u/breadist

I think it's understandable, because LLMs are doing exactly what they're supposed to do: emulate the ideal response that a human would say. It's literally what they're designed to do. And as humans, we're designed to see other things that act like humans as humans. These things are acting an awful lot like humans, so it's hard not to see them like that and think that somewhere in the bits, something there is actually understanding you and connecting with you.

The problem is we have no evidence that they understand anything, and we have every reason to believe they're just doing what they've been trained to do: sound like a very helpful, very smart human. We've just gotten so good at making the machines sound very smart that people are being tricked into thinking they are actually conscious or actually have real understanding.

To me, someone who uses LLMs quite often as a tool (all day at work as a software developer, and sometimes at home on personal projects), I notice the times when they clearly don't actually understand. They continue to make mistakes that humans don't make. Even just in a single day I encounter so many instances of LLMs saying stupid shit that makes no sense and that a human would never, ever say, that it's pretty easy for me to remember that I'm not talking to a human.

But I also never get friendly with them or try to use them for life advice, comfort, companionship, etc. I find it hollow and I'm not interested in it. I only want to use them as a tool and that's it. It pisses me off when they get too friendly with me and then I give it more specific direction to avoid that behavior whenever it happens.

I guess people are lonely and like to see humanity where they can. I dunno. I'm not really lonely, and I don't see humanity in these machines. I see a useful tool. That's enough, I don't need a fake friend.

But it's not really that it understands what the inconsistency is, or even that it's an inconsistency at all. It's still just following the same rules it always follows: neurons. Follow the neurons. It has no deep "understanding" of what these neurons mean. It's all just a neural network, and the things they can output when trained and connected at scale are indeed very impressive. But it doesn't mean there is anything there to "understand" what's happening. It's still just neurons connecting to neurons to calculate a likely next token. We have no evidence that there is any level of "understanding" going on.

It knows what the next token is, but it's just a number. It renders it to us as a part of a word. But LLMs don't know what words mean. They only know what words come after other words. Sometimes, it thinks the wrong word comes after the other words. And sometimes, after it does that, it thinks a correction goes after that. But it doesn't know what a "correction" is. It's just more tokens to the LLM.

I thought that's what a 90s kid was. Not being born in the 90s but being a kid in the 90s.

Brony doesn't imply any sexual attraction to the ponies. It does mean what you think it means.

The people telling you it's a sex thing are idiots. Yes, those people exist in the fandom. A brony is just anyone who likes MLP and wants to describe themselves as one. For some of them it's a sex thing, but for most it's not.

I think the misconception just comes from it being a kind of niche thing, and for a lot of people they only hear about it in the context of "those weird brony people" when someone is talking about weird sex things.

• he

This doctor needs to brush up on his biology. He thinks chromosomes = sex = phenotype = gender, no exceptions. Come on!! We've known this isn't true for a very, very long time. Do better, guy.

Predicting the next token DOES actually explain that behavior.

Every time it goes to predict the next token, it's reading the entire conversation before it. And each time it reads it, the model can go down a slightly different path. If it starts going down the correct path, then encounters the incorrect statement, it can either continue with the incorrect statement or go down a more correct path.

If it's going down a more correct path this time, that path includes it correcting itself on the mistake.

LLMs as implemented are not deterministic. They don't literally predict THE most likely next token - they choose from a number of likely predictions. And since it's going back over the conversation for every next token it predicts, sometimes it connects different neurons in the process. That neuron can be one that corrects its mistake.

It's still not "understanding" anything in the true sense like a human does. It's just going through a different path which includes a correction, rather than putting a lot of emphasis on being consistent with the thing it already said, so it can notice the inconsistency and write a correction.

Still needs nothing other than next token prediction. Nothing new or surprising is happening here.

There's a really really really big difference between using AI to do research, and using it to do your thinking or writing or all your work for you. Don't act like they're the same just because you hate AI.

You don't have to like AI. I get it, there are so many reasons to hate it. I really do get it. But did you ever consider that Google is getting enshittified, and for a lot of things, basically the only way you're even going to get an answer is with AI? I fucking hate that that's what things have come to, but it's true, and I can't do anything about it, nor can Hank. If he wants to get shit done, I can see why he's using AI for research. I do too. It's really hard not to. Not impossible, just really hard.

Humans are complex and you don't have to agree with everything they do. You really have to pick and choose what's actually worth judging people for, because nobody on earth, probably not even yourself, is going to live up to your standard otherwise.

I'm gonna reserve that type of judgement for people who actively, eagerly misrepresent reality and have no allegiance to the truth. Hank's not it.

You don't have to agree with his AI use. He's not out here spreading hate or misinformation - he's actually trying to do some good, and he's so forthcoming with it. You can tell he really cares. He's one of the good ones.

Yes, that's the word for changing the weights. That's what that means. It doesn't mean training or programming anything new into the model.

To put it another way, it's steering like a car - the road already exists and you can make the choice to go down that road or not. You're not making a new road, you're just choosing to go down it specifically.

By "steering" the model, you're biasing it to go down a certain road. The model could always have gone down that road without steering it, given the right prompts. But the steering tells it to go over there more than it would otherwise. That's all. It's literally just saying "do this one more". And "this one" is what you could call an "evil neuron" - it makes the responses sound evil.

Steering didn't create the "evil neuron". It was always there. The steering is just biasing it to go there more consistently.

Holy crap that's a magnificent crest!

It wasn't fed anything new to do this, just modified weights. It's not new training or programming, the model already has the capacity to do this, it's just changing what's emphasized in the behavior.

Why would they do that unless you were going to get a refund under customer of size? They already got their money for the seat. The person is suggesting no refunds, so it doesn't matter who they sell the seat to. They can't double-sell the seat and make twice the money, they have to refund somebody if they sell their seat.

It says 29th which is the day after tomorrow.

Do they still have oats like the regular gf?

Yes! Enjoy it while you can :) eat something delicious for me, personally I miss pastries like croissants - they are probably, to me, the hardest thing to replace gluten free.

Don't they say things like "you can't evolve half an eye" or " we've never seen speciation" or "evolution only changes pre-existing genes, it doesn't make new ones", all of which are demonstrably false and very simple to counter, and then their response is just "nuh uh"?

It's very very likely but yeah don't stop eating gluten yet and talk to your doctor, they'll probably want to do an endoscopy and you MUST be eating gluten for this to be accurate. Sorry, and welcome to the club most likely?

Okay hold on, when it's Anthropic testing things out, they can run Claude without internet. You can't, they can. It's their software running on their data centres, they can change what they need to for their tests

Nobody was smart enough to try to find the extra page of the constitution until Trump. He's smart, he knows the best words.

Their invisible sky man doesn't like you.

In a literal sense they have files on their servers that you download when you listen to the music. That's not arguable, it's just what's actually happening.

If you are talking about in a moral sense, like they don't really own them, well... Nobody was talking about that, it's not relevant, I guess you just want to hate on Spotify today.

Hahahaha what is that abomination, holy crap. Pure fantasy.

Love when trash takes itself out.

I believe you, that person is right but just being a bit harsh. I can tell you love her just by posting here asking for advice. Take care of your chunky girl and try to make her less chunky ♥️