alt Hacker NewsThere is no burden of proof on me, because I'm not asserting that AI has invented something on its own. I haven't told you what my view is or whether I ever have a view.
The problem with the reasoning of the person I was responding to is that it's assuming "if X is in the training set and LLM outputs X, then it did so because X is in the training set". That does not follow. Conceivably it's possible that X is in the training set and LLM outputs X, but if X hadn't been in the training set the LLM also would've output X.
Lets look at that phrase again:
> Why do we think this emerged “on its own”? Surely this technique has been discussed in research papers that are in the training set.
This phrase implies "if X was in the training set, then LLM couldn't have come up with X on its own". This is false. In fact, my claim that the implication is false is testable, in the following manner: Have two training sets, T and T'. In T, X is present. In T' you've removed X but left X-adjacent things. Train LLM A on T and A' on T'. Find a prompt that requires that A outputs X. If on the same prompt A' also outputs X, that's an example of my claim. To repeat, my claim is "it's possible that X is in the training set and LLM outputs X, but if X hadn't been in the training set the LLM also would've output X."
In fact, I've just realized I even have a method for constructing (T, T') that guarantees what I've described. Not sure if it's worth a paper on its own though.
Your pure logic is probably right; I do not have the time or interest to dissect it.
But you’re missing the context and implication: “doing new stuff” is the major achievement we’re looking for next from LLMs. Seeing something that is “new” and is not in the training set is interesting in a way that something contained in the training set is not.
We cannot introspect LLMs meaningfully yet, so the difference between “came up with myself and it’s in the training set incidentally” and “applied a concept in the training set” is not meaningful.