←back to thread

454 points nathan-barry | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.201s | source
Show context
kibwen ◴[] No.45645307[source]
To me, the diffusion-based approach "feels" more akin to whats going on in an animal brain than the token-at-a-time approach of the in-vogue LLMs. Speaking for myself, I don't generate words one a time based on previously spoken words; I start by having some fuzzy idea in my head and the challenge is in serializing it into language coherently.
replies(14): >>45645350 #>>45645383 #>>45645401 #>>45645402 #>>45645509 #>>45645523 #>>45645607 #>>45645665 #>>45645670 #>>45645891 #>>45645973 #>>45647491 #>>45648578 #>>45652892 #
crubier ◴[] No.45645401[source]
You 100% do pronounce or write words one at a time sequentially.

But before starting your sentence, you internally formulate the gist of the sentence you're going to say.

Which is exactly what happens in LLMs latent space too before they start outputting the first token.

replies(5): >>45645466 #>>45645546 #>>45645695 #>>45645968 #>>45646205 #
taeric ◴[] No.45645546[source]
I'm curious what makes you so confident on this? I confess I expect that people are often far more cognizant of the last thing that the they want to say when they start?

I don't think you do a random walk through the words of a sentence as you conceive it. But it is hard not to think people don't center themes and moods in their mind as they compose their thoughts into sentences.

Similarly, have you ever looked into how actors learn their lines? It is often in a way that is a lot closer to a diffusion than token at a time.

replies(7): >>45645580 #>>45645621 #>>45646119 #>>45646153 #>>45646165 #>>45647044 #>>45647828 #
1. bee_rider ◴[] No.45647044[source]
It must be the case that some smart people have studied how we think, right?

The first person experience of having a thought, to me, feels like I have the whole thought in my head, and then I imagine expressing it to somebody one word at a time. But it really feels like I’m reading out the existing thought.

Then, if I’m thinking hard, I go around a bit and argue against the thought that was expressed in my head (either because it is not a perfect representation of the actual underlying thought, or maybe because it turns out that thought was incorrect once I expressed it sequentially).

At least that’s what I think thinking feels like. But, I am just a guy thinking about my brain. Surely philosophers of the mind or something have queried this stuff with more rigor.