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Some Remarks on Large Language Models

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Re: Some Remarks on Large Language Models

#2
Sometimes I read text like this and really enjoy the deep insights and arguments once I filter out the emotion, attitude, or tone. And I wonder if the core of what they're trying to communicate would be better or more efficiently received if the text was more neutral or positive. E.g. you can be 'bearish' on something and point out 'limitations', or you can say 'this is where I think we are' and 'this is how I think we can improve', but your insights and arguments about the thing can more or less be the same in either form of delivery.

Re: Some Remarks on Large Language Models

#3
The dismissal of biases and stereotypes is exactly why AI research needs more people who are part of the minority. Yoav can dismiss this because it just doesn't affect him much.

It's easy to say "Oh well, humans are biased too" when the biases of these machines don't: misgender you, mistranslate text that relates to you, have negative affect toward you, are more likely to write violent stories related to you, have lower performance on tasks related to you, etc.

Re: Some Remarks on Large Language Models

#4
> In particular, if the model is trained on multiple news stories about the same event, it has no way of knowing that these texts all describe the same thing, and it cannot differentiate it from several texts describing similar but unrelated events

And... the claim is that humans can do this? Is it just the boring "This AI can only receive information via tokens, whereas humans get it via more high resolution senses of various types, and somehow that is what causes the ability to figure out two things are actually the same thing?" thing?

Re: Some Remarks on Large Language Models

#5

The dismissal of biases and stereotypes is exactly why AI research needs more people who are part of the minority. Yoav can dismiss this because it just doesn't affect him much. It's easy to say "Oh well, humans are biased too" when the biases of these machines don't: misgender you, mistranslate text that relates to you, have negative affect toward you, are more likely to write violent stories related to you, have lo…

"

The models encode many biases and stereotypes.

    Well, sure they do. They model observed human's language, and we humans are terrible beings, we are biased and are constantly stereotyping. This means we need to be careful when applying these models to real-world tasks, but it doesn't make them less valid, useful or interesting from a scientiic perspective."
Not sure how this can be seen as dismissive.

>Yoav can dismiss this because it just doesn't affect him much.

Maybe just maybe someone named Yoav Goldberg might maybe be in a group where bias affects him quite strongly.

Re: Some Remarks on Large Language Models

#6

The dismissal of biases and stereotypes is exactly why AI research needs more people who are part of the minority. Yoav can dismiss this because it just doesn't affect him much. It's easy to say "Oh well, humans are biased too" when the biases of these machines don't: misgender you, mistranslate text that relates to you, have negative affect toward you, are more likely to write violent stories related to you, have lo…

I mean he is presumably Jewish and lives in Israel, so I would guess he knows quite a bit about being a minority and experiencing bias.

Re: Some Remarks on Large Language Models

#7

The dismissal of biases and stereotypes is exactly why AI research needs more people who are part of the minority. Yoav can dismiss this because it just doesn't affect him much. It's easy to say "Oh well, humans are biased too" when the biases of these machines don't: misgender you, mistranslate text that relates to you, have negative affect toward you, are more likely to write violent stories related to you, have lo…

" The models encode many biases and stereotypes. Well, sure they do. They model observed human's language, and we humans are terrible beings, we are biased and are constantly stereotyping. This means we need to be careful when applying these models to real-world tasks, but it doesn't make them less valid, useful or interesting from a scientiic perspective." Not sure how this can be seen as dismissive. >Yoav can dismi…

In fact, the author even says this argument is "true but uninspiring / irrelevant". He's just deciding not to focus on that aspect in this article.

Re: Some Remarks on Large Language Models

#8
post #2

Sometimes I read text like this and really enjoy the deep insights and arguments once I filter out the emotion, attitude, or tone. And I wonder if the core of what they're trying to communicate would be better or more efficiently received if the text was more neutral or positive. E.g. you can be 'bearish' on something and point out 'limitations', or you can say 'this is where I think we are' and 'this is how I think…

> Sometimes I read text like this and really enjoy the deep insights and arguments once I filter out the emotion, attitude, or tone.

Curiously enough, I imagine that sort of filtering/translation is the sort of thing a Large Language Model would be pretty good at.

Re: Some Remarks on Large Language Models

#9
Great focus on the core model itself! I think a complimentary aspect of making LLM's "useful" from a productionization perspective is all of the engineering around the model itself. This blog post did a pretty good job highlighting those complementary points: https://lspace.swyx.io/p/what-building-copilot-for-x-really

Re: Some Remarks on Large Language Models

#10

> In particular, if the model is trained on multiple news stories about the same event, it has no way of knowing that these texts all describe the same thing, and it cannot differentiate it from several texts describing similar but unrelated events And... the claim is that humans can do this? Is it just the boring "This AI can only receive information via tokens, whereas humans get it via more high resolution senses…

Of course humans can do this. You don't recognize when articles are talking about the same thing?
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