| ▲ | _superposition_ 6 hours ago |
| I really wish it was called chain of instruction. Because it's definitely not thought. |
|
| ▲ | minimaxir 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| "Chain of Thoughts" is a term from the title of a 2022 research paper "Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models" (https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.11903), well before ChatGPT and the subsequent marketing hype. If anything, it's the most correct way to use the term. |
| |
| ▲ | bertmuir 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | The term is an anthropomorphised pseudoexplanation for what it actually refers to. It's akin to calling genetic mutation "the forces of evolution", or price negotiation "the invisible hand of the market". We do that sort of thing when we don't know what the thing we're trying to describe is and have nothing better - a contemporary example of an appropriate use of this would be "dark matter". But we do know what this is. It's "instruction steps". Not a series of thoughts! Can we please aim higher than Victorian-era allegory and metaphors. If we don't, we'll keep getting people saying stuff like "GPT-6 is better at hiding its thoughts". | | |
| ▲ | _superposition_ 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I truly appreciate your depth of insight on the matter. Like I said elsewhere marketing stepped in shit and it's gonna stick. |
|
|
|
| ▲ | mgraczyk 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| this is needlessly pedantic first, they are certainly not instructions so that is a much worse name but more importantly, we use words in new contexts all the time.
Do you object to calling the computer device "mouse" because it's not a mouse? how about "neural network"? "ignition" on an electric vehicle? "cot" is no more misleading than thousands of words you use every day. |
| |
| ▲ | _superposition_ 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Anthropomorphizing is not pedantic, especially in a technical domain. I get the paper title and all, but at this point it's marketing. | |
| ▲ | parineum 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | They are instructions. Everything in the context is instructions for the next token. The "thought" guides the answer by providing clearer instructions. |
|
|
| ▲ | arm32 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| They’re intermediate tokens, so I wish we called it what it is… ITG. The anthropomorphizing is out of control. |
| |
|
| ▲ | popupeyecare 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Maybe thoughts are just a chain of instructions in our head. |
|
| ▲ | 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| [deleted] |
|
| ▲ | Angostura 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Chain Of Tokens |
|
| ▲ | fooker 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What is thought? |
| |
| ▲ | _superposition_ 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Great question. I suspect it's more than tokens. | | |
| ▲ | _superposition_ 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Casually found this quote from Einstein, and personally it hits the nail on the head. "The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be "voluntarily" reproduced and combined. There is, of course, a certain connection between those elements and relevant logical concepts. It is also clear that the desire to arrive finally at logically connected concepts is the emotional basis of this rather vague play with the above-mentioned elements. But taken from a psychological viewpoint, this combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought—before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others." | |
| ▲ | fooker 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Thing you can only suspect and not define are usually open to interpretation :) | | |
|
|
|
| ▲ | lossolo 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Yeah, basically they are using more computation to explore the solution space before producing the final answer. |
|
| ▲ | ahofmann 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Everything around LLMs is blatantly misleading. There is no thought, there is no personality in those programs. I really despise how those tools are trained to sound like a person, or appearing as honest. The worst offender are the AI voices with their fake pauses, breathes and so on, which sound so convincing, while talking just false, sycophancy bullshit. |
