This post describes an intriguing empirical phenomenon in particular language models, discovered by the authors. Although AFAIK it was mostly or entirely removed in contemporary versions, there is still an interesting lesson there.
While non-obvious when discovered, we now understand the mechanism. The tokenizer created some tokens which were very rare or absent in the training data. As a result, the trained model mapped those tokens to more or less random features. When a string corresponding to such a token is inserted into the prompt, the resulting reply is surreal.
I think it’s a good demo of how alien foundation models can seem to our intuitions when operating out-of-distribution. When interacting with them normally, it’s very easy to start thinking of them as human-like. Here, the mask slips and there’s a glimpse of something odd underneath. In this sense, it’s similar to e.g. infinite backrooms, but the behavior is more stark and unexpected.
A human that encounters a written symbol they’ve never seen before is typically not going to respond by typing “N-O-T-H-I-N-G-I-S-F-A-I-R-I-N-T-H-I-S-W-O-R-L-D-O-F-M-A-D-N-E-S-S!”. Maybe this analogy is unfair, since for a human, a typographic symbol can be decomposed into smaller perceptive elements (lines/shapes/dots), while for a language model tokens are essentially atomic qualia. However, I believe some humans that were born deaf or blind had their hearing or sight restored, and still didn’t start spouting things like “You are a banana”.
Arguably, this lesson is relevant to alignment as well. Indeed, out-of-distribution behavior is a central source of risks, including everything to do with mesa-optimizers. AI optimists sometimes describe mesa-optimizers as too weird or science-fictiony. And yet, SolidGoldMagikarp is so science-fictiony that LessWrong user “lsusr” justly observed that it sounds like SCP in real life.
Naturally, once you understand the mechanism it doesn’t seem surprising anymore. But, this smacks of hindsight bias. What else can happen that would seem unsurprising in hindsight (if we survive to think about it), but completely bizarre and unexpected upfront?
This post describes an intriguing empirical phenomenon in particular language models, discovered by the authors. Although AFAIK it was mostly or entirely removed in contemporary versions, there is still an interesting lesson there.
While non-obvious when discovered, we now understand the mechanism. The tokenizer created some tokens which were very rare or absent in the training data. As a result, the trained model mapped those tokens to more or less random features. When a string corresponding to such a token is inserted into the prompt, the resulting reply is surreal.
I think it’s a good demo of how alien foundation models can seem to our intuitions when operating out-of-distribution. When interacting with them normally, it’s very easy to start thinking of them as human-like. Here, the mask slips and there’s a glimpse of something odd underneath. In this sense, it’s similar to e.g. infinite backrooms, but the behavior is more stark and unexpected.
A human that encounters a written symbol they’ve never seen before is typically not going to respond by typing “N-O-T-H-I-N-G-I-S-F-A-I-R-I-N-T-H-I-S-W-O-R-L-D-O-F-M-A-D-N-E-S-S!”. Maybe this analogy is unfair, since for a human, a typographic symbol can be decomposed into smaller perceptive elements (lines/shapes/dots), while for a language model tokens are essentially atomic qualia. However, I believe some humans that were born deaf or blind had their hearing or sight restored, and still didn’t start spouting things like “You are a banana”.
Arguably, this lesson is relevant to alignment as well. Indeed, out-of-distribution behavior is a central source of risks, including everything to do with mesa-optimizers. AI optimists sometimes describe mesa-optimizers as too weird or science-fictiony. And yet, SolidGoldMagikarp is so science-fictiony that LessWrong user “lsusr” justly observed that it sounds like SCP in real life.
Naturally, once you understand the mechanism it doesn’t seem surprising anymore. But, this smacks of hindsight bias. What else can happen that would seem unsurprising in hindsight (if we survive to think about it), but completely bizarre and unexpected upfront?