6 ms·

It doesn't, though. From the outside, without access to the parameters, you can't distinguish the watermarking system from a random number generator. We alrea

It doesn't, though. From the outside, without access to the parameters, you can't distinguish the watermarking system from a random number generator. We already use an RNG at inference precisely because it leads to higher-quality output. Changing what function is generating our random numbers changes the sequence, not the randomness from the point of view of a user. Fundamentally the article is railing against --temp > 0.0. He doesn't know what he's talking about.

simonh 1mo ago
>It doesn't, though. From the outside, without access to the parameters, you can't distinguish the watermarking system from a random number generator. You can't as a user tell by how much the quality of the output was degraded. True. >We already use an RNG at inference precisely because it leads to higher-quality output. Changing what function is generating our random numbers changes the sequence, not the randomness from the point of view of a user. I'm not saying it wasn't random and now it is. I know how these things work. I said that the quality of the system is in the quality of the probabilities. That quality is being degraded.
- regularfry 1mo ago
  What you're arguing for is that the deviation from true randomness is worse than the PRNGs that are already used, and that the deviation is anticorrelated with some notion of quality. You need both. I don't think you've got either.
- rbits 29d ago
  > I said that the quality of the system is in the quality of the probabilities. That quality is being degraded. How is it being degraded exactly? The probability that it picks each option will still be the same, just deterministic based on a seed generated from the text. LLMs already use PRNGs. This is just changing the source of the seed. And a different seed does not change the "quality" of the random numbers. Even if you are worried that it somehow might, they can just use a cryptographic PRNG, then it is literally guaranteed that the source of the seed will not affect the output in any noticable way.

simonh 1mo ago

>It doesn't, though. From the outside, without access to the parameters, you can't distinguish the watermarking system from a random number generator. You can't as a user tell by how much the quality of the output was degraded. True. >We already use an RNG at inference precisely because it leads to higher-quality output. Changing what function is generating our random numbers changes the sequence, not the randomness from the point of view of a user. I'm not saying it wasn't random and now it is. I know how these things work. I said that the quality of the system is in the quality of the probabilities. That quality is being degraded.

regularfry 1mo ago
What you're arguing for is that the deviation from true randomness is worse than the PRNGs that are already used, and that the deviation is anticorrelated with some notion of quality. You need both. I don't think you've got either.
rbits 29d ago
> I said that the quality of the system is in the quality of the probabilities. That quality is being degraded. How is it being degraded exactly? The probability that it picks each option will still be the same, just deterministic based on a seed generated from the text. LLMs already use PRNGs. This is just changing the source of the seed. And a different seed does not change the "quality" of the random numbers. Even if you are worried that it somehow might, they can just use a cryptographic PRNG, then it is literally guaranteed that the source of the seed will not affect the output in any noticable way.