Power Hungry Magic
/0 Comments/by Jörg Lehmann“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, Arthur C. Clarke already knew, and it is part of the magic of new technologies that their downsides are systematically concealed. This is also the case with the energy consumption of large language models (LLMs): As with the schnitzel that ends up on consumers’ plates and makes […]
Feeding the Cuckoo
/0 Comments/by Jörg LehmannLarge Language Models (LLMs) combine words that frequently appear in similar contexts in the training dataset; on this basis, they predict the most probable word or sentence. The larger the training dataset, the more possible combinations there are, and the more ‘creative’ the model appears. The sheer size of models such as GPT-4 already provides […]
Human-Machine-Cognition
/0 Comments/by Jörg LehmannHumans search for themselves in non-human creatures and inanimate artefacts. Apes, the “next of kin”, or dogs, the “most faithful companions” are good examples of the former, robots are good examples of the latter: A human-like design of the robots’ bodies and a humanising linguistic framing of their capabilities supports, according to a common hypothesis, […]