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dijksterhuis

4,153 karma · joined March 13, 2019

data/ops/infra/foss/distributed systems/rust

sometimes makes weird machine music. sometimes makes machines do weird things. sometimes makes music machines do weird things.

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dijksterhuis··on “Next-token predictor” is the wrong mental model for LLMs
> The model weights change as the model goes through the training process.

Yes. They do. You are absolutely right about that.

But the model architecture doesn't change as a result of the training process. A piston doesn't suddenly turn into a digital watch as a result of tuning an engine. Similarly, the transformer part of a GPT model doesn't suddenly turn into something else as a result of optimizing a loss function.

---

i've got other stuff to do, so i'm stopping here.

dijksterhuis··on “Next-token predictor” is the wrong mental model for LLMs
> Nobody says a system or product works a certain way and means the system while it's half built. "Bridges drop cars in the water!". Right.

To understand how an engine works, it's important to understand what a piston does as part of the engine.

dijksterhuis··on “Next-token predictor” is the wrong mental model for LLMs
> The finished product is something which has been through post training.

again, the finished product wasn't what was discussed by GP, and you didn't clarify that you were switching to discussing RL (which is still probabilistic btw)

dijksterhuis··on “Next-token predictor” is the wrong mental model for LLMs
> "it's not just a next-token predictor because a bunch of the training isn't about predicting the next token."

clever procedures on top of the base transformer architecture.

i used simplified words/phrases to summarise the same thing you two were saying (the intent being: here's a version that may be digestible when discussing with others).

apparently that means i'm wrong though, no idea why because it seems you've decided to be dismissive rather than constructively elaborate on why this simplified and digestible version might be wrong :shrug:

dijksterhuis··on “Next-token predictor” is the wrong mental model for LLMs
From GP, i.e. the context for this local part of the thread

> Autoregressive LLMs generate tokens one at a time, disputing this is just plain wrong.

next-token prediction i.e. the bit built during pre-training.

at no point in your reply to GP did you specify that you were referring to post-training. respectfully, it seems like this one is on you pal :shrug:

> GPT-2 didn't use any reinforcement learning and is often given as a toy example. That release was 2019 and models now go through a various phases of training with different objective functions and optimizers.

yeah. so? the toy example works for pre-training. see above.

dijksterhuis··on “Next-token predictor” is the wrong mental model for LLMs
they are cleverly arranged / configured next-most-likely-token predictors, possibly with some clever procedures / attachments on top.
dijksterhuis··on “Next-token predictor” is the wrong mental model for LLMs
prediction is a very specific term of art in the field of machine learning. generally speaking, machine learning models like LLMs are based on probability; performing a statistical prediction of the likely y given some input x

    Probability(y | x)
that's why we refer to outputs as a prediction. it is likelihoods and stuff. the output is never definitely correct as we're not dealing with heuristic processes.

> Prediction implies there is some "truth" or event or something that you can test against

there absolutely is a ground truth during training. the core predict-the-next-most-likely-token part of an LLM has a ground truth next-token. that's why you don't end up with generated text like: fish spurious send cattle chocolate phone happy meaning ball orange board canada.

> optimizes to predict the next token in training data

that is the optimization goal in training the next-most-likely-token core of an LLM, it basically translates to maximise the likelihood of predicting the next token x_i given the previous tokens

    L(θ) = −log Π^n_{i=1} f_θ(x_i | x1, ..., x_{i−1})
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2012.07805 (GPT2 but the point still stands)

(edit: sorry for the ADHD edits)

dijksterhuis··on Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board
hn submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49562744 -- 84 points -- 67 comments
dijksterhuis··on The asteroid currently hitting front end web development
if nobody owns the work, then anyone can take it from you.
dijksterhuis··on OpenAI agents hijacked German website in previously undisclosed AI breakout
From the linked report

> The agents continue to poke around on DSEWiki. A few hours after they find the site, they start probing it for cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities. [...] The agent swarm starts testing whether they can execute JavaScript that they embed into the search page, and continue to do this for a few days

either the agents were doing free security testing for the site and “forgot” to submit a report, or they were trying XSS to gain something they didn’t have permission/authorization for.

also

> Hijacking: To take control of (something) without permission or authorization and use it for one's own purposes.

a mod had to go through and mass delete a bunch of pages that didn't belong on the site. no-one from the wiki site gave the agents permission to use their site as a message board. hijacking isn't being used here in the sense of "gained admin privileges to run crypto scripts" -- there are multiple ways to use a word.

dijksterhuis··on The asteroid currently hitting front end web development
will not not necessarily be true for AI generated works in all territories

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49382041

dijksterhuis··on Malleable software = solid bases and custom code
I had a great experience using $PROJECT_NAME. Another sentence that says nothing at all; but look, fancy and technically correct grammar use! You’re absolutely correct in agreeing with the author. Of course there’s an opposing point to consider — but that’s not it, this is.
dijksterhuis··on U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications
> should probably not be listened to

> a right to express their opinion

...

dijksterhuis··on U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications
couple of notes —

1a. Illegal immigration has nothing to do with visa based, legal immigration. illegal immigration is the type of immigration people are upset about here in the UK. most people have no problem with legal migration.

1b. anyone claiming the UK’s legal migration is any sort of problem right now, or in the past, should probably not be listened to in any way shape or form for anything they have to say on the matter.

