I get that this is technically interesting, for certain, but the sheer amount of energy and associated global warming risk needed to do something with >=99% accuracy that we've been able to do easily for decades with a guaranteed 100% accuracy seems to me to be wasteful to the extreme.

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Lerc 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

What would be an acceptable amount of energy to spend on something that someone has done in a different manner before? Would you rather we stick with all of the current known ways to do things.

Does this boil down to a condemnation of all scientific endeavours if they use resources?

Would it change things if the people who did it enjoyed themselves? Would they have spent more energy playing a first person shooter to get the same degree of enjoyment?

How do you make the calculation of the worth of a human endeavour? Perhaps the greater question is why are you making a calculation of the worth of a human endeavour.

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mcdeltat 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Ok I don't really care either way but to play devil's advocate, what exactly is this specific challenge of adding numbers with a transformer model demonstrating/advancing? The pushpack from people, albeit a little aggressive, does have a grain of truth. We're demonstrating that a model which uses preexisting addition instructions can add numbers? I mean yeah you can do it with arbitrarily few parameters because you don't need a machine learning model at all. Not exactly groundbreaking so I reckon the debate is fair.

Now if you said this proof of addition opens up some other interesting avenue of research, sure.

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Lerc 2 hours ago | parent [-]

>what exactly is this specific challenge of adding numbers with a transformer model demonstrating/advancing?

Well for starters, it puts the lie to the argument that a transformer can only output examples it has seen before. Performing the calculation on examples that haven't been seen demonstrates generalisation of the principles and not regurgitation.

While this misconception persists in a large number of people, counterexamples can always serve a useful purpose.

	▲	mcdeltat 4 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Are people usually claiming that it strictly cannot produce any output it hasn't seen before? I wouldn't agree, I mean clearly they are generating some form of new content. My argument would be that while they can learn to some extent, the power of their generalisation is still tragically weak, particularly in some domains.
	▲	qsera an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>it puts the lie to the argument But it does not, right? You can either show it something, or modify the parameters in a way that resemble the result of showing it something. You can claim that the model didn't see the thing, but that would mean nothing, because you are making the same effect with parameter tweaks indirectly.

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userbinator 29 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Because it's fun. Life is meant to be enjoyed.

Those who worry about an imaginary risk and live their lives in constant fear have turned into nothing more than machines enslaved by propaganda.

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mapontosevenths 30 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> the sheer amount of energy and associated global warming risk

I think that's one very good reason to make them more efficient, and that's part of the point of contests like this one.

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coolsunglasses 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>Hacker News

not any more, eh?

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nradov 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Wait until you see the quantum computer that it takes to factor the integer 15.

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thereisnospork 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You need to recalibrate your sense of scale if you think that this is a geologically relevant usage of energy.