The results of this new GSM-Symbolic paper aren’t completely new in the world of AI research. Other recent papers have similarly suggested that LLMs don’t actually perform formal reasoning and instead mimic it with probabilistic pattern-matching of the closest similar data seen in their vast training sets.
WTF kind of reporting is this, though? None of this is recent or new at all, like in the slightest. I am shit at math, but have a high level understanding of statistical modeling concepts mostly as of a decade ago, and even I knew this. I recall a stats PHD describing models as “stochastic parrots”; nothing more than probabilistic mimicry. It was obviously no different the instant LLM’s came on the scene. If only tech journalists bothered to do a superficial amount of research, instead of being spoon fed spin from tech bros with a profit motive…
It’s written as if they literally expected AI to be self reasoning and not just a mirror of the bullshit that is put into it.
Probably because that’s the common expectation due to calling it “AI”. We’re well past the point of putting the lid back on that can of worms, but we really should have saved that label for… y’know… intelligence, that’s artificial. People think we’ve made an early version of Halo’s Cortana or Star Trek’s Data, and not just a spellchecker on steroids.
The day we make actual AI is going to be a really confusing one for humanity.
One time I exposed deep cracks in my calculator’s ability to write words with upside down numbers. I only ever managed to write BOOBS and hELLhOLE.
LLMs aren’t reasoning. They can do some stuff okay, but they aren’t thinking. Maybe if you had hundreds of them with unique training data all voting on proposals you could get something along the lines of a kind of recognition, but at that point you might as well just simulate cortical columns and try to do Jeff Hawkins’ idea.
Are you telling me Apple hasn’t seen through the grift and is approaching this with an open mind just to learn how full off bullshit most of the claims from the likes of Altman are? And now they’re sharing their gruesome discoveries with everyone while they’re unveiling them?
I would argue that Apple Intelligence™️ is evidence they never bought the grift. It’s very focused on tailored models scoped to the specific tasks that AI does well; creative and non-critical tasks like assisting with text processing/transforming, image generation, photo manipulation.
The Siri integrations seem more like they’re using the LLM to stitch together the API’s that were already exposed between apps (used by shortcuts, etc); each having internal logic and validation that’s entirely programmed (and documented) by humans. They market it as a whole lot more, but they market every new product as some significant milestone for mankind … even when it’s a feature that other phones have had for years, but in an iPhone!
What’s an example of a claim Altman has made that you’d consider bullshit?
The entirety of “open” ai is complete bullshit. They’re no longer even pretending to be nonprofit at all and there is nothing “open” about them since like 2018.
The fun part isn’t even what Apple said - that the emperor is naked - but why it’s doing it. It’s nice bullet against all four of its GAFAM competitors.
Real headline: Apple research presents possible improvements in benchmarking LLMs.
Not even close. The paper is questioning LLMs ability to reason. The article talks about fundamental flaws of LLMs and how we might need different approaches to achieve reasoning. The benchmark is only used to prove the point. It is definitely not the headline.
Once there’s a benchmark, LLMs can optimise for it. This is just another piece of news where people call “game over” but the money poured into R&D isn’t stopping anytime soon. Wasn’t synthetic data supposed to be game over for LLMs? Its limitations have been identified and it’s still being leveraged.
You say “Not even close.” in response to the suggestion that Apple’s research can be used to improve benchmarks for AI performance, but then later say the article talks about how we might need different approaches to achieve reasoning.
Now, mind you - achieving reasoning can only happen if the model is accurate and works well. And to have a good model, you must have good benchmarks.
Not to belabor the point, but here’s what the article and study says:
The article talks at length about the reliance on a standardized set of questions - GSM8K, and how the questions themselves may have made their way into the training data. It notes that modifying the questions dynamically leads to decreases in performance of the tested models, even if the complexity of the problem to be solved has not gone up.
The third sentence of the paper (Abstract section) says this “While the performance of LLMs on GSM8K has significantly improved in recent years, it remains unclear whether their mathematical reasoning capabilities have genuinely advanced, raising questions about the reliability of the reported metrics.” The rest of the abstract goes on to discuss (paraphrased in layman’s terms) that LLM’s are ‘studying for the test’ and not generally achieving real reasoning capabilities.
By presenting their methodology - dynamically changing the evaluation criteria to reduce data pollution and require models be capable of eliminating red herrings - the Apple researchers are offering a possible way benchmarking can be improved.
Which is what the person you replied to stated.
The commenter is fairly close, it seems.
Adding the benchmark back into the training process doesn’t mean you get an LLM the can weed out irrelevant data, what you get is an LLM that can pass the new metric and you have to design a new metric with different semantic patterns to actually know if it’s “eliminating red herrings”.
