Actually genuinely curious
Decided to finally see what this AI thing is all aboutView quoted post on X
Because Language
@becauselangpod
A show about linguistics, the science of language. Your hosts (in order of coolness): Hedvig Skirgård, Daniel Midgley, and Ben Ainslie (tie for 2nd).
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We had a party to celebrate 20 years of @GrammarGirl ! Mignon Fogarty joins us for this episode.
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1:08
We thought this was a great and interesting result, so we talked to the authors! You can read or listen here. We really get into the weeds.
Chomsky was wrong.
Researchers found your brain doesn’t store language the way every textbook since 1957 claims.
For decades, the undisputed rule of linguistics, led by Noam Chomsky, was that human language is hierarchical.
We were told our brains process language using complex "grammar trees." That we secretly build deep, abstract, mathematical rules in our heads before we speak.
This new paper proves that is completely wrong.
Researchers at Cornell University analyzed how people actually process and produce language in real time.
They found sequences. Linear chunks.
When we speak, we aren't calculating deep syntactic rules. We are just predicting the next most logical sequence of words based on the context of the words right before it.
We string linear chunks together.
If this sounds familiar, it should.
This is exactly how Large Language Models like ChatGPT work.
For years, critics have dismissed AI as "just a next-token predictor." They said it isn't truly intelligent because it doesn't understand deep grammatical hierarchies like humans do.
But this paper suggests humans don't use those hierarchies either.
We are just predicting the next chunk.
Language isn't a rigid tree of mathematical rules. It's a linear stream of contextual predictions.
We thought we were building AI to mimic the complexity of the human brain.
It turns out, the human brain was just running a simpler algorithm all along.View quoted post on X
I’m noticing stuff that people do, like disfluencies, overlapping turns. Pretty cool! And a challenge for human verification.
damn, this is the most natural sounding AI model i've heardView quoted post on X
He’s got this right.
Language output is only one part of language. The models are mimicking language output, without the sentience or awareness behind it.
Being able to convincingly mimic language output is an impressive accomplishment, don’t get me wrong.
Language output is only one part of language. The models are mimicking language output, without the sentience or awareness behind it.
Being able to convincingly mimic language output is an impressive accomplishment, don’t get me wrong.
Ben Affleck says AI is simply matrix multiplication, linear algebra and floating point calculations, and however convincingly it sounds like a person, it has nothing to do with thought, humanity or feeling
“Nor do I believe, and I think it’s important to draw the distinction between what AI does, which is simply predict the next token or the next word in a sentence, then add that word on, run it back to the machine, do a lot of computation and pick the next word."
"That is a very different thing than sentience or thought. And I think we need to be really clear about that because it can be convincingly, in an illusory way, sound like thought or like a person."
"But let’s be real clear. This is matrix multiplication. This is linear algebra. These are floating point calculations. It has nothing to do with thought, humanity, or feeling.”View quoted post on X
