5 ms·
You know, the more I read about these things, the more I realize we are literally getting close to "spells" technology. This is literally an entire paper about
by galaxytachyon 3y ago
You know, the more I read about these things, the more I realize we are literally getting close to "spells" technology.
This is literally an entire paper about constructing a specific incantation to create an effect. Neither the author nor the LLM maker can completely deconstruct and trace every steps of the process from the input to the output. They only know how to chant a litany, add a request, chant another litany, then look at the output and hope they didn't summon Satan.
- lawlessone 3y agoalternatively "lets work on this step by step" sounds like an adult encouraging a child on how they can solve a big problem by breaking it into smaller problems.
- yk 3y agoCharlie Stross had an essay about that ten years ago. (I wanted to submit it to HN for a few month now, so thanks for the reminder.) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37438398 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37438398
- Legend2440 3y ago>You can't credibly learn to service a modern automobile in your own garage. Sure you can, that's how my brother learned to be a mechanic.
- drittich 3y ago“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”
- gflan 3y agoExcept Clarke wasn't referring to the black-boxiness of said advanced tech, was he?
- michaelmior 3y agoNot explicitly, I think no. But in some sense, yes. Arguably any tech which we don't really understand is a black box. I think the lack of understanding how something works is a large part of the "magical" effect.
- visarga 3y agoI think LLM smarts is actually language smarts. Language is accessible, we can track how it creates these capabilities.
- michaelmior 3y ago> we can track how it creates these capabilities. Could you explain what you mean here? To the best of my knowledge, there hasn't been much success in successfully explaining how LLMs actually work? Of course we know all the low level mathematical details, we built them. But my understanding is that we don't really know much about the structure of LLM parameters and how they relate to the concepts the model is supposedly learning.
- piecerough 3y agoNice, one would expect so. Though if you think more deeply about it, I think not. The language itself is the manifestation of capabilities, but the process exhibiting them is the underlying system, eg. neural nets or human brain.
- amelius 3y ago> “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” "... even to its creators" -- me
- internet101010 3y agoIt's like Skyrim mod that turns shouts into farts.
- jnwatson 3y agoYou win the Internet today. Still, there's a deeper analogy here. Very much in the "enshittification" vein, today's tech companies are about making something cool, getting folks to use it, and then monetizing while gradually turning said cool thing into a bad parody of itself.
- DistractionRect 3y agoIndeed, and we can even summon familiars, though care must be taken that we don't summon something like Microsofts Tay.
- zelias 3y ago"words are power" -- someone wise
- amelius 3y agoYes, this is the distinction. In the past, we did our best to find guarantees about the things we invented. E.g. in control theory we would analytically find the limits of a system's inputs and performance, in CS we would determine bounds on the worst case performance, etc. But nowadays we just dump everything into a giant black box and call it a day.