5 ms·

I have to ask, why call it that? I had a chuckle once I saw the name.

binarymax 4y ago
Large language models have a (recent) history of silly names. BERT, BART, ELMO, RoBERTa, BIGBIRD, PaLM, Megatron etc. Might as well go full nonsense.
- jstx1 4y ago
  Image models too - the Inception paper from 2014 directly refers to knowyourmeme.com and the "we need to go deeper" meme from the movie Inception - https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-need-to-go-deeper https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-need-to-go-deeper - it's the first reference in the paper [1] and it's also why the model is called that way. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.4842.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.4842.pdf
- omarhaneef 4y ago
  True. I will add that it is customary to justify it by demonstrating it is some sort of acronym or contraction.
  - yeetsfromhellL2 4y ago
    It's a recursive, selective acronym C CH CHI CHIN CHINC CHINCH CHINCHI CHINCHIL CHINCHILL ==> CHINCHILLA HINCHILLA INCHILLA NCHILLA CHILLA HILLA ILLA LLA LA A
    - omarhaneef 4y ago
      I know what recursive means, I know what selective means, I know what an acronym is, and I think I see the pattern in that picture, but when I put it all together I am lost. Alternatively, is this a joke and the "recursive, selective acronym" can be used to justify any word?
      - veonik 4y ago
        A AR ARB ARBI ARBIT ARBITR ARBITRA ARBITRAR ==> ARBITRARY RBITRARY BITRARY ITRARY TRARY RARY ARY RY Y Yup, seems it works for any word.
- DSingularity 4y ago
  A touch of irony that cutting edge research on language can’t produce better names.
- MisterTea 4y ago
  My theory is since no one reads literature anymore, timeless, interesting and unique names from history and other cultures are lost to a deluge of soon to be forgotten gag, pop-culture and meme names. Perhaps this is why we have Chinchilla and not Oberon.
  - jankeymeulen 4y ago
    Like the Oberon OS and programming language?
redredrobot 4y ago
It outperforms the Gopher model
- cshimmin 4y ago
  Yeah, similar "thematic" naming to MacOS versions. I don't know why the original one was called Gopher, though.
  - goodside 4y ago
    Because it retrieves facts from memory in a way that’s analogized to a gopher retrieving objects.
- ellisv 4y ago
  Yet oddly enough I don't think chinchillas are smaller than gophers
farmin 4y ago
It's the name of a town in QLD.
MrBuddyCasino 4y ago
Its not so bad. If they were radio astronomers they'd call it Very Big Neuronal Language Model. IBM would call it Watson Advanced AI. If they were a gamer accessory company they'd call it DeepTek Ultra Pro VDH-Max AI A320M. Chinchilla is nice and fluffy.
gwern 4y ago
There were a lot of complaints about earlier models being named, say, 'Meena'. (It's very sexist, you know, to name a chatbot a female name.) People won't complain about 'Chinchilla' because chinchillas are adorable. PaLMs aren't adorable, but at least it's neutral.

Large language models have a (recent) history of silly names. BERT, BART, ELMO, RoBERTa, BIGBIRD, PaLM, Megatron etc. Might as well go full nonsense.

jstx1 4y ago
Image models too - the Inception paper from 2014 directly refers to knowyourmeme.com and the "we need to go deeper" meme from the movie Inception - https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-need-to-go-deeper https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-need-to-go-deeper - it's the first reference in the paper [1] and it's also why the model is called that way. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.4842.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.4842.pdf
omarhaneef 4y ago
True. I will add that it is customary to justify it by demonstrating it is some sort of acronym or contraction.
- yeetsfromhellL2 4y ago
  It's a recursive, selective acronym C CH CHI CHIN CHINC CHINCH CHINCHI CHINCHIL CHINCHILL ==> CHINCHILLA HINCHILLA INCHILLA NCHILLA CHILLA HILLA ILLA LLA LA A
  - omarhaneef 4y ago
    I know what recursive means, I know what selective means, I know what an acronym is, and I think I see the pattern in that picture, but when I put it all together I am lost. Alternatively, is this a joke and the "recursive, selective acronym" can be used to justify any word?
    - veonik 4y ago
      A AR ARB ARBI ARBIT ARBITR ARBITRA ARBITRAR ==> ARBITRARY RBITRARY BITRARY ITRARY TRARY RARY ARY RY Y Yup, seems it works for any word.
DSingularity 4y ago
A touch of irony that cutting edge research on language can’t produce better names.
MisterTea 4y ago
My theory is since no one reads literature anymore, timeless, interesting and unique names from history and other cultures are lost to a deluge of soon to be forgotten gag, pop-culture and meme names. Perhaps this is why we have Chinchilla and not Oberon.
- jankeymeulen 4y ago
  Like the Oberon OS and programming language?

redredrobot 4y ago

It outperforms the Gopher model

cshimmin 4y ago
Yeah, similar "thematic" naming to MacOS versions. I don't know why the original one was called Gopher, though.
- goodside 4y ago
  Because it retrieves facts from memory in a way that’s analogized to a gopher retrieving objects.
ellisv 4y ago
Yet oddly enough I don't think chinchillas are smaller than gophers

farmin 4y ago

It's the name of a town in QLD.

MrBuddyCasino 4y ago

Its not so bad. If they were radio astronomers they'd call it Very Big Neuronal Language Model. IBM would call it Watson Advanced AI. If they were a gamer accessory company they'd call it DeepTek Ultra Pro VDH-Max AI A320M. Chinchilla is nice and fluffy.

gwern 4y ago

There were a lot of complaints about earlier models being named, say, 'Meena'. (It's very sexist, you know, to name a chatbot a female name.) People won't complain about 'Chinchilla' because chinchillas are adorable. PaLMs aren't adorable, but at least it's neutral.