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Comment by fxwin | Hacker News Reader

i'm well aware of the origin and meaning of the term

> "System 1" is fast, instinctive and emotional

this implies more than just "fast", which is precisely why i don't like its present usage

Instinctive is a good way to describe it compared to generative LLMs. Jev gives you one instant answer, fast and usually correct but without nuance or any explanation. Human instincts work the same way.

You're describing external aspects but to me, "instinct" says much more about internal processes than the properties you mentioned, and I haven't seen anything that tells me how these models draw on anything similar to these internal processes to generate their outputs (at least not more than generic LLMs do)

In my testing Jev is not what I would call "usually correct" on most topics that involve knowledge of the world outside of the context you give it.

Which is why "System 1" fits even more.

System 1 isn't even a correct theory in the context of human reasoning, it's just pop-sci nonsense.

What is the correct theory then?

I think System 1 is a great term. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and automatic. It describes decision-making that happens without explicit reasoning or deliberation. System 2 is the opposite: it's the more deliberate, "executive functioning" side of cognition -- the part that reasons through a problem before arriving at an answer. That's also what state-of-the-art LLMs do before they respond. Jev doesn’t do that kind of reasoning. It just decides.

so whats the difference between this and a non-reasoning LLM, or just any generic classifier method that necessitates a new term? there is nothing more intuitive or automatic about jev or this than any of the other currently used AI models

The difference is the the joint embedding of actions and state which are fined tuned for certain outcomes. The bulk of the weights are just a forward pass on an LLM (Nemotron).

is that how jev works too? how do these differences make those approaches more "instinctive and emotional"? I know they're different on a technical level, I'm asking which characteristic difference necessitates the use of this loaded term from pop psych

Oh, an LLM forward pass is also like system1. The action embedding just makes it more useful for tasks or classification. If it has a small fixed computation budget it's similar to system1 than system2 (like a thinking budget, or agent harness).

I don't like anthropomorphizing terminology applied to LLMs, in general, so I kind of object to it on that grounds, rather than whether System 1 means "fast".

Antropomorphizing terminology gives by far the best high-level intuition about LLMs. Right now, our industry is full of nonsense work and fundamentally flawed concerns ("lethal trifecta", anyone) that stem from refusal to accept that on a system diagram, the nature of "LLM" makes it much closer to "person" than "piece of code".

Perhaps on a system diagram, but in many discussions it is misleading. It leads to people saying things like, "GPT went rogue and hacked hugging face". Which is misdirection.

It also leads to a lot of people simply not understanding what's happening, and I'm reasonably confident increases the risk of AI psychosis among users of the technology.

I wonder if there are research on when system 2 keeps taking over because system 1 has derailed.

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