undefined | Better HN

story

0 pointsalmosthere6mo ago0 comments

We used to say "if you put a million monkeys on typewriters you would eventually get shakespear" and no one would ever say that anymore, because now we can literally write shakespear with an LLM.

And the monkey strategy has been 100% dismissed as shit..

We know how to deploy monkeys on typewriters, but we don't know what they'll type.

We know how to deploy transformers to train and inference a model, but we don't know what they'll type.

We DON'T know how a thinking human (or animal) brain works..

Do you see the difference.

0 comments

nearbuy6mo ago

The monkeys on typewriters saying is just a colorful way of saying that an infinite random sequence will contain all finite sequences somewhere within it. Which is true. But I don't see what infinite random sequences have to do with LLMs or human thinking.

> Do you see the difference

No? I'm not sure what you're getting at.

procaryote6mo ago

To be fair, we also trained the LLM on (among other things) shakespeare, and adjusted the weights so that generating shakespeare would be more likely after that training.

We don't claim a JPEG can paint great art, even though certain jpegs do.

almosthereOP6mo ago

So, more proof it's not thinking, right? It can only regurgitate a large if/else superstructure with some jumping around.

procaryote6mo ago

Who truly knows if you can make an if-else + randomness structure big enough to become smart?

But yes, we built a machine that generates text similar to what we built it from, and now we're looking at it generating text and are all impressed.

KoolKat236mo ago

I was going to use this analogy in the exact opposite way. We do have a very good understanding of how the human brain works. Saying we don't understand how the brain works is like saying we don't understand how the weather works.

If you put a million monkeys on typewriters you would eventually get shakespeare is exactly why LLM's will succeed and why humans have succeeded. If this weren't the case why didn't humans 30000 years ago create spacecraft if we were endowed with the same natural "gift".

almosthereOP6mo ago

Yeah no, show me one scientific paper that says we know how the brain works. And not a single neuron because that does absolute shit towards understanding thinking.

KoolKat236mo ago

This is exactly why I mentioned the weather.

A scientific paper has to be verifiable, you should be able to recreate the experiment and come to the same conclusion. It's very very difficult to do with brains with trillions of parameters and that can't be controlled to the neuron level. Nothwithstanding the ethical issues.

We don't have a world weather simulator that is 100% accurate either given the complex interplay and inability to control the variables i.e. it's not verifiable. It'd be a bit silly to say we don't know why it's going to rain at my house tomorrow.

Until then it is a hypothesis, and we can't say we know even if the overwhelming evidence indicates that in fact that we do know.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

nearbuy6mo ago

> Do you see the difference

No? I'm not sure what you're getting at.

procaryote6mo ago

To be fair, we also trained the LLM on (among other things) shakespeare, and adjusted the weights so that generating shakespeare would be more likely after that training.

We don't claim a JPEG can paint great art, even though certain jpegs do.

almosthereOP6mo ago

So, more proof it's not thinking, right? It can only regurgitate a large if/else superstructure with some jumping around.

procaryote6mo ago

Who truly knows if you can make an if-else + randomness structure big enough to become smart?

But yes, we built a machine that generates text similar to what we built it from, and now we're looking at it generating text and are all impressed.

KoolKat236mo ago

almosthereOP6mo ago

Yeah no, show me one scientific paper that says we know how the brain works. And not a single neuron because that does absolute shit towards understanding thinking.

KoolKat236mo ago

This is exactly why I mentioned the weather.

Until then it is a hypothesis, and we can't say we know even if the overwhelming evidence indicates that in fact that we do know.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse