@ritswd
@lemmy.worldTo be clear I’m not expert. But I know a bit.
The way LLMs (like ChatGPT, GPT-4, etc) work, is that they continuously decide what the next best-sounding word might be, and they print it, over and over and over, until it makes sentences and paragraphs. And the way that next-word decision works under the hood, is with a deep neural net that was initially a theoretical tool designed to imitate the neural circuits that make up our biological nervous system and brain. The actual code for LLMs is rather small, it’s just about storing and managing representations of a neuron, and rearranging the connections between neurons as it learns more; just like the brain does.
I was listening to the first part of this “This American Life” episode this morning that covers it really well: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-american-life/id201671138?i=1000618286089 In it, Microsoft AI experts also express excitement and confusion about how GPT-4 seems to actually reason about things, rather than just bullshitting the next word to make it look like it reasons, like it’s supposed to be designed to do.
And so I was thinking: the reason why it works might be the other way around. It’s not that LLMs are smart enough to reason instead of bullshit, it’s that human’s reasoning actually works out of constantly bullshitting too, one word at a time. Imitate the human brain exactly, and I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that we land with a familiar-looking kind of intelligence - or lack thereof. Right?
I seem to hear from a variety of people that they struggle to fall asleep at night; but the difficult to fall asleep sounds like an evolutionary downside. Even as hunter-gatherers, being able to sleep whenever and wherever sounds like it would be an advantage.
Is it a recent product of modern times and people didn’t actually struggle with it a while back? In which case, what of modern life is causing this? If not, what is the evolutionary advantage of not falling asleep easily?
Both their functionings are complex, so people can get impressed. But for both of them, all the complexity is inside the device and there isn’t much to put together; and the way they hook up to your house is really simple.
Why YSK: so you don’t live too long with a broken toilet or garbage disposal, thinking it will be too hard to replace. Those two are some of the simplest things to DIY.