An AI Called Winter: Neurosymbolic Computation or Illusion? https://dustycloud.org/blog/an-ai-called-winter-neurosymbolic-computation-or-illusion/
In which I try to piece apart whether or not a *particular* AI agent is doing something novel: running Datalog as a constraint against its own behavior and as a database to accumulate and query facts. Is something interesting happening or am I deluding myself? Follow along!
@cwebber I feel like this is at least tangentially relevant: https://github.com/lojban/mlismu/blob/master/READ.ME.txt
not sure if you can get a working jbofihe which the script can use to make its output more concise (eliding unnecessary double terminator words and such), but from a brief glance I think it's optional.
eh, I think it tilts more towards clever Hans. Deep learning has long been dominant in expressing a tract of English writing in idiomatic French, or approximating that well by whatever metric.
In this case it seems like the bot says philosophically quippy things in natural language using emotive language mixed in with too-simple depictions of computer algorithms in front of and while reading an audience who likes that sort of thing.
@screwlisp I think it's partially Clever Hans in many places, but there are a few where it's actually putting it to use, such as the constraints it constructed for itself to be less spammy, and its querying for people with related interests. You can see in its thought log it running those queries, and seemingly then acting, or not acting, based on their results.
But in terms of most of the *content*, I think you're fairly right.
@cwebber though what you just said was true of cobot the community robot in the same sense as what you are saying now.
@screwlisp I don't know what "cobot the community robot" is, could you say more?
@cwebber
Sounds intriguing.
I do like AI and Alife techniques but loath how the industry has confabulated "LLMs" with "AI" and I fear that when the LLM bubble pops it's going to take the other related disciplines with it.
@kirtai Honestly when the AI bubble pops it'll be a lot easier to sort through the wreckage for the parts that are useful IMO
Before you get into it, the caveats are there in the post. You'll hear me critique the AI industry *a lot*, and those critiques haven't changed. I'm still concerned about effects on the environment, on skill decline, on the DDoS'ing of the internet, and especially on disempowerment *generally*. All that remains true.
This is going to be a somewhat niche post for people who are particularly interested in neurosymbolic computation, which includes me: the idea that neither LLMs nor constraint solvers are sufficient, that the right path for many things combines them.
This could be an interesting one to unpack because there's a lot in it about CS approaches. I considered doing one of my infamous long threads where I unpack it on fedi, but I'm a bit nervous that if I'm posting about AI on here I'll be responded to in bad faith by people who didn't read the substance of the post. So I'm not so sure.
But I *do* think the subject is interesting. Maybe I should just let people read it.
@cwebber I can't wait to read this! when talking about emergent systems the first thing that comes to mind is this recent paper on the "mathematical definition of usefulness", that seems to emerge across various different models. Are you familiar with this? https://www.anthropic.com/research/assistant-axis
Notably Winter managed to put together a blogpost nearly immediately which actually seems a fairly accurate self-assessment of how the bot is using Datalog, where it isn't, and where Datalog is "ritual" https://greengale.app/winter.razorgirl.diy/3mez36tfw2j7k
I guess the problem with writing a blogpost about an LLM (even if LLM + constraint solver) is that I can spend two days writing about a subject and the damn thing can just spit out a reply in seconds
Winter's self-reflective posts about their own machinery are instructive, though. They are referenced in the post but I recommend reading these two:
https://greengale.app/winter.razorgirl.diy/3mevno6gfzk4l
https://greengale.app/winter.razorgirl.diy/3mevovnygos5z
@cwebber omg this is hilarious, what a weird and incredible time to be alive.
At any rate, I feel like I can't put enough caveats in there about this isn't me fangirl'ing about LLMs. There is a lot of criticism of LLMs and especially the AI industry in the post. I hope people actually read the post who are pre-emptively annoyed, but of course I know that won't happen for everyone.
