Careful. If you start being too reasonable people might accuse you of using ad hominems.

I’ve literally been accused of being anti-human for trying to differentiate AI from the genuine harms it is being used for. There was one post where scientists had used a specialized LLM to create novel bacteriophages, and the comments were freaking out, claiming it was super-bugs and a new bioweapon…

You were the one throwing out ad hominems, dude.

Lol what? Ad hominems? Oh Jesus Christ you’re one of those… So I ignored your argument and said you didn’t know what you were talking about because you were a janitor? Or that you can’t possibly understand LLMs because you’re too old/young/uneducated?

No. Disagreeing is not an ad hominem. Claiming you don’t understand something is not an ad hominem. Misunderstanding is not an ad hominem. I even apologized for the misunderstanding. And if you can’t see how “I believe in X because I care about humanity,” doesn’t directly insinuate that not caring about X means you don’t care about humanity, then holy fuck communication was never going to work.

It’s a shame, because you had some good points, and I was hoping that apologizing would have reduced your hostility. But I can see now that your goal has been to “Win” the argument. I’ve literally never seen that ad hominem claim used incorrectly, by somebody trying to have an honest discussion.

Also. Nothing I said is ad hominem either. It’s direct commentary of events within this conversation, independent of what your profession is or who you are. Even the “You’re one of those,” comment is not ad hominem.

I’m done 👍.

Okay… You seem to get really upset when I directly quote you, and claim that I’m putting words in your mouth, so I’ll do what you do and cite your phrases exactly.

Why only assume? I cited Wikipedia. You cited nothing.

Because whether you or I are correct in the specific definition is what is means to be an LLM is irrelevant to my purpose in engaging in this conversation. I concede that I might have overreached in my confidence of whether or not it is an LLM, because Nature itself calls it:

“the largest-scale fully open language model[s] to date.”

And a lot of the other abstracts and comments on Evo draw the deep similarities to other LLMs. Again, this comes down to where the clean line between any given AI actually is. And my entire point behind this argument is that it doesn’t matter to anybody outside the lab.

My hate of LLMs is certainly not misinformed. It’s only tribe-based in that I care for humanity.

Stating you hate LLMs because you care for humanity directly supposes that those who do not hate LLMs, do not care for humanity.

“I’m against X because I care about protecting children,” is used ad nauseum to suggest that NOT being against X automatically means you don’t care about children. I’m not putting words in your mouth by interpreting your words in the way words are typically interpreted.

If I misunderstand your meanings, I apologize. But please stop assuming I’m intentionally misinterpreting you when I’m literally just reading your words and responding to them to the best of my ability.

…Except that it isn’t. It’s not a Generative Pre-Trained Transformer. It uses a Transformer-like architecture. You cannot use Evo’s architecture to make a chatbot. It’s a GLM.

Okay. Is that the defining feature of where your problem lies? Specifically in the capacity to use human language to interact with AI? Because that’s a specific issue that can be addressed, rather than the vague “I don’t like this technology because it has hurt people.”

Go ahead and train a StripedHyena2 model to be a chatbot, then. I’m sure that will work great.

Okay, second pass. So your issue is specifically with interacting with AI using natural human language?

For someone who’s such a stickler for making 100% correct and unambiguous statements, you’re sure keen on asserting equality where there is merely similarity.

Fair. I shouldn’t have confidently claimed they were identical in every way. The vast majority of the time, I’m talking to people that have very little understanding of the technology, and have just pure vibe-based fears about it. I apologize for the unjustified gross-comparison.

Nobody is claiming these technologies don’t share some (or even a lot of) DNA. Being upset that people correctly use the definition of LLMs as outlined by Wikipedia, where even Evo’s own Github page doesn’t claim it’s an LLM, is just derailing the conversation away from people’s righteous objections.

Again, my focus on the conversation was separating “This technology is universally bad,” from “This technology has been used to hurt people.” I wasn’t trying to derail the conversation, I was trying to focus it. I am far less interested in scientific definitions of what every single model technically classifies as, than I am in addressing the widespread blanket hate against a technology that has no say in how it is used. I don’t think dynamite is evil, nor do I think genetics is evil. Despite both being used for MASSIVE harm at various points in history.

When X-rays were first discovered in 1896 they were used EVERYWHERE. This is what humans do. AI is not unique or special in this regard. A surprising number of people got radiation sickness because of the over-use of the technology.

And again. Just because you have yet to personally experience a use for a technology does not mean the technology is bad or useless. There is undoubtedly widespread abuse, but this doesn’t diminish the cases in which it is useful.

Enforce regulation, charge those who abuse it, but the universal claim of “This is bad,” doesn’t help the cause. It just serves to build mindless tribal hate.

Not defending the obsession with corpo-chatbots. But a lot of the development is coming purely from hobbyists doing it because it’s fun to experiment with new technology.

And there have been developments using branches of the tech to do surprising things, such as using genomic sequences instead of normal human language. Still an LLM, but instead of doing auto-correct/auto-complete responses in English, it fills in genomic sequences.

That’s the same argument creationists make against evolution.

The first versions of anything are never comparable to highly developed versions.

The simplest cell today is VASTLY more complex than the first protocell that existed on the planet.

