260
Scientists invented a fake disease. AI told people it was real (www.nature.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
30 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 1 point 7 months ago (5 children)

What are you saying precisely? It’s well known that LLMs have non-deterministic output (Ilya Sutskever even claims as such). Are you saying the way it goes about retrieving tokens as deterministic?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 child)

    They are deterministic but complex to determine.

    The Assumed Intelligence systems I'm familiar with have a "random" element, but it's unclear where that source of randomness comes from. Is it using a computational random source, or something like the lava lamp wall at Cloudflare, which is significantly more random, potentially actually random.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (2 children)

    I think you’re right about that, but it is artificial nondeterminism in the sense that it’s relying on several algorithmic factors and, more subtly, device differences. The system itself is a complex yet deterministic function.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    I can agree with that largely but I still contend you’re conflating a few things to make that argument. Fundamentally an LLM will make predictions based on probability (ignoring temperature) and probability does not equal certainty.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    I would argue that’s empirically true but not fundamentally true. Actually, I’d argue that my point is the fundamental truth here. Computers still cannot generate random output. They simulate the process, and it’s not truly random. It’s just good enough to fool us at the surface level.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent