from the article "A pattern we see in some interpretability and interpretability-adjacent ML papers is defining some metric which is claimed to correspond to some property of interest, and then very rigorously measuring this metric. We see this as a kind of Cargo-Cult Science."
In Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do about It, Erica Thompson explores how mathematical models are used in contexts that affect our everyday lives – from finance to climate change to health policy – and what can happen when they are malformed or misinterpreted. Rather than abandoning these models, Thompson presents a compelling case for why we should revise how we understand and work with them, writes Connor Chung.
I'm interested in whether this has potential trickle effect in other startups where the staff threaten to mutiny if they don't like the change in leadership. Flipping crazy and precedent setting for corporate governance.
It isn’t clear to me (other than it’s an open engineering problem) why LLs couldn’t also include attribution as part of training. Also tracking attribution could lead to some insights on how its internal representations in vector space are created.
This is a very intriguing study as it would appear the fact that LLMs need public data to train on, its incentive on the marketplace of ideas is to reduce the very thing that gives it its power. It contains the seeds of its own destruction, destroying the web and open data ethos, and yet another data point pointing at another AI winter.
I'd love to get an AI philosopher to address the interesting thought experiment here. I think this really needs to get at the truth - paraphrasing Stephen Wolfram - of whether language is actually much simpler than we've all assumed all along.
It is wholly interesting that such a tool is needed. We need a new generation motivated by self-control and at an early age be critical of how technology triggers dopamine responses. I would be interested in seeing clinical classification of app addictions as a real health issue that deserves treatment. The real answer is to put down the phone. We (in this industry) are all complicit in the creation and promulgation of this problem.