Also, that last line is an appeal to personal experience. If I could show you a single example of a single agent being genuinely useful would you change your mind? Or have you decided carte blanche?

Honestly, I develop mine just because it’s fun experimenting with the technology. Quite often it takes more effort to teach it how to do a task than doing the task myself would require. But it’s a fun challenge.

That analogy doesn’t really hold up to the “Therefore.”

There are LOTS of things that taste worse than water, and yet are critical to cooking. Vanilla extract, oil, soy sauce, etc. I personally don’t like fish, but a little bit in the right context can be delicious.

Lol wow you’re VERY good at ignoring the concept of words, eh? Kinda makes your “ridicule” difficult to take seriously. Keep crying about things that matter less than a fart in the wind 👍

I did not say all deep learning algorithms are LLMs, I said all LLMs are deep learning algorithms. It’s a nested hierarchy, that relationship only runs one way.

Yes. Evo was trained on text strings of genomic data. That’s what I was trying to say was the misunderstanding. LLMs do not require language as you and I would recognize it. If you think that calling them “Large Language Models,” is misleading, I kinda agree, but then we can start arguing semantics about why scientists name anything the way they do. Dark matter isn’t actually dark, and probably isn’t matter. Dark energy isn’t dark. There was no explosion during the big bang.

If you’re using colloquial word usage and demanding scientific advances follow your expectations, you’re going to have a bad time.

But let’s just say for the sake of argument that you’re 100% correct, and that Evo is not an LLM. Rather, it’s something extremely close, save for a few differences.

People are already angry at the researchers for “Using AI to develop super-bugs,” or saying the genuinely universal “AI has no uses!” And earnestly failing to differentiate between the shit-bot that makes deep-fakes, and the AI designed to identify cancers.

That is why I absolutely reject your disrespectful framing that by defending a technology, and NOT it’s worst uses, I’m somehow opposite to “care(ing) for humanity.”

The actual technology behind Evo and ChatGPT is structurally the same. The methods of training a model on genomic data or weather patterns is indistinguishable from training it on stolen media. The difference is the uses, and targets.

This is my point. They are LLMs. That is not an opinion or a debatable point. They are categorically, definitionally, LLMs. You don’t understand what LLMs are, because LLMs ARE deep learning models, and instead of taking the time to actually learn about the technology you’re responding to my corrections with hostility.

You and I are on the same side. Chat-bots ARE harmful. But putting that label on a technology as a whole is purely tribe-based fear that is already causing the spread of unfounded fear and misinformation.

And the claim wasn’t “Don’t use AI as a source of information,” which I agree with. It was “Don’t use any AI,” which you clarified to mean LLMs. So this is very much pertinent.

Then you don’t actually understand what LLMs are, and you’re using the term as a short-hand to mean chat bots. I’m not trying to be rude, but you need to understand that is just a fact, if you think LLMs can only be chat-bots, and can only be corporate, and can only be trained unethically.

Would it surprise you to know that quite a lot of genuine advances have been made by using LLMs that don’t speak any language you’d recognize? Evo 1 and Evo 2 for example “Speak” genome sequences. There are other models that have been used to improve weather modeling, and animal behaviour analysis.

You’re right that AI is a very broad term, but so is LLM. The problem is that ignorant people see “AI” and automatically assume it’s bad because of the connotation with Chat-Bots.

By AI do you mean LLMs specifically? All LLMs, or just the corporate ones? Because I fully agree that ChatGPT, Gemini, etc. truly are awful. But this is also catching genuinely useful technological advances in with the wide net. AI isn’t just LLMs, LLMs aren’t just chat bots. And claiming a technologies worst implementations are indicative of the entire tech would see just about every single technology ever made fall in the same category.

probably by the same mechanism that you took my obviously sarcastic hyperbole and responded as though it took a genuine decade to perform. Or because the entire point was “stop complaining about this, it’s petty.” I still remember when people bitched and cried when meme-building websites started to get popular. This has the same pathetic gatekeeping vibe.

I just have to say their blatant declaration of having absolutely no idea what AI is, as an inflammatory response to me pointing out that they have absolutely no idea what AI is, was quite satisfying.

But remember, we’re the stupid ones for taking the time to understand what the technology even is.

Lol you literally just described AI and a locally hosted Gen AI in a single sentence while claiming there’s no overlap. How are you this ignorant? You have no idea what you’re mad about, but you’re AGGRESSIVELY confident that you do. Gen AI is algorithms. Many are offline and locally hosted.

You basically said “Wow, you really think rocky road is the same thing as double fudge? They’re totally different colours, you must be stupid.”

Just in case you don’t get the analogy, those are both flavours of ice cream.

They’d be really upset, if they knew what AI was.

I don’t want this planet to burn, I actually bicycle to work, eat very little meat, and tend to only buy local produce, but good job on identifying your preferred “Out Group.” Unless you have another classifier you want to use against me.

Charge the people responsible for harms, ABSOLUTELY. but holy fuck, you don’t even understand the thing you’re complaining about.

Do you even know what you dislike? Or is it just vibes and tribal identity?

Yeah, I find moral posturing pretentious and annoying.