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Comment by measurablefunc | Hacker News Reader

Because they encode statistical properties of the training corpus. You might not know why they work but plenty of people know why they work & understand the mechanics of approximating probability distributions w/ parametrized functions to sell it as a panacea for stupidity & the path to an automated & luxurious communist utopia.

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My goodness. Please introduce me to this "plenty of people". I'm in the field, and none of them work with me.

But I can tell you that statistics and parametrized functions have absolutely nothing to do with it. You're way out of your depth my friend.

Yes, yes, no one understands how anything works. Calculus is magic, derivatives are pixie dust, gradient descent is some kind of alien technology. It's amazing hairless apes have managed to get this far w/ automated boolean algebra handed to us from our long forgotten godly ancestors, so on & so forth.

No this is false. No one understands. Using big words doesn’t change the fact that you cannot explain for any given input output pair how the LLM arrived at the answer.

Every single academic expert who knows what they are talking about can confirm that we do not understand LLMs. We understand atoms and we know the human brain is made 100 percent out of atoms.we may know how atoms interact and bond and how a neuron works but none of this allows us to understand the brain. In the same way we do not understand LLMs.

Characterizing ML as some statistical approximation or best fit curve is just using an analogy to cover up something we don’t understand. Heck the human brain can practically be characterized by the same analogies. We. Do. Not. Understand. LLMs. Stop pretending that you do.

I'm not pretending. Unlike you I do not have any issues making sense of function approximation w/ gradient descent. I learned this stuff when I was an undergrad so I understand exactly what's going on. You might be confused but that's a personal problem you should work to rectify by learning the basics.

omfg the hard part of ML is proving back-propagation from first principles and that's not even that hard. Basic calculus and application of the chain rule that's it. Anyone can understand ML, not anyone can understand something like quantum physics.

Anyone can understand the "learning algorithm" but the sheer complexity of the output of the "learning algorithm" is way to high such that we cannot at all characterize even how an LLM arrived at the most basic query.

This isn't just me saying this. ANYONE who knows what they are talking about knows we don't understand LLMs. Geoffrey Hinton: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/zKM-msksXq0. Geoffrey, if you are unaware, is the person who started the whole machine learning craze over a decade ago. The god father of ML.

Understand?

There's no confusion. Just people who don't what they are talking about (you)

I don't see how telling me I don't understand anything is going to fix your confusion. If you're confused then take it up w/ the people who keep telling you they don't know how anything works. I have no such problem so I recommend you stop projecting your confusion onto strangers in online forums.

The only thing that needs to be fixed here is your ignorance. Why so hostile? I'm helping you. You don't know what you're talking about and I have rectified that problem by passing the relevant information to you so next time you won't say things like that. You should thank me.

I didn't ask for your help so it's probably better for everyone if you spend your time & efforts elsewhere. Good luck.

Well don't ask me to help you then. I read your profile and it has this snippet in there:

"Address the substance of my arguments or just save yourself the keystrokes."

The substance of your argument was complete ignorance about the topic, so I addressed it as you requested.

Please remove that sentence from your profile if that is not what you want. Thank you.

I don't see how you interpreted it that way so I recommend you make fewer assumptions about online content instead of asserting your interpretation as the one & only truth. It's generally better to assume as little as possible & ask for clarifications when uncertain.

There is no other interpretation for that other than what I said. If you disagree then that’s a misinterpretation of the English language.

I am addressing the substance of your argument and that substance is lack of knowledge there is zero other angle to interpret it.

As I said previously, I don't think this is a productive use of time or effort for anyone involved so I'm dropping out of this thread.

u come across ungrateful to someone who was just trying to help

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