LeelooFeb 25

As a software developer who took an elective in neural networks - when people call LLMs stochastic parrots, that's not criticism of their results.

It's literally a description of how they work.

The so-called training data is used to build a huge database of words and the probability of them fitting together.

Stochastic because the whole thing is statistics.
Parrot because the answer is just repeating the most probable word combinations from its training dataset.

Calling an LLM a stochastic parrot is lile calling a car a motorised vehicle with wheels. It doesn't say anything about cars being good or bad. It does, however, take away the magic. So if you feel a need to defend AI when you hear the term stochastic parrot, consider that you may have elevated them to a god-like status, and that's why you go on the defense when the magic is dispelled.

Show threadGrowlph IbexFeb 26
@leeloo I feel like there are certain situations where a stochastic parrot is useful, many more situations where it is not, and alarmingly few people recognizing the difference.
Show threadcalcifer Feb 27

@growlph @leeloo this is the whole frustration I have with the polarization on the topic. There is genuinely utility. There’s also a very good argument that the utility doesn’t exceed the costs (socially, environmentally, etc).

But the hype is unreal and legitimately dangerous.

Show threadGrowlph Ibex
@calcifer @leeloo I think I agree with the argument that the utility doesn't exceed the costs. But its at best unhelpful, and at worst self-sabotaging, when the discourse forbids acknowledging that that utility exists.
Feb 27 at 9:39pmWeb