Comment by tovej
18 days ago
You did not address the second issue at all. You are inverting the implication in your argument. Whether gradient descent helps solve the language model problem or not does not help you show that this means it's a useful world model.
Let me illustrate the point using a different argument with the same structure: 1) The best professional chefs are excellent at cutting onions 2) Therefore, if we train a model to cuy onions using gradient descent, that model will be a very good profrssional chef
2) clearly does not follow from 1)
I think the commenter is saying that they will combine a world model with the word model. The resulting combination may be sufficient for very solid results.
Note humans generate their own non-complete world model. For example there are sounds and colors we don’t hear or see. Odors we don’t smell. Etc…. We have an incomplete model of the world, but we still have a model that proves useful for us.
> they will combine a world model with the word model.
This takes "world model" far too literally. Audio-visual generative AI models that create non-textual "spaces" are not world models in the sense the previous poster meant. I think what they meant by world model is that the vast majority of the knowledge we rely upon to make decisions is tacit, not something that has been digitized, and not something we even know how to meaningfully digitize and model. And even describing it as tacit knowledge falls short; a substantial part of our world model is rooted in our modes of actions, motivations, etc, and not coupled together in simple recursive input -> output chains. There are dimensions to our reality that, before generative AI, didn't see much systematic introspection. Afterall, we're still mired in endless nature v. nurture debates; we have a very poor understanding about ourselves. In particular, we have extremely poor understanding of how we and our constructed social worlds evolve dynamically, and it's that aspect of our behavior that drives the frontier of exploration and discovery.
OTOH, the "world model" contention feels tautological, so I'm not sure how convincing it can be for people on the other side of the debate.
Really all you're saying is the human world model is very complex, which is expected as humans are the most intelligent animal.
At no point have I seen anyone here as the question of "What is the minimum viable state of a world model".
We as humans with our ego seem to state that because we are complex, any introspective intelligence must be as complex as us to be as intelligent as us. Which doesn't seem too dissimilar to saying a plane must flap its wings to fly.
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