Videos

Kevin Ellis - Probabilistic Thinking in Language and Code - IPAM at UCLA

Presenter
November 7, 2024
Abstract
Recorded 07 November 2024. Kevin Ellis of Cornell University presents "Probabilistic Thinking in Language and Code" at IPAM's Naturalistic Approaches to Artificial Intelligence Workshop. Abstract: I will present work that tries to bridge Bayesian models of cognition with LLMs, treating both informal (natural) language and formal (programming) languages as candidate languages-of-thought for humanlike internal representations. First, I will define a class of Bayesian models that wrap around LLMs. Then, I will show ways in which the resulting models are more humanlike than either a raw LLM, or a conventional Bayesian cognitive model. Last, I will show engineering results suggesting how wake-sleep learning could fine-tune language models to be more effective at inductive reasoning by amortizing probabilistic inference. Learn more online at: https://www.ipam.ucla.edu/programs/workshops/workshop-iii-naturalistic-approaches-to-artificial-intelligence/?tab=overview