zlacker

>>mef+(OP)
All this interview proves is that Chomsky has fallen far, far behind how AI systems work today and is retreating to scoff at all the progress machine learning has achieved. Machine learning has given rise to AI now. It can't explain itself from principles or its architecture. But you couldn't explain your brain from principles or its architecture, you'd need all of neuroscience to do it. Because the brain is digital and (probably) does not reason like our brains do, it somehow falls short?

While there's some things in this I find myself nodding along to in this, I can't help but feel it's an a really old take that is super vague and hand-wavy. The truth is that all of the progress on machine learning is absolutely science. We understand extremely well how to make neural networks learn efficiently; it's why the data leads anywhere at all. Backpropagation and gradient descent are extraordinarily powerful. Not to mention all the "just engineering" of making chips crunch incredible amounts of numbers.

Chomsky is extremely ungenerous to the progress and also pretty flippant about what this stuff can do.

I think we should probably stop listening to Chomsky; he hasn't said anything here that he hasn't already say a thousand times for decades.

>>titzer+S5
It really shouldn't be hard to understand that a titan of a field has forgot more than what an arm chair enthusiast knows.

I remember having thoughts like this until I listened to him talk on a podcast for 3 hours about chatGPT.

What was most obvious is Chomsky really knows linguistics and I don't.

"What Kind of Creatures Are We?" is good place to start.

We should take having Chomsky still around to comment on LLMs as one of the greatest intellectual gifts.

Much before listening to his thoughts on LLMs was me projecting my disdain for his politics.