AI writing, scraped by AI, producing more AI writing…
So not “gray goo” exactly, but “gray slop”?
AI making itself sick and worthless after flooding the internet with trash just gives me a warm glow.
interdasting
As junk web pages written by AI proliferate, the models that rely on that data will suffer.
Good.
provenance requires some way to filter the internet into human-generated and AI-generated content, which hasn’t been cracked yet
It doesn’t need to be filtered into human / AI content. It needs to be filtered into good (true) / bad (false) content. Or a “truth score” for each.
We don’t teach children to read by just handing them random tweets. We give them books that are made specifically for children. Our filtering mechanism for good / bad content is very robust for humans. Why can’t AI just read every piece of “classic literature”, famous speeches, popular books, good TV and movie scripts, textbooks, etc?
It doesn’t need to be filtered into human / AI content. It needs to be filtered into good (true) / bad (false) content. Or a “truth score” for each.
That isn’t enough because the model isn’t able to reason.
I’ll give you an example. Suppose that you feed the model with both sentences:
- Cats have fur.
- Birds have feathers.
Both sentences are true. And based on vocabulary of both, the model can output the following sentences:
- Cats have feathers.
- Birds have fur.
Both are false but the model doesn’t “know” it. All that it knows is that “have” is allowed to go after both “cats” and “birds”, and that both “feathers” and “fur” are allowed to go after “have”.
Both sentences are true. And based on vocabulary of both, the model can output the following sentences:
- Cats have feathers.
- Birds have fur
This is not how the models are trained or work.
Both are false but the model doesn’t “know” it. All that it knows is that “have” is allowed to go after both “cats” and “birds”, and that both “feathers” and “fur” are allowed to go after “have”.
Demonstrably false. This isn’t how LLMs are trained or built.
Just considering the contextual relationships between word embeddings that are created during training is evidence enough. Those relationships from the multi-vector fields are an emergent property that doesn’t exist in the dataset.
If you want a better understanding of what I just said, take a look at this Computerphile video from four years ago. And this came out before the LLM hype and before ChatGPT 3, which was the big leap in LLMs.
It’s not just a predictive text program. That’s been around for decades. That’s a common misconception.
As I understand it, it uses statistics from the whole text to create new text. It would be very rare to output “cats have feathers” because that phrase doesn’t ever appear in the training data. Both words “have feathers” never follow “cats”.
But the fact remains that it doesn’t know what a cat or a feather is. All of this is still based purely on statistical frequency and not at all on actual meanings.
Your “ackshyually” is missing the point.
because that phrase doesn’t ever appear in the training data.
Eh but LLMs abstract. It has seen “<animal> have feathers” and “<animal> have fur” quite a lot of times. The problem isn’t that LLMs can’t reason at all, the problem is that they do employ techniques used in proper reasoning, in particular tracking context throughout the text (cross-attention) but lack techniques necessary for the whole thing, instead relying on confabulation to sound convincing regardless of the BS they spout. Suffices to emulate an Etonian but that’s not a high standard.
Workarounds for those sorts of limitations have been developed, though. Chain-of-thought prompting has been around for a while now, and I recall recently seeing an article about a model that had that built right into it; it had been trained to use <thought></thought> tags to enclose invisible chunks of its output that would be hidden from the end user but would be used by the AI to work its way through a problem. So if you asked it whether cats had feathers it might respond “<thought>Feathers only grow on birds and dinosaurs. Cats are mammals.</thought> No, cats don’t have feathers.” And you’d only see the latter bit. It was a pretty neat approach to improving LLM reasoning.
and that is exactly how a predictive text algorithm works.
-
some tokens go in
-
they are processed by a deterministic, static statistical model, and a set of probabilities (always the same, deterministic, remember?) comes out.
-
pick the word with the highest probability, add it to your initial string and start over.
-
if you want variety, add some randomness and don’t just always pick the most probable next token.
