Phase Change
Metadata
Highlights
- Language models as universal couplers begin to suggest protocols that really are plain language. What if the protocol of the GPT-alikes is just a bare TCP socket carrying free-form requests and instructions? What if the RSS feed of the future is simply my language model replying to yours when it asks, “What’s up with Robin lately?” (View Highlight)
- An important fact about these language models — one that sets them apart from, say, the personal computer, or the iPhone — is that their capabilities have been surprising, often confounding, even to their creators.
AI at this moment feels like a mash-up of programming and biology. The programming part is obvious; the biology part becomes apparent when you see AI engineers probing their own creations the way you might probe a mouse in a lab. (View Highlight)
- The nonlinearity is, to me, the most interesting part. As these models have grown, they have undergone widely observed “phase changes” in capability, just as sudden and surprising as water frozen or cream whipped. (View Highlight)
- Where the GPT-alikes are concerned, a question that’s emerging for me is:
What could I do with a universal function — a tool for turning just about any X into just about any Y with plain language instructions?
I don’t pose that question with any sense of wide-eyed expectation; a reasonable answer might be, eh, nothing much. Not everything in the world depends on the transformation of symbols. But I think that IS the question, and I think it takes some legitimate work, some strenuous imagination, to push yourself to believe it really will be “just about any X” into “just about any Y” (View Highlight)
- I think “brace for it” might mean imagining human-only spaces, online and off. We might be headed, paradoxically, for a golden age of “get that robot out of my face”. (View Highlight)
- It might be as simple as: is this kind of capability, extrapolated forward, useful to me and my work? If so, how?
It might be as wacky as: what kind of protocol could I build around plain language, the totally sci-fi vision of computers just TALKING to each other?
It might even be my original question, or a version of it: what do I want from the internet, anyway? (View Highlight)
title: “Phase Change”
author: “Robin Sloan”
url: ”https://www.robinsloan.com/lab/phase-change/”
date: 2023-12-19
source: reader
tags: media/articles
Phase Change
Metadata
Highlights
- Language models as universal couplers begin to suggest protocols that really are plain language. What if the protocol of the GPT-alikes is just a bare TCP socket carrying free-form requests and instructions? What if the RSS feed of the future is simply my language model replying to yours when it asks, “What’s up with Robin lately?” (View Highlight)
- An important fact about these language models — one that sets them apart from, say, the personal computer, or the iPhone — is that their capabilities have been surprising, often confounding, even to their creators.
AI at this moment feels like a mash-up of programming and biology. The programming part is obvious; the biology part becomes apparent when you see AI engineers probing their own creations the way you might probe a mouse in a lab. (View Highlight)
- The nonlinearity is, to me, the most interesting part. As these models have grown, they have undergone widely observed “phase changes” in capability, just as sudden and surprising as water frozen or cream whipped. (View Highlight)
- Where the GPT-alikes are concerned, a question that’s emerging for me is:
What could I do with a universal function — a tool for turning just about any X into just about any Y with plain language instructions?
I don’t pose that question with any sense of wide-eyed expectation; a reasonable answer might be, eh, nothing much. Not everything in the world depends on the transformation of symbols. But I think that IS the question, and I think it takes some legitimate work, some strenuous imagination, to push yourself to believe it really will be “just about any X” into “just about any Y” (View Highlight)
- I think “brace for it” might mean imagining human-only spaces, online and off. We might be headed, paradoxically, for a golden age of “get that robot out of my face”. (View Highlight)
- It might be as simple as: is this kind of capability, extrapolated forward, useful to me and my work? If so, how?
It might be as wacky as: what kind of protocol could I build around plain language, the totally sci-fi vision of computers just TALKING to each other?
It might even be my original question, or a version of it: what do I want from the internet, anyway? (View Highlight)