☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆

  • 511 Posts
  • 462 Comments
Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: January 18th, 2020

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  • I’d say it’s not so much that this tech doesn’t have value, but that it gets hyped up and used for things it really shouldn’t be used for. Specifically, the way models work currently, they’re not suitable for any scenario where you need an exact answer. So, it’s great for stuff like generative art or creative writing, but absolutely terrible for solving math problems or driving cars. Understanding the limitations of the tech is key for applying it in a sensible way.




  • not working due to hallucinations

    It’s pretty clear that hallucinations are an issue only for specific use cases. This problem certainly doesn’t make ML useless. For example, I find it’s far faster to use a code oriented model to get an idea of how to solve a problem than going to stack overflow. The output of the model doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to get me moving in the right direction.

    Furthermore, there is nothing to suggest that the problem of hallucinations is fundamental and can’t be addressed going forward. I’ve linked an example of a research team doing precisely that above.

    wasteful in terms of resources

    Sure, but so are plenty of other things. And as I’ve illustrated above, there are already drastic improvements happening in this area.

    creates problematic behaviors in terms of privacy

    Not really a unique problem either.

    creates more inequality

    Don’t see how that’s the case. In fact, I’d argue the opposite to be true, especially if the technology is open and available to everyone.

    and other problems and is thus in most cases (say outside of e.g numerical optimization as already done at e.g DoE, so in the “traditional” sense of AI, not the LLM craze) better be entirely ignored.

    There is a lot of hype around this tech, and some of it will die down eventually. However, it would be a mistake to throw the baby out with the bath water.

    what I mean is that the argument of inevitability itself is dangerous, often abused.

    The argument of inevitability stems from the fact that people have already found many commercial uses for this tech, and there is a ton of money being poured into it. This is unlikely to stop regardless of what your personal opinion on the tech is.





  • Open source does actually pave the way towards addressing many of the problems. For example, Petals is a torrent style system for running models which allows regular people to share resources to run models.

    Problems like hallucinations and energy consumption aren’t inherent either. These problems are actively being worked on, and people are finding ways to make models more efficient all the time. For example, by using the same techniques Google used to solve Go (MTCS and backprop), Llama8B gets 96.7% on math benchmark GSM8K. That’s better than GPT-4, Claude and Gemini, with 200x fewer parameters. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2406.07394

    And here’s an approach being explored for making models more reliable https://www.wired.com/story/game-theory-can-make-ai-more-correct-and-efficient/

    The reality is that we can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube now. This tech will be developed one way or the other, and it’s much better if it’s developed in the open.