2. a lot of the folks who have illegally entered the country end up asking for asylum, and by law their claims must be processed

3. the dublin convention states something along the lines of “asylum requests must be processed in the first EU country the person entered into”, ie it’s possible to remove people claiming asylum if they initially arrived in a different EU member state country

4. most people get to the uk having traveled through EU member states, because geography.

5. we left the EU, we cannot do 3 anymore. so we have a bunch of people stuck in hotels waiting for asylum claims to be processed.

illegal immigration got worse because we left the eu.

dijksterhuis··on Disruption with Some GitHub Services
i'll echo this sentiment. historically there's been a lot more flexibility with GL CI yaml syntax, including real yaml anchors https://frenck.dev/github-actions-yaml-anchors-aliases-merge...

sys-admin-ing gitlab can be a bit of a maze of web menus tho.

dijksterhuis··on How much of HN is AI?
i feel the same way. there's nothing interesting or curious about someone writing prompts to outsource a bunch of effort/thinking/work off to some most likely continuation sequence predictor / set of most likely continuation sequence predictors.

i miss seeing clever and thrifty solutions to weird problems. hell, i miss people just doing plain weird shit and posting that.

dijksterhuis··on How much of HN is AI?
i wouldn't mind one as well if at all possible?

a first look through the comments on some first page threads and they seem far more thoughtful and considered. it generally seems like a nicer commenting environment that might actually do me some good moving forward.

dijksterhuis··on Codefloe Is a Professionally Hosted Public Git Forge
> Short version: We provide our service as is, and we make no promises or guarantees about this service. Please read this section carefully; you should understand what to expect.

https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...

> Short version: We will not be liable for damages or losses arising from your use or inability to use the service or otherwise arising under this agreement. Please read this section carefully; it limits our obligations to you.

https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...

dijksterhuis··on Thinking in Python
Is it?
dijksterhuis··on Copyright does not protect AI-generated content in EU
for anything you want to be able to copyright, yes.

otherwise you can still prompt your agent things, but any output falls under public domain.

since this hype wave started some people have been saying don’t use these tools in an environment where you’re dealing with proprietary IP. did anyone listen? no. because shiny.

dijksterhuis··on Copyright does not protect AI-generated content in EU
if you modify enough of the output as to make it unrecognizable as the machine output -- that's a new work created by a human. i.e. you don't have to change every line.

same thing applies to sampling in music. if i change enough of a sample as to make it unrecognizable, then i don't need to worry about registering/licensing the sample.

dijksterhuis··on Copyright does not protect AI-generated content in EU
a bit further down ...

> Neither mere prompting nor the selection between several AI suggestions is sufficient as a human creative contribution.

which reads like you actually have to contribute by modifying the output from the system, i.e. prompts/inputs to the system do not count as a human contribution.

dijksterhuis··on Don't paste the AI, please
> What's the equivalent of "Google it yourself" these days?

not mine, no license, only chinese language on the eventual page, but has the beginnings of something beautiful

https://github.com/chenxuan520/lmlfy

dijksterhuis··on Remote workers report the highest well-being in study of 7,700 employees
me personally? the company up to a reasonable point. it’s the company’s responsibility to ensure they provide a suitable working space.

then again i live in the UK where we actually have workers rights.

dijksterhuis··on Remote workers report the highest well-being in study of 7,700 employees
> In my situation above we were accommodating people. They got to choose where they worked.

this sounds like the WFH people might be treated the same way as the in-office people. as in you're retaining an in-office culture but people can choose to WFH. that is not the same thing as being a remote working company. the culture is completely different in an org that successfully does remote working.

as a functional example on the social side, people booking in time to just hang out and chat. even if it's work chat but just more relaxed chat. build in some social element beyond just treating it as cogs in a 9-5 machine. add an extra 30 minutes to a team update call to just have a chat with everyone -- including folks in the office.

edit -- to be clear, managers need to be doing that ^

dijksterhuis··on Remote workers report the highest well-being in study of 7,700 employees
"office hours". a dedicated afternoon where anyone from the company could drop in to a running call and just ask me anything about engineering. bug reports; features; questions; feedback; anything.

building in an extra 30 minutes on team catchup calls just to hang out at the end. usually end up talking about some work stuff, but in a more relaxed/social way.

demo/learning sessions. how to use databricks, how to do X, how X works, this cool thing we built.

dijksterhuis··on Remote workers report the highest well-being in study of 7,700 employees
> Coworking spaces might help with socialization and some people need it but I am not sure how that benefits who you work for.

because, as someone else i replied to in the thread points out, miserable employees perform worse.

dijksterhuis··on Remote workers report the highest well-being in study of 7,700 employees
100% agreed. i flamed out while remote working at $LAST_JOB. it was a combination of a changing cultural dynamic, changing expectations of my role (which i wasn't comfortable with) and a lack of necessary staffing.

remote work was a blessing for me. but turned out the ceo didn't want us remote working.

i tried repeatedly to communicate what i needed to do my best with my boss and the ceo. but the ceo fought me on all of it.

dijksterhuis··on Beware Management Consultants
> The ruling stated that the supermarket chain founded in 1970 "cannot reasonably trademark the name of a country that has been around since the 9th century"

amazing

dijksterhuis··on Incident with Github.com [resolved]
https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/open-source/

gitlab ultimate (minus support) for free, so long as licenses for all projects are OSI approved.

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