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Comment by galaxyLogic | Hacker News Reader

The reason LLMs are and will be so powerful I think is that they in essence add up the intellectual output of everybody who's output is available online.

Classical AI was about some genius trying to devise the most genius computer inference algorithm. But any single genius can only do so much in limited time and it is difficult to make them work together.

Whereas LLMs are not genius, they are simply using statistics to predict what is the accumulated intellect on the internet. They are simple but they combine the output of millions of minds, which no human genius could ever do.

They are a brain addition machine, rather than super-intelligent by themselves. But when you add together the outputs of many minds you get powerful general purpose output.

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> They are a brain addition machine

I like that metaphor. LLMs are masters of linguistic addition. They are literally made by adding up language gradients. They accumulate knowledge and insight through exposure to vast swaths of text, stitching together concepts and ideas into an ever-growing tapestry of understanding.

But whereas brains are isolated islands, unable to directly share their contents, language forms a collective reservoir that flows between minds. Words and ideas mix and mingle within this pool, combining into new formulations that reflect the present.

In this way, language displays an evolutionary dynamism that outpaces biological change. LLMs ride this wave, leveraging the emergent intelligence inherent in humanity's shared linguistic legacy. The wisdom accumulated over generations surpasses the capacity of any single mind. We stand upon the shoulders of giants, supported by the communal scaffolding of language and knowledge that previous generations erected. LLMs tap into this source, channeling and distilling the experience contained within our words.

tl;dr AI is riding the language exponential while we are distracted by models and brains, implementation details.

This is a really elegantly worded perspective

They likely watched wheel of time recently...

Nit: they are powerful because they approximate the intellectual outcome of everyone online.

Applying this to time series forecasting of stock trading would mean you are doing what the rest of the market is doing. At that point, you could have just bought index funds.

Time-series forecasting of random processes is impossible

Protip: Buy low, sell high.

One comment that made me think on HN a while back is something akin to "The average IQ is between 85 and 115, therefore AI will be akin to friends with IQ's between 85 and 115 giving you advice". So not that useful?

If the AI can distinguish between good and bad reasoning, it can select training material that has a higher average than than the corpus. If it can output data that covers the range, it can generate its own data to bootstrap higher functioning models (like alpha go playing against itself to achieve superhuman go playing skills).

I also don’t think you need to remove the dumb comments from the training material anyway. The AI could be able to simulate either someone of 80 IQ or 180 IQ, producing output consistent with both personas.

Lower IQ people are likely under represented online.

Accurate information is also over represented because you can be wrong in far more ways than you can be correct. In other words the wisdom of the crowd is in part the 10% of people that know X all match each other while the other 90% is all over the place.

It's not so much about IQ but the amount of knowledge in the system.

And ignorant person could have a very high IQ still be very ignorant.

LLMs may not be "smart" but they know a lot.

Cool, so they'll be able to project the future time-series of the S&P 500 as well as the average of all the analysts in the world combined? What startup can I buy part of that's most adept at selling that bullshit to investors as SaS to most rapidly separate gamblers from their cash? /s

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