Achieving AI-style reasoning without an LLM

(fleetingswallow.com)

42 points | by edwardchalk 3 hours ago ago

24 comments

  • jstanley 2 hours ago

    I can't see where you can try this out, so at the moment it's a lot of claims and no real evidence. Also the text feels like it was written by an LLM.

    If it's really such a small model why not provide a web interface where we can test it for ourselves?

    This feels like high risk of being crackpottery.

    • srdjanr 4 minutes ago

      And all illustrations have the AI look (they're not AI images, but AI-generated SVG or Powerpoint or something)

    • SOLAR_FIELDS 36 minutes ago

      It was definitely written by an LLM, the entire article is full of “it’s not X, it’s Y” overconfident truisms

      • prmph 10 minutes ago

        Yep:

        > The relation between them always has to be supplied, and supplying it is what the system’s logic is.

        100% sure this is Claude's recent writing style at work

  • iterance an hour ago

    The associated paper is (I will say generously) not forthcoming: https://zenodo.org/records/23526702

    I can also find no working model. I expect this may be disregarded for now.

  • vintagedave an hour ago

    > A large language model is trained to predict the next word of a piece of text. … simply asking a model to “think step by step” makes its answers better.

    I thought both these statements were no longer held to be broadly true? At least in big lab or frontier models.

    • nayroclade an hour ago

      Next token prediction is still how pre-training works, but that's a relatively small part of the whole training run nowadays. Most of the time is spent in post-training reinforcement learning scenarios, where models are scored based on an evaluation of their ability to complete a task, not whether any specific token correctly predicts a known next token.

      Generally, anyone talking about next token prediction being some limiting factor of LLM capability is a good reason to ignore them, as they haven't updated their understanding of LLMs since 2023 or so.

      • chrisjj an hour ago

        > Next token prediction is still how pre-training works, but that's a relatively small part of the whole training run nowadays

        Only if you call 90% small.

        No-one is claiming <50%.

    • asdfsa32 an hour ago

      Only the meaning of "next" and "word" as well as "next word" has become more complicated, otherwise it still holds true as a general mechanism.

  • glimshe an hour ago

    When I read the title, I thought this was a joke and the article would just say: "Think by yourself".

    Although that's arguably way superior to AI-style reasoning.

  • kangalioo 2 hours ago

    Never seen that one before:

    "Insufficient Storage

    The method could not be performed on the resource because the server is unable to store the representation needed to successfully complete the request. There is insufficient free space left in your storage allocation.

    Additionally, a 507 Insufficient Storage error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request."

    • chrisjj an hour ago

      This is what you get when you employ a stochastic parrot to deliver a 507.

  • zefir 32 minutes ago

    As a Prolog enthusiast and someone who had followed Newell & Simon's SOAR work etc., this was intriguing. There are some respositories that seem related: https://github.com/pcoz/operational-representation-of-system... But, it is disappointing that the summary does seem to be AI-generated slop and I can't find code reproducing the claims as described.

  • MrOrelliOReilly an hour ago

    Chicanery! As others have stated, this is total AI slop. How do these things get upvoted?

  • 8474_s an hour ago

    > without a LLM https://github.com/pcoz/decisionator

    2. Obtain an OpenAI API Key

        Sign up at OpenAI
        Create an API key
    • jstanley an hour ago

      I'm pretty sure that's a different project

      • 8474_s an hour ago

        Its the only repo by the author(Edward Chalk) that focuses on decision making models? Its his github account linked from the front page.

        • jstanley 3 minutes ago

          I'm pretty sure it's a different project. It's not that inconceivable that the same author has done more than one project in a related area, especially if the one you found on github is obviously different to the one described here.

  • bvan an hour ago

    I want to believe… but..

  • anentropic an hour ago

    Ironically it seems to have been made by LLM ...?

  • cubefox an hour ago

    This might have been written by someone suffering from AI psychosis.

  • suddenlybananas 2 hours ago

    It's really a nitpick but putting a big, obvious AI generated slop photo at the top of your post is a signal for bad quality content. I would recommend to avoid doing it.

    • tarkin2 an hour ago

      And using AI's favourite phrase, a deep dive, is also offputting.

      (I mean, is he grading the dive?)

    • jpnc an hour ago

      I wouldn't even mind it if it weren't so blatantly lazy (lazier). It's always that off-putting overly busy default look. Like, you couldn't even be bothered to ask for some refinement.