Comment by fenomas

Comment by fenomas 3 days ago

"Know" doesn't have any rigorous precisely-defined senses to be used! Asking for it not to be used colloquially is the same as asking for it never to be used at all.

I mean - people have been saying stuff like "grep knows whether it's writing to stdout" for decades. In the context of talking about computer programs, that usage for "know" is the established/only usage, so it's hard to imagine any typical HN reader seeing TFA's title and interpreting it as an epistemological claim. Rather, it seems to me that the people suggesting "know" mustn't be used about LLMs because epistemology are the ones departing from standard usage.

random3 3 days ago

colloquial use of "know" implies anthropomorphisation. Arguing that usign "knowing" in the title and "awarness" and "superhuman" in the abstract is just colloquial for "matching" is splitting hairs to an absurd degree.

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fenomas 2 days ago

You missed the substance of my comment. Certainly the title is anthropomorphism - and anthropomorphism is a rhetorical device, not a scientific claim. The reader can understand that TFA means it non-rigorously, because there is no rigorous thing for it to mean.
As such, to me the complaint behind this thread falls into the category of "I know exactly what TFA meant but I want to argue about how it was phrased", which is definitely not my favorite part of the HN comment taxonomy.

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- random3 2 days ago
  
  I see. Thanks for clarifying. I did want to argue about how it was phrased and what is alluding to. Implying increased risk from "knowing" the eval regime is roughly as weak as the definition of "knowing". It can be equaly a measure of general detection capability, as it can about evaluation incapability - i.e. unlikely news worthy, unless it reached top HN because of the "know" in the title.
  
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  fenomas 2 days ago
  
  Thanks for replying - I kind of follow you but I only skimmed the paper. To be clear I was more responding to the replies about cognition, than to what you said about the eval regime.
  Incidentally I think you might be misreading the paper's use of "superhuman"? I assume it's being used to mean "at a higher rate than the human control group", not (ironically) in the colloquial "amazing!" sense.
  
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- lamename 2 days ago
  
  I really do agree with your point overall, but in a technical paper I do think even word choice can be implicitly a claim. Scientists present what they know or are claiming and thus word it carefully.
  My background is neuroscience, where anthropomorphising is particularly discouraged, because it assumes knowledge or certainty of an unknowable internal state, so the language is carefully constructed e.g. when explaining animal behavior, and it's for good reason.
  I think the same is true here for a model "knowing" somethig, both in isolation within this paper, and come on, consider the broader context of AI and AGI as a whole. Thus it's the responsibility of the authors to write accordingly. If it were a blog I wouldn't care, but it's not. I hold technical papers to a higher standard.
  If we simply disagree that's fine, but we do disagree.
  
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