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by 0xBA5ED10 hours ago |
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upvoteby tptacek9 hours ago|
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2022 called, wants this argument back. When you're "statistically generating text" to find zero-day vulnerabilities in hard targets, building Linux kernel modules, assembly-optimizing elliptic curve signature algorithms, and solving arbitrary undergraduate math problems instantaneously --- not to mention apparently solving Erdos problems --- the "statistical text" stuff has stopped being a useful description of what's happening, something closer to "it's made of atoms and obeys the laws of thermodynamics" than it is to "a real boundary condition of what it can accomplish".

I don't doubt that there are many very real and meaningful limitations of these systems that deserve to be called out. But "text generation" isn't doing that work.

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upvoteby emp173449 hours ago|
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But the systems that do that impressive work are no longer just LLMs. Look at the Claude Code leak - it’s a sprawling, redundant maze relying on tools and tests to approximate useful output. The actual LLM is a small portion of the total system. It’s a useful tool, but it’s obviously not truly intelligent - it was hacked together using the near-trillions of dollars AI labs have received for this explicit purpose.
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upvoteby tptacek9 hours ago|
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What does this matter? You can build a working coding agent for yourself extremely quickly; it's remarkably straightforward to do (more people should). But look underneath all the "sprawling tools": the LLM itself is a sprawling maze of matrices. It's all sprawling, it's all crazy, and it's insane what they're capable of doing.

Again if you want to say they're limited in some way, I'm all ears, I'm sure they are. But none of that has anything to do with "statistical text generation". Apparently, a huge chunk of all knowledge work is "statistical text generation". I choose to draw from that the conclusion that the "text generation" part of this is not interesting.

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upvoteby emp173449 hours ago|
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Well, hang on a second - it sounds like you may actually disagree with the user who created this thread. That user claims that these systems exhibit “real intelligence”, and success on this Erdos problem is proof.

You seem to be making the claim that LLMs are statistical text generators, but statistical text generation is good enough to succeed in certain cases. Those are different arguments. What do you actually believe? Are we even in disagreement?

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upvoteby tptacek9 hours ago|
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I don't have any opinion about "real intelligence" or not. I'm not a P(doom)er, I don't think we're on the bring of ascending as a species. But I'm also allergic to arguments like "they're just statistical text generators", because that truly does not capture what these things do or what their capabilities are.
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upvoteby baxtr8 hours ago|
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Just to clarify because I’m not sure I understand:

So you agree that LLMs are in fact statistical text generators but you don’t like people use that fact in arguments about the capabilities of the things?

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upvoteby Jtarii5 hours ago|
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It's like a genotype/phenotype distinction, the genotype may be statistical text generator but the phenotype is something much more.
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upvoteby 5 hours ago|
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upvoteby fc417fc8027 hours ago|
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Not parent but I think you're being rather dense. They are _obviously_ statistical text generators. There's plenty of source code out there, anyone can go and inspect it and see for themselves so disputing that is akin to disputing the details of basic arithmetic.

But it is no longer useful to bring that fact up when conversing about their capabilities. Saying "well it's a statistical text generator so ..." is approximately as useful as saying "well it's made of atoms so ...". There are probably some very niche circumstances under which statements of each of those forms is useful but by and large they are not and you can safely ignore anyone who utters them.

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upvoteby pepa658 hours ago|
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He does say that LLMs are just a part of the models used these days.
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upvoteby resident42310 hours ago|
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Solving open math problems is strong evidence of intelligence so there's not really any need for rationalization? I don't understand why intelligence would require intent or motive? Isn't intent just the behaviour of making a specific thing happen rather than other things?
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upvoteby x3ro9 hours ago|
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I'm curious, do you think that this also applies to stable diffusion? Are these models "creative" too?
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upvoteby resident4239 hours ago|
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I haven't used stable diffusion enough to have a strong opinion on it. But my thinking is LLMs have only recently started contributing novel solutions to problems, so maybe there is some threshold above which there's less sloppy remixing of training data and more ability to form novel insights, and image generators haven't crossed this line yet.
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upvoteby famouswaffles9 hours ago|
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Yeah? Those models are creative.
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upvoteby 0xBA5ED9 hours ago|
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The LLM did not solve the problem.
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upvoteby baxtr8 hours ago|
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Who did then?
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