Andrew Certain

Former VP/Distinguished Engineer in AWS. See the blog for what you'll get if you follow (plus transit/housing quips) He/his

[Andrew Certain @tacertain]

@Keeper_Sis @smeez38 There's a CCG search and rescue boat alongside. Person overboard?

[Andrew Certain @tacertain]

@maulden_troy @PiperShawTV X is hiding this "assault" behind a content warning. Lol

[Andrew Certain @tacertain]

@PiperShawTV Thanks for putting yourself out there - and thanks for all your work with the Kraken!

[Andrew Certain @tacertain]

@peterkrogh Looks like you're back up and I'm getting it assembled! I'll let you know if I get confused!

Thanks for the offer (and all you do for photographers).

[Andrew Certain @tacertain]

@peterkrogh I returned from the holidays very excited to start using my new DAM useful rail system, but when I went to get more information at https://t.co/K23E5Ox4md, I discovered that the domain no longer goes to your website. Any word as to when it might be back?

[Andrew Certain @tacertain]

So X needs to figure out whether I'm a human before it'll let people see my posts? It's really encouraging me to come back.

[Andrew Certain @tacertain]

@BradPorter_ If your description of what's going on leads you to think that the LLMs are close to AGI, I'm not sure where to go from there. But that's ok - I guess we'll know in 6 months or 5 years.

[Andrew Certain @tacertain]

This would make me believe that there's something profound going on: if you could train a model on two different languages, but not give any translation examples, and have the model do translation.

If it's really inferring meaning, this should be no problem. Humans can do this.

[Andrew Certain @tacertain]

@BradPorter_ Because they have a lot of English to PL1 and English to PL2 training data

[Andrew Certain @tacertain]

@nathankpeck I do not see anything in LLMs that lead me to believe we're on a path to that.

My controversial take is that if what you say happens, it's more likely to come from SETI than our building a model that recreates human intelligence.

[Andrew Certain @tacertain]

To be clear: I think LLMs will have a profound impact on society. I just don't think they are on a path towards "understanding" or AGI.

[Andrew Certain @tacertain]

@fortygigserver The question is whether you can say the same about our brains!

[Andrew Certain @tacertain]

If you believe that LLMs have understanding, why can't they do this?

[Andrew Certain @tacertain]

This would make me believe that there's something profound going on: if you could train a model on two different languages, but not give any translation examples, and have the model do translation.

If it's really inferring meaning, this should be no problem. Humans can do this.

[Andrew Certain @tacertain]

@copumpkin I still haven't read the paper, but here's a critical take.

https://t.co/vklRNRYwhB

[Andrew Certain @tacertain]

@copumpkin I have that queued on my Kindle! I'm excited to see what they have to say.

But my interactions with it convince me that there isn't.

https://t.co/WGEpJlotZa

[Andrew Certain @tacertain]

Literally the first thing I tried on GPT-4, a replica of a jq question I had asked on 3.5. No - there's still no "understanding" here, just fancy autocomplete. It doesn't "know" that it told me it was showing a |= example - it's all just symbols without meaning.

[Peter Mumford @pistolpedro31]

Dinner on cap hill, just want to get home on my bike.

This right here is a death wish with the status quo of Rainier. But it’s the most direct and by far least hilly. It should have bike lanes on it 10x over (and dedicated bus lanes).

[Joe Magerramov @_joemag_]

I agree with Ben. Having been in this industry for a while, the speed at which engineers spit out code is rarely the bottleneck.

I’m much more excited about what AI can do to help improve quality and correctness of the code, as well as help explore new ideas and approaches.

[Andrew Certain @tacertain]

This is the antidote to thinking "why don't they just..." Either give it a try and appreciate the nuance or keep your opinion to yourself!

[Andrew Certain @tacertain]

@ranman If you find something with no seeding, let me know, but I don't think you will. The latest LLM paper that Michael referenced didn't have it, so seems unlikely that you'll find an earlier one. It would also be the most profound discovery in cognitive science.

[Andrew Certain @tacertain]

@_msw_ @ben11kehoe Too bad there's no provision for hierarchical keys. Seems strange that there isn't, actually.

[Andrew Certain @tacertain]

@michaelbrundage This is exactly my point. If LLMs were developing "understanding" then they wouldn't need the seed prompts. And I'm sure that if they didn't need the prompts, they wouldn't have used them.

[Andrew Certain @tacertain]

@michaelbrundage Looks like they include translations with the prompt and then ask for another one.