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A non-anthropomorphized view of LLMs

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475 points zdw | 8 comments | | HN request time: 1.22s | source | bottom
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chaps ◴[] No.44484946[source]
I highly recommend playing with embeddings in order to get a stronger intuitive sense of this. It really starts to click that it's a representation of high dimensional space when you can actually see their positions within that space.
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perching_aix ◴[] No.44485088[source]
> of this

You mean that LLMs are more than just the matmuls they're made up of, or that that is exactly what they are and how great that is?

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1. chaps ◴[] No.44485124[source]
Not making a qualitative assessment of any of it. Just pointing out that there are ways to build separate sets of intuition outside of using the "usual" presentation layer. It's very possible to take a red-team approach to these systems, friend.
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2. cootsnuck ◴[] No.44491363[source]
They don't want to. It seems a lot of people are uncomfortable and defensive about anything that may demystify LLMs.

It's been a wake up call for me to see how many people in the tech space have such strong emotional reactions to any notions of trying to bring discourse about LLMs down from the clouds.

The campaigns by the big AI labs have been quite successful.

replies(1): >>44493126 #
3. perching_aix ◴[] No.44493103[source]
Yes, and what I was trying to do is learn a bit more about that alternative intuition of yours. Because it doesn't sound all that different from what's described in the OP, or what anyone can trivially glean from taking a 101 course on AI at university or similar.
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4. perching_aix ◴[] No.44493126[source]
Do you actually consider this is an intellectually honest position? That you have thought about this long and hard, like you present this, second guessed yourself a bunch, tried to critique it, and this is still what you ended up converging on?

But let me substantiate before you (rightly) accuse me of just posting a shallow dismissal.

> They don't want to.

Who's they? How could you possibly know? Are you a mind reader? Worse, a mind reader of the masses?

> It seems a lot of people are uncomfortable and defensive about anything that may demystify LLMs.

That "it seems" is doing some serious work over there. You may perceive and describe many people's comments as "uncomfortable and defensive", but that's entirely your own head cannon. All it takes is for someone to simply disagree. It's worthless.

Have you thought about other possible perspectives? Maybe people have strong opinions because they consider what things present as more important than what they are? [0] Maybe people have strong opinions because they're borrowing from other facets of their personal philosophies, which is what they actually feel strongly about? [1] Surely you can appreciate that there's more to a person than what equivalent-presenting "uncomfortable and defensive" comments allow you to surmise? This is such a blatant textbook kneejerk reaction. "They're doing the thing I wanted to think they do anyways, so clearly they do it for the reasons I assume. Oh how correct I am."

> to any notions of trying to bring discourse about LLMs down from the clouds

(according to you)

> The campaigns by the big AI labs have been quite successful.

(((according to you)))

"It's all the big AI labs having successfully manipulated the dumb sheep which I don't belong to!" Come on... Is this topic really reaching political grifting kind of levels?

[0] tangent: if a feature exists but even after you put an earnest effort into finding it you still couldn't, does that feature really exist?

[1] philosophy is at least kind of a thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Getting_to_Philosoph...

5. chaps ◴[] No.44496047[source]
So what? :)
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6. perching_aix ◴[] No.44497441{3}[source]
Nothing? """:)"""

Was just confusing because your phrasing implied different.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle

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7. chaps ◴[] No.44522358{4}[source]
My real point was to emphasize that play is important because it expands our world of interfaces, whatever those interfaces may be, and however far those interfaces go.

Your antagonistic attitude is not productive nor playful. Lighten up, friend.

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8. perching_aix ◴[] No.44524377{5}[source]
We're veering extremely off topic, but I don't think you're aware and maybe you should be: my antagonistic attitude is 100% a reaction to you being overly friendly. Calling me your "friend" repeatedly without any prior acquaintance comes across as remarkably sarcastic and condescending. The "So what? :)" wasn't any less condescending either as you may imagine, in fact, quite the opposite.

I'm sure there are people who can always reliably respond with kindness despite being handed condescension. As you can probably tell by now, I'm not one of those.