zlacker

>>srames+(OP)
The more I think about LLMs the stranger it feels trying to grasp what they are. To me, when I'm working with them, they don't feel intelligence but rather an attempt at mimicking it. You can never trust, that the AI actually did something smart or dump. The judge always has to be you.

It's ability to pattern match it's way through a code base is impressive until it's not and you always have to pull it back to reality when it goes astray.

It's ability to plan ahead is so limited and it's way of "remembering" is so basic. Every day it's a bit like 50 first dates.

Nonetheless seeing what can be achieved with this pseudo intelligence tool makes me feel a little in awe. It's the contrast between not being intelligence and achieving clearly useful outcomes if stirred correctly and the feeling that we just started to understand how to interact with this alien.

>>Chipsh+jZ
> they don't feel intelligence but rather an attempt at mimicking it

Because that's exactly what they are. An LLM is just a big optimization function with the objective "return the most probabilistically plausible sequence of words in a given context".

There is no higher thinking. They were literally built as a mimicry of intelligence.

>>Gazoch+u11
I don't understand why this point is NOT getting across to so many on HN.

LLM's do not think, understand, reason, reflect, comprehend and they never shall. I have commented elsewhere but this bears repeating

If you had enough paper and ink and the patience to go through it, you could take all the training data and manually step through and train the same model. Then once you have trained the model you could use even more pen and paper to step through the correct prompts to arrive at the answer. All of this would be a completely mechanical process. This really does bear thinking about. It's amazing the results that LLM's are able to acheive. But let's not kid ourselves and start throwing about terms like AGI or emergence just yet. It makes a mechanical process seem magical (as do computers in general).

I should add it also makes sense as to why it would, just look at the volume of human knowledge (the training data). It's the training data with the mass quite literally of mankind's knowledge, genius, logic, inferences, language and intellect that does the heavy lifting.

>>encycl+4i1
> If you had enough paper and ink and the patience to go through it, you could take all the training data and manually step through and train the same model.

But you could make the exact same argument for a human mind? (could just simulate all those neural interactions with pen and paper)

The only way to get out of it is to basically admit magic (or some other metaphysical construct with a different name).

>>myrmid+Vn1
I'm not so sure "a human mind" is the kind of newtonian clockwork thingiemabob you "could just simulate" within the same degree of complexity as the thing you're simulating, at least not without some sacrifices.