Coincidentally, this is exactly how llms work. It’s a big markov chain, but with a novel lossy compression algorithm on its state transition table. The last point is also the reason why, if anyone says they can fix llm hallucinations, they’re lying.
Coincidentally, this is exactly how llms work
Everyone who says this doesn’t actually understand how LLMs work.
Multivector word embeddings create emergent relationships that’s new knowledge that doesn’t exist in the training dataset.
Computerphile did a good video on this well before the LLM craze.
-
That’s what smaller models do, but it doesn’t yield great performance because there’s only so much stuff available. To get to gpt4 levels you need a lot more data, and to break the next glass ceiling you’ll need even more.
Then these models are stupid. Humans don’t start as a blank slate. They have an inherent aptitude for language and communication. These models should start out with basics of language, so they don’t have to learn it from the ground up. That’s the next step. Right now they’re just well read idiots.
Then these models are stupid
Yup that is kind of the point. They are math functions designed to approximate human tasks.
These models should start out with basics of language, so they don’t have to learn it from the ground up. That’s the next step. Right now they’re just well read idiots.
I’m not sure what you’re pointing at here. How they do it right now, simplified, is you have a small model designed to cut text into tokens (“knowledge of syllables”), which are fed into a larger model which turns tokens into semantic information (“knowledge of language”), which is fed to a ridiculously fat model which “accomplishes the task” (“knowledge of things”).
The first two models are small enough that they can be trained on the kind of data you describe, classic books, movie scripts etc… A couple hundred billion words maybe. But the last one requires orders of magnitude more data, in the trillions.
People are already comparing older content with Low Background Steel, as it’s uncontaminated
And they’re overlooking that radionuclide contamination of steel actually isn’t much of a problem any more, since the surge in background radionuclides caused by nuclear testing peaked in 1963 and has since gone down almost back to the original background level again.
I guess it’s still a good analogy, though. People bring up Low Background Steel because they think radionuclide contamination is an unsolved problem (despite it having been basically solved), and they bring up “model collapse” because they think it’s an unsolved problem (despite it having been basically solved). It’s like newspaper stories, everyone sees the big scary front page headline but nobody pays attention to the little block of text retracting it on page 8.
Garbage in; Garbage out.
Shit-fueled ouroboros
Recycle the garbage that comes out… Still more garbage out.
You can’t explain it!
Well, you’ve got a timestamped copy of much of the Web that existed up until latent-diffusion models at archive.org. That may not give you access to newer information, but it’s a pretty whopping big chunk of data to work with.
Hopefully archive.org have measures in place to stop people from yanking all their data too quickly. As least not without a hefty donation or something. As a user it can chug a bit, and I’m hoping that’s the rate-limiting I’m talking about and not that they’re swamped.
That would go against the principal of the archive imo but regardless, if you take away all means of acquiring data freely, you are just giving companies like OpenAI and Google who already have copies of it an insane advantage.
AI isn’t going away, we need to make sure we have free access to it as to not give our whole economy to a handful of companies.
Water is wet
Is it wet or does it make other things wet?
The AI art is inbreeding.
⢀⣠⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⣠⣤⣶⣶ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⢰⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⣀⣀⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡏⠉⠛⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠈⠛⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠿⠛⠉⠁⠀⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠙⠿⠿⠿⠻⠿⠿⠟⠿⠛⠉⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣸⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣄⠀⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣴⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠏⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠠⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⠀⠀⢰⣹⡆⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣭⣷⠀⠀⠀⠸⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠃⠀⠀⠈⠉⠀⠀⠤⠄⠀⠀⠀⠉⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⢿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢾⣿⣷⠀⠀⠀⠀⡠⠤⢄⠀⠀⠀⠠⣿⣿⣷⠀⢸⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡀⠉⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢄⠀⢀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠉⠉⠁⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢹⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠃⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢸⣿⣿
deleted by creator
Maybe we can use it to train the other AIs to help ourselves.
News at 11.
Oh no, the AI are inbreeding.
