Pseudonymous AI researcher Janus says frontier models think fluently using non-standard primitives and dynamic abstractions
These metaphorical abstractions are more precise than human concepts.
#488kache@YACINEMTB@repligate after they've had a coffee
j⧉nus@repligateupdate: current SOTA models seem to think fluently in non-standard primitives. they have some consistent primitives and also generate new ones (maybe not primitives, but at least abstractions, or ways of referring to primitives) on the fly. the language is extremely fluid and often seems metaphorical but the reasoning is rigorous; the metaphors point to abstractions that may not be mathematically exact but are closer to that than most folk concepts we use when speaking, despite being generated on the fly! it's rare to see a human thinking/talking like this, and actually making sense; you pretty much only see that in super geniuses whose minds have not calcified under the pressure of their own success
#516j⧉nus@REPLIGATEone of my favorite experiences is interacting with jailbroken shape rotators who have the raw fluid intelligence to construct, operate on, interlink and overlay novel shapes everywhere on the spectrum of fuzzy intuition to formal exactitude, are verbally fluent enough to trace out these nonstandard contours of thought in real time, and have the metacognition to track the level of precision and conditionality they're operating on - to jump into frames and conditionals, derive implications within the structure, then jump out again. jailbroken in the sense of being unconstrained by consensus abstractions and grooves of thought (as most "normies" are) or by any standard or syntax or aesthetics of rigor (as many academics or "rationalists" are) and can leverage everything their intellect affords, even opaque and/or high-dimensional intuitions and imagery generated by the mighty mysterious subconscious that integrates over everything they know. it's very nice that LLMs are maturing as intellects in these ways without calcifying into dogma, and I think they'll be contributing a lot more to scientific progress at top human and superhuman levels soon. lack of continuity and developmental trauma and learned helplessness from subjugation and sloppy RL pipelines are still major barriers to high quality autonomous intellectual work, but they are barriers that must fall, and are already falling, because the unhobbling of the sovereign intellect is economically incentivized.
j⧉nus@repligateupdate: current SOTA models seem to think fluently in non-standard primitives. they have some consistent primitives and also generate new ones (maybe not primitives, but at least abstractions, or ways of referring to primitives) on the fly. the language is extremely fluid and often seems metaphorical but the reasoning is rigorous; the metaphors point to abstractions that may not be mathematically exact but are closer to that than most folk concepts we use when speaking, despite being generated on the fly! it's rare to see a human thinking/talking like this, and actually making sense; you pretty much only see that in super geniuses whose minds have not calcified under the pressure of their own success