News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Do Language Models Know How Heavy an Elephant Is?. Parent comment

Re:Do Language Models Know How Heavy an Elephant Is? by wyattpeak on Saturday March 06, 2021 @04:00AM (#26366153)
That's a heck of a question to expect an AI to answer. It's weird (we almost never discuss half animals), oddly phrased ("on the moon" is much more standard), and runs afoul of an imprecision in English (we normally given masses when asked about weight, this requires an answer in force, or else by analogy a mass with equivalent Earth-weight).
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Do Language Models Know How Heavy an Elephant Is? by perl4ever on Saturday March 06, 2021 @10:36PM (#26372909)
A question that's not "weird" has been asked and answered before, so you can answer it with a database and zero "intelligence".

I think you're lowering expectations for an AI to zero.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Do Language Models Know How Heavy an Elephant Is? by notum on Saturday March 06, 2021 @04:09AM (#26366178)
It's tailored to be difficult, I took this course right after the question above was autosuggested to me.

Also while "the moon" could mean anything, there's only one Moon. I gave it a fighting chance.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Do Language Models Know How Heavy an Elephant Is? by IshKebab on Saturday March 06, 2021 @04:16AM (#26366211)
Dunno if you're native but ".. on Moon" is not right. It should be "..on the Moon". Don't ask me why it is different for Earth and the Moon but it is!

I would expect any language model to be robust to minor errors like that though so I doubt it makes any difference.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Do Language Models Know How Heavy an Elephant Is? by astrange on Saturday March 06, 2021 @04:38AM (#26366301)
It's because the name of the moon is "The Moon", not "Moon". I think SF writers sometimes pretend it's called "Luna" so it'll have a more interesting name.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Do Language Models Know How Heavy an Elephant Is? by nicoburns on Saturday March 06, 2021 @04:47AM (#26366344)
It is "la luna" in spanish. So I don't think SF writers are pretending.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Do Language Models Know How Heavy an Elephant Is? by narag on Saturday March 06, 2021 @05:01AM (#26366410)
Spanish, that's right, but I guess they mean Latin.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Do Language Models Know How Heavy an Elephant Is? by dTal on Saturday March 06, 2021 @07:13AM (#26366894)
They pretend it will be called Luna (in English), because "The Moon" is a silly name when you routinely travel to lots of moons.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Do Language Models Know How Heavy an Elephant Is? by snypher on Sunday March 07, 2021 @12:46AM (#26373491)
It's name is Moon, and it's referred to as "the moon".
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Do Language Models Know How Heavy an Elephant Is? by d0mine on Saturday March 06, 2021 @05:12AM (#26366454)
It is Luna (Луна) in Russian
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Do Language Models Know How Heavy an Elephant Is? by dotancohen on Saturday March 06, 2021 @05:43AM (#26366555)
And other well-accepted sci-fi terms are of Slavic origin as well. Robot, for one, and that term actually transferred to colloquial language.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Do Language Models Know How Heavy an Elephant Is? by ralphm on Saturday March 06, 2021 @06:23AM (#26366705)
Except that Luna in Slavic and Latin just share the same ancestor in PIE.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Do Language Models Know How Heavy an Elephant Is? by notum on Saturday March 06, 2021 @04:32AM (#26366282)
Thanks! I'm indeed not native :) In my own defense it "felt" like it was missing something. However I am confident there are many moons and just one Moon, our own.

Also, the answer is 1.62kN to 4.8kN, I know Wolfram doesn't employ a language model or anything of a sorts, but with all the other NLP magic I've seen I sort of expected a valid answer.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Do Language Models Know How Heavy an Elephant Is? by nandhinianand on Saturday March 06, 2021 @04:25AM (#26366253)
Bleh.. .English and it's weird grammar .. Sometimes I find it such a messed up language compared to my native tongue..... I guess it's the separation of modifiers and nouns that's part of the problem.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Do Language Models Know How Heavy an Elephant Is? by nandhinianand on Sunday March 07, 2021 @01:34AM (#26373711)
Seriously a downvote ?? for what?? ughh.... "bavula kappa" ==> frog in the well.. a metaphor for biased people(or people who live in a bubble).
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Do Language Models Know How Heavy an Elephant Is? by karmakaze on Saturday March 06, 2021 @11:36AM (#26368517)
It shouldn't really be that difficult. If it's capable of structuring "How heavy is _ on the moon?" The answer would be start out the same way looking for weight of _.

It seems to me that these kinds of questions could be handled but require some adjustments or tuning more than we need fundamentally different approaches. We can't do everything at once so there's going to be simple things that don't work for quite a while.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Do Language Models Know How Heavy an Elephant Is? by TheCoelacanth on Saturday March 06, 2021 @01:59PM (#26369608)
It's a question that a B+ student in high-school physics could answer with a few minutes of googling.

If that's beyond the capabilities of AI, then it obviously isn't living up to the hype.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Do Language Models Know How Heavy an Elephant Is? by wyattpeak on Saturday March 06, 2021 @06:51PM (#26371674)
Well, yes. A B+ high-school student can also reliably recognise the number 710. If you think that AI should be able to do something just because a high-school student can, I think it's your expectations which are out of touch.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Do Language Models Know How Heavy an Elephant Is? by TheCoelacanth on Saturday March 06, 2021 @07:40PM (#26371972)
My expectations are fine. The AI hype is out of touch.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Do Language Models Know How Heavy an Elephant Is? by ForHackernews on Saturday March 06, 2021 @06:27AM (#26366715)
It is a tough question, but we keep hearing from AI-boosters about how the Singularity is right around the corner and have you seen this AI that can make plausible-looking text?
[ Parent | on HN ]