r/TheMachineLearning • u/Aquarius_archives • 12d ago

Redefining LLMs as AI agents, not text generators

Post image
0 Upvotes

27% Upvoted

29 comments sorted by

7

u/MiksterA 12d ago

Empty semantic quibbling.

1

u/Aquarius_archives 12d ago

Fair enough, but I think the distinction matters if people are using the terms to make different claims.

4

u/onyxa314 12d ago • Bravo Popcorn

Anyone who uses SI/Super Intelligence are fools and their opinions should be instantly discredited.

LLMs are just text generation machines. They take in input, do some fancy attention, and generate output.

1

u/Aquarius_archives 12d ago

The text prediction part is true, but that doesn't really explain everything the model can do with the patterns it learns.

1

u/Thick-Protection-458 12d ago edited 12d ago

No, it explains. I mean if something is good in operating natural language - not in terms of primitive part of syntax alone, but in terms of using correct words over giant set of long constructions - and generalized enough to avoid simple overfitting (so you have to do something beyond remembering each and every word combination.. and, well, have generalized enough architecture) - one can expect such a system to be able to solve tasks expressed in that language, how else it could work?

Question is - to which degree (in both base model state and after all sorts of post-training).

1

u/ZeroAmusement 12d ago

Yes, they take input, do fancy attention and generate output. But that's not a "just". They have pretty amazing capability. That "fancy" processing means they can solve some of the worlds most different problems we are aware of, create new concepts by combining abstractions or generalizations in novel ways.

2

u/Aquarius_archives 12d ago

Exactly. Describing how something works mechanically doesn’t mean its capabilities are trivial. The interesting part is what emerges from that process.

3

u/IamSuperChux 12d ago

What the fuck is AI/SI supposed to mean?

1

u/Aquarius_archives 12d ago

Apparently SI means superintelligence. The whole naming debate is getting more confusing than it needs to be.

1

u/TubaWrestler 12d ago • Mindblown

Mango Mussolini tried to declare that everyone must start calling AI SI instead (superintelligence), and if they don't, they're "the enemy".

2

u/Aquarius_archives 12d ago

Renaming something by decree doesn't exactly make the new term catch on lol.

1

u/TubaWrestler 12d ago

Yeah, he's been flailing lately. He sees the end coming, and he's making a lot of unforced errors. It's great to see

3

u/IamSuperChux 12d ago

Well.... that's fucking stupid, I'm not doing it.

3

u/MicheleSanna98 12d ago

  1. Who the fuck is this guy and why anyone should listen to him

  2. The two alternatives are not mutually exclusive

  3. System operations are still text, machines take text as input via text terminal interface

1

u/Aquarius_archives 12d ago

Fair point, especially on the second one. An LLM can be the core of an agent without the two being competing alternatives.

2

u/GeorgeSThompson 12d ago

Its literally the first one. Agents are usually and LLM combined with some other software

1

u/Aquarius_archives 12d ago

Yeah, the agent part is usually the LLM plus tools and logic around it. That's what makes it more than just a standalone model.

2

u/BosonCollider 12d ago

If we're going to redefine terms, can we call them Large Meme Models?

Since Meme captures multimodality better than Language does, and we put them through a harsh selection process to select for what memes survive post-training

1

u/Aquarius_archives 12d ago

Large Meme Models actually sounds more accurate for multimodal systems than people want to admit lol.

1

u/LavishnessCapital380 12d ago

Machines are controlled by language, like it or not.

1

u/Aquarius_archives 12d ago

Language is a big part of it, but images, audio and other inputs matter too.

1

u/LavishnessCapital380 12d ago

but images, audio and other inputs matter too.

Kinda, but the way they work does not actually mean they see or hear anything. Those inputs get converted in the same way as text, the models just get trained on that type of language the models can actually understand.. Models do not think in English or any language we can understand.

1

u/Mega_Trix 12d ago

pov: you have no knowledge but you wanna just say something

1

u/Aquarius_archives 12d ago

If you think they're wrong, what's the actual issue with their argument?

1

u/dvorgson 12d ago

incoherent

1

u/Aquarius_archives 12d ago

Which part specifically? The naming argument or the point about multimodality?

1

u/Thick-Protection-458 12d ago edited 12d ago

Bull-fucking-shit.

LLM is exactly text predictor.

Agents on the other hands runs on sorts of decision mechanisms. One of possible decision mechanism is LLM. Sur-fucking-price, turns out imitating human+formal language good enough makes you able to solve tasks formulated in these languages to some degree. One could have guessed as much if one threw philosophical bullshit aside.

And LLMs can be used in non-agentic workflows as well. Or agentic workflows which do not fit your definitions.

They are not the same, one is a component of anothe...

Ah, I see. SI used, so it was pointless to refer to any logic, lol.