[tikhonj]

The point is that it's the same process with—much—better priors.

This seems like a reasonable view to me. It's surprising just how much better priors matter and how we can develop those priors by training on a bunch of text. But it also explains, or at least hints at an explanation, for why LLM capabilities are so jagged, and in such inhuman ways.

[dpark]

> The point is that it's the same process

Except it’s not at all the same process. The fact that LLM are non deterministic is not the same as churning out random garbage.

[tsunamifury]

The literally churn out random garbage and are trained over time for that garbage to look more and more like an acceptable outcome to humans.

It’s training monkeys at typewriters through reinforcement.

[dpark]

> trained over time

So not random.

> acceptable outcome to humans

And not garbage.

It’s real weird to see people argue that LLM output is no different than random gibberish and then handwave over the fact that it’s clearly not with terms like “training”, as if a steam of random garbage is trainable.