this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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A physicist is not gonna know a lot more about language models than your average college grad.
That's absolute nonsense. Physicists have to be excellent statisticians and, unlike data scientists, statisticians have to understand where the data is coming from, not just how to spit out simple summaries of enormously complex datasets as if it had any meaning without context.
And his views are exactly in line with pretty much every expert who doesn't have a financial stake in hyping the high tech magic 8-ball. On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots.
I had that paper in mind when I said that. Doesn't exhibit a very thorough understanding of how these models actually work.
A common argument is that the human brain very well may work the exact same, ergo the common phrase, "I'm a stochastic parrot and so are you."
That's a Sam Altman line and all it shows is that he does not know how knowledge is acquired, developed, or applied. He has no concept of how the world actually works and has likely never thought deeply about anything in his life beyond how to grift profitably. And he can't afford to examine his (professed) beliefs because he's trying to cash out on a doomed fantasy before too many people realise it is doomed.