Thread

1. aogaili · 1790086544 · focus · HN ↗

   If the problem was solved by anyone before or if a similar problem has been solved, then LLMs seem to be able to solve them which is an astonishing piece of technology.

   I'm personally not sure if it can come with original thinking and techniques to solve completely novel problems. For that, some imagination and thinking outside the box are required, and I doubt the current architecture can do any of this.

   1. mitthrowaway2 · 1790086708 · focus · HN ↗

      What's an example of a completely novel problem?

      1. aogaili · 1790087258 · focus · HN ↗

         I don't know..I doubt for example it can come up with special relatively if it has knowledge up until 1905.

         But I think that is what makes it so good at coding, because coding and building software in general has a lot of repeated problems in different context. Same thing for human lives, many think their story or situation are unique, but reality is that the shape of human life has been repeated many many times.

         I'd say novel math or scientific theories..let us say we send a robot to space, and we ask to build a colony. A lot of the challenges this robot will face will be novel, it could use inspirations of what humans did on earth, but it might get stuck when things don't work as expected and training data has nothing to build on..but then again we might teach it how to run experiments etc, which would result in data that it can use..but some of those experiments might require imagination or breakthrough in understanding..my guess is that it will get stuck there...

         1. madaxe_again · 1790143385 · focus · HN ↗

            Oh god this again. Riemann. Lorenz. Grossmann.

            Einstein was not some brain floating around in a vacuum deriving GR from the pure Platonic solids.

            1. aogaili · 1790163297 · focus · HN ↗

               Yes of course he is going to use resources around him, that is not the point. It took a leap of imagination to apply it the way he did and think differently.

               And this again because it's a solid argument and popular example of human ingenuity.

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