Comment by futurisold
1 year ago
One last comment here on contracts; an excerpt from the linked post I think it's extremely relevant for LLMs, maybe it triggers an interesting discussion here:
"The scope of contracts extends beyond basic validation. One key observation is that a contract is considered fulfilled if both the LLM’s input and output are successfully validated against their specifications. This leads to a deep implication: if two different agents satisfy the same contract, they are functionally equivalent, at least with respect to that specific contract.
This concept of functional equivalence through contracts opens up promising opportunities. In principle, you could replace one LLM with another, or even substitute an LLM with a rule-based system, and as long as both satisfy the same contract, your application should continue functioning correctly. This creates a level of abstraction that shields higher-level components from the implementation details of underlying models."
Anyone interested in this from a history / semiotics / language-theory perspective should look into the triad concepts of:
Sign (Signum) - The thing which points Locus - The thing being pointed to Sense (Sensus) - The effect/sense in the interpreter
Also known by: Representation/Object/Interpretation, Symbol/Referent/Thought, Signal/Data/User, Symbol/State/Update. Same pattern has been independently identified many many times through history, always ending up with the triplet, renamed many many times.
What you're describing above is the "Locus" essential object being pointed to, fulfilled by different contracts/LLMs/systems but the same essential thing always being eluded to. There's an elegant stability to it from a systems design pov. It makes strong sense to build around those as the indexes/keys being pointed towards, and then various implementations (Signs) attempting to achieve them. I'm building a similar system atm.
Thanks for bringing this up. I'm fairly familiar with Peirce's triadic semiotics and Montague's semantics, and they show up in some of my notes. I haven't turned those sketches into anything applied yet, but the design space feels *huge* and quite promising intuitively.
Agreed. This is a very interesting discussion! Thanks for bringing it to light.
Have you read Escher, Bach, Gödel: the Eternal Golden Braid?
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