noosphr 2 days ago

A term like knowing is fine if it is used in the abstract and then redefined more precisely in the paper.

It isn't.

Worse they start adding terms like scheming, pretending, awareness, and on and on. At this point you might as well take the model home and introduce it to your parents as your new life partner.

  • 0xDEAFBEAD 2 days ago

    >A term like knowing is fine if it is used in the abstract and then redefined more precisely in the paper.

    Sounds like a purely academic exercise.

    Is there any genuine uncertainty about what the term "knowing" means in this context, in practice?

    Can you name 2 distinct plausible definitions of "knowing", such that it would matter for the subject at hand which of those 2 definitions they're using?

    • Msurrow 2 days ago

      > Sounds like a purely academic exercise.

      Well, yes. It’s an academic research paper (I assume since it’s submitted to arXiv) and to be submitted to academic journals/conferences/etc., so it’s a fairly reasonable critique of the authors/the paper.

devmor 2 days ago

One could say, for instance… A pattern matching algorithm detects when patterns match.

  • 0xDEAFBEAD 2 days ago

    That's not what's going on here? The algorithms aren't being given any pattern of "being evaluated" / "not being evaluated", as far as I can tell. They're doing it zero-shot.

    Put it another way: Why is this distinction important? We use the word "knowing" with humans. But one could also argue that humans are pattern-matchers! Why, specifically, wouldn't "knowing" apply to LLMs? What are the minimal changes one could make to existing LLM systems such that you'd be happy if the word "knowing" was applied to them?

    • devmor 2 days ago

      Not to be snarky but “as far as I can tell” is the rub isn’t it?

      LLMs are better at matching patterns than we are in some cases. That’s why we made them!

      > But one could also argue that humans are pattern-matchers!

      No, one could not unless they were being disingenuous.

      • mewpmewp2 2 days ago

        What about animals knowing? E.g. dog knows how to X or its name. Are these things fine to say?

      • 0xDEAFBEAD a day ago

        >Not to be snarky but “as far as I can tell” is the rub isn’t it?

        From skimming the paper, I don't believe they're doing in-context learning, which would be the obvious interpretation of "pattern matching". That's what I meant to communicate.

        >No, one could not unless they were being disingenuous.

        I think it is just about as disingenuous as labeling LLMs as pattern-matchers. I don't see why you would consider the one claim to be disingenuous, but not the other.