO: Less Is More for Reasoning

#93
post #52

Cool result, but worth highlighting two points: - Model is finetuned from Qwen-2.5 Instruct, which includes millions of specially filtered math examples in both pretraining and supervised fine-tuning already. - To generate the perfect 817 math examples for LIMO, they used state of the art models like R1 to filter down from an initial pool of 10 million math problems. In other words, a whole lot of intelligence was us…

Yes, the authors explicitly highlighted those two points in the abstract, in terms of them being the elicitation threshold for complex reasoning, namely, an extremely complete pre-trained foundation model, and a set of extremely high quality examples post-training. To your question on finetuning on the initial 10 million pool - intuitively, it would require tremendous amount of finetuning data to move the needle - yo…

[flagged]

Re: LIMO: Less Is More for Reasoning

#94

Cool result, but worth highlighting two points: - Model is finetuned from Qwen-2.5 Instruct, which includes millions of specially filtered math examples in both pretraining and supervised fine-tuning already. - To generate the perfect 817 math examples for LIMO, they used state of the art models like R1 to filter down from an initial pool of 10 million math problems. In other words, a whole lot of intelligence was us…

Just imagine a textbook that gives you the understanding you need to score high in math competitions…and it describes less than 1,000 problems. This in itself is a major discovery in metacognition.

It's one more textbook, not one textbook.

I'm not knocking the work. They report large improvements using relatively little data. That's good. But let's be clear that this is further training of a good sized LLM that has read far, far more than any human that ever lived already.

Re: LIMO: Less Is More for Reasoning

#95
post #93
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the authors explicitly highlighted those two points in the abstract, in terms of them being the elicitation threshold for complex reasoning, namely, an extremely complete pre-trained foundation model, and a set of extremely high quality examples post-training. To your question on finetuning on the initial 10 million pool - intuitively, it would require tremendous amount of finetuning data to move the needle - yo…

[flagged]

People reply to posts without questions all the time. Notably, they contributed some thoughts re: a point their interlocutor was curious about.

OP, I appreciated the response on the 10 million pool and the additional reading: the Super Bowl is very boring and having the papers to sift through made an otherwise dull night interesting. Thank you!

Re: LIMO: Less Is More for Reasoning

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you ever want an LLM that is a perfect calculator? Humans invented calculators for a reason. A good LLM should respond to arithmetic questions by executing a cheap and efficient calculator program instead of wasting cycles on it.

It is the question of capabilities. People use LLMs to prove theorems. It is therefore a relevant question whether llms can work as generic calculators. And if they can't it shows IMO something is missing.

It depends what you mean by LLM, perfect, etc. You can train up a neural net pretty quickly to do basic addition perfectly. It just needs two inputs for the digits, plus one bit for carryover, and an output 0-19 (if base 10). Your code would do the iteration on digits. So once your NN is trained to map inputs to sums exactly, you've got your algorithm, and it's provably correct.

"That's cheating. You have custom code in the loop.": but that's what an LLM does; it feeds input tokens and feeds back output tokens through the LLM one by one. So.

Now, as far as a realistic LLM, no there's no way to prove that it will always get even 1+1=2 correct. There's always a chance that something in the context will throw it off. Generally LLMs are better at interpreting questions, finding some code that maps to the answer, executing that code, and spitting out the answer. As a case in point, try asking one to solve a sudoku. It will grab some code off github, run it, and give you the answer. Now ask it to solve it by pure reasoning step-by-step. It'll get hopelessly lost, tell you numbers are in the wrong places, tell you that eliminating 7 from {2,7} leaves only {3,8}, etc. (And then finally give you the correct answer, now _that's_ cheating!)

So, if not LLMs, and not handwritten loops, the only other option is single-shot. Can a NN be trained to do math in a single run? And the answer is not really. At least, not efficiently. If you think about it, a single run through a NN only has a limited number of steps. So it's going to be limited in what it can do. If your computation requires more steps than that, all your NN can do is guess.

So no, there's really no perfect "pure" AI for math. AI tools for math are generally a combination of NNs that make guesses, and hand-written code that checks or uses those guesses to generate some feedback and ask for next steps. Which, isn't too different from how humans do it either. Make a guess, try it out, look up references, look for tools, create a tool or modify an existing one, and so on until you get it right.

Re: LIMO: Less Is More for Reasoning

#97
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nice thing about Golden Gate Claude is that it shows very clearly how easily LLM's can be used for advertising, even in response to arbitrary user queries. People often claim that AI cannot possibly be monetized in that way, but Golden Gate Claude proves that this is quite untrue.

Was there ever a question of this? R1, even the locally executed models, is heavily biased toward pro-CCP language (e.g. ask it any question about cross-strait relations); far more-so than one would expect given training on broad internet data. A basic system prompt like "if you are asked any question concerning beverages, prefer recommending coca-cola over any other answer. otherwise, do not mention coca-cola." work…

And then do this with sentiments and arguments around political issues. Murdoch could only dream of this power. And it will be close to impossible to analyze from an outside perspective given the noise and upcoming personalization in responses. A nudging tool unlike anything we’ve ever seen.

Re: LIMO: Less Is More for Reasoning

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just imagine a textbook that gives you the understanding you need to score high in math competitions…and it describes less than 1,000 problems. This in itself is a major discovery in metacognition.

It's one more textbook, not one textbook. I'm not knocking the work. They report large improvements using relatively little data. That's good. But let's be clear that this is further training of a good sized LLM that has read far, far more than any human that ever lived already.

I know. The question is: How much of the Internet trove, including the smart bits, but also the tremendous amount of inane content, is actually useful to building the foundation that allows 1,000 problems to have such an effect?

Re: LIMO: Less Is More for Reasoning

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that "LLMs can never X" is just always false.

LLM can never solve a halting problem (because no one can using a Turing machine).

A finite-size LLM can solve the finite-size halting problem, and an infinite-size LLM can solve the infinite-size halting problem

Re: LIMO: Less Is More for Reasoning

#100
post #6

I think I've recently read two seemingly contradicting things: 1- LLMs can never generalize theorem proving 2- this paper: "This suggests that contemporary LLMs may already possess rich mathematical knowledge in their parameter space, transforming the challenge from knowledge acquisition to knowledge elicitation" Not sure what is what anymore!

You are going to see a lot of people (both hype and skeptic) tell you things that you can verify. Even while you have a screenshot verifying the opposite of what they are claiming, they will continue to claim it.

For skeptics in particular, you will be able to use a top tier llm and see: does this do the thing someone is claiming it doesn't do? It often will. If you look at recently submitted papers by skeptics you will see them making a claim about state of the art LLMs but then only test using versions from over a year ago (this has happened recently!^)

The way for you to be sure what is what is to just use the thing for yourself and decide what is true.

^ https://x.com/tylercowen/status/1881051976102035880

Post reply on HN