Superposition, Self-Modeling, and the Path to AGI: A New Perspective

post by Peterpiper · 2024-06-30T17:20:45.546Z · LW · GW · 0 comments

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Executive Summary:

• Current feed forward AI faces a tradeoff between intelligence and self-modeling capability due to dense superposition in upper layers.
• This limitation potentially hinders advanced meta-learning and AGI development.
• A proposed solution involves using infinite context length and recursive training loops.
• This approach could allow for high-fidelity self-modeling while maintaining the benefits of dense superposition.
• Parallels with biological cognition, including hemispheric specialization and embodied cognition, offer insights for future AI development.

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The Superposition Dilemma in AI

Modern neural networks, particularly in their upper layers, exhibit dense superposition - a feature where individual neurons or groups of neurons represent multiple concepts simultaneously. This characteristic allows for rich, complex representations and correlates with the network's overall intelligence and pattern recognition capabilities.

However, this same density poses a significant challenge for self-modeling and meta-learning:

1. Self-Modeling Difficulty: Dense superposition makes it nearly impossible to cleanly segment out specific functionalities or representations, hindering accurate self-modeling.

2. Compounding Errors: In attempting iterative self-modeling, errors compound rapidly due to the entangled nature of representations.

3. Meta-Learning Limitations: The inability to perform high-fidelity iterative self-modeling severely limits the depth of meta-learning achievable.

The Tradeoff

There appears to be a fundamental tradeoff between a network's capacity for complex representations (correlated with "intelligence") and its ability to perform clear, iterative self-modeling. This tradeoff becomes particularly evident when considering networks of a given size and training regimen.

A Potential Solution

To overcome this limitation, we propose leveraging two key concepts:

1. Infinite Context Length: Allowing the model to store its entire state explicitly in the context.

2. Recursive Training Loops: Training the model to perform self-modeling tasks recursively, with each iteration explicitly represented in the context.

This approach essentially offloads the self-modeling task from the neural architecture to the context space, potentially enabling high-fidelity, deeply recursive self-modeling while maintaining the benefits of dense superposition for intelligence.

Biological Parallels

Interestingly, this computational tradeoff and its potential solution have parallels in biological cognition:

1. Hemispheric Specialization: The brain's hemispheric structure might be a biological approach to balancing complex pattern recognition with clearer self-modeling capabilities.

2. Embodied Cognition: Humans appear to use their bodies to model cognitive processes, analogous to how the proposed AI solution uses the context window.

Implications and Future Directions

This perspective opens up new avenues for AI research and development:

1. Novel Architectures: Designing AI systems that can dynamically balance representational power and self-modeling capability.

2. Embodied AI: Incorporating forms of 'embodied' context in AI systems to support advanced cognitive capabilities.

3. Meta-Learning Advancements: Potentially enabling deeper, more effective meta-learning in AI systems.

4. AGI Development: Offering a possible path to overcome current limitations in achieving artificial general intelligence.

Conclusion

The tradeoff between intelligence and self-modeling capability in AI systems presents both a challenge and an opportunity. By understanding and addressing this tradeoff, potentially through approaches inspired by biological cognition, we may be able to develop AI systems capable of both rich, complex representations and high-fidelity self-modeling - key steps on the path to AGI.

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