I like the pointing out things that need names and attempting to name them. Good stuff!
To rephrase the definition pointed to by “neuro-scaffold” to see if I understood, it is “an integration of ML models and non-ML computer programs that creates nontrivial capabilities beyond those of the ML model or computer program”?
Naively I would refer to this as an “ML deployment” but the ”… nontrivial capabilities beyond...” aspect is important and not implied by “ML deployment”, so “ML integration” might be better, but both are clunky and “ML” can refer to many data science and AI techniques other than neural nets, so I think we’re stuck with the “neuro” terminology. Although, I think I would prefer if people called them “multi-layer perceptrons” to disambiguate them from the biological neurons they were inspired by. “Artificial neural networks” would also be an improvement. “MLP” or “ANN”.
I think I dislike “scaffold” because it implies a temporary structure used for building or repairing another structure, and I don’t think that represents the programs the ANNs are integrated with well. The program might be temporary, but it might not be. So it could perhaps be called an “integrated ANN system” or “integrated MLP system”, or acronymized, an “IANN” or “IMLP”. But these suggestions seem klunky. They don’t seem as easy to say or understand as a “neuro-scaffold”, so “neuro-scaffold” is probably a better term despite the issues I have with the words “neuro” and the words “scaffold”.
“Scaffold” sounds very natural to me, because it’s been common parlance on LessWrong for at least a year. A while ago, I Googled “LLM scaffold” and was surprised to find that all of the top results are LessWrong-adjacent. Before that, I just assumed everyone in AI called it a “scaffold,” but “AI agent” is actually more common. Maybe it didn’t catch on here because it would cause too much confusion when we talk about “agency” and “agent foundations.”
IMO, “neuro-scaffold” is clearer than the existing options and pretty easy to say. I strong-upvoted the post because I think having a Schelling point for what to call these things would be good. (Even if it may not be the very first thing I’d pick—for instance, “neural scaffold” sounds slightly less neologism-y to me.)
This is good context to have. If it is a Schelling point on LW that’s probs a good enough reason to choose it as the term to adopt, although some consideration might be warranted for it’s adoption in wider communities, but I can’t think of any other term would work better for that.
Agreed that having a common term would be really nice, and this is more specific than the very broad LLM agent or AI agent.
But neuro-scaffold feels really wrong. It is not a scaffold made of a neural substance. It is a neural substance with a scaffolding around it, or a neural substance that is scaffolded. The tense of neuro-scaffold is wrong.
I don’t know how much of a blocker that would be, but for me it feels much better to continue saying scaffolded LLM. I’ve also wondered about LHLLM for long horizon (agentic) LLM or ALLMA for agentic LLM (based) architecture.
Those don’t feel quite right either. But an acronym expanding on LLM does. They do look like they could be quite a mouthful, but for me LLM is now one thought, not an expansion to large language model, so those feel fairly compact.
I like the pointing out things that need names and attempting to name them. Good stuff!
To rephrase the definition pointed to by “neuro-scaffold” to see if I understood, it is “an integration of ML models and non-ML computer programs that creates nontrivial capabilities beyond those of the ML model or computer program”?
Naively I would refer to this as an “ML deployment” but the ”… nontrivial capabilities beyond...” aspect is important and not implied by “ML deployment”, so “ML integration” might be better, but both are clunky and “ML” can refer to many data science and AI techniques other than neural nets, so I think we’re stuck with the “neuro” terminology. Although, I think I would prefer if people called them “multi-layer perceptrons” to disambiguate them from the biological neurons they were inspired by. “Artificial neural networks” would also be an improvement. “MLP” or “ANN”.
I think I dislike “scaffold” because it implies a temporary structure used for building or repairing another structure, and I don’t think that represents the programs the ANNs are integrated with well. The program might be temporary, but it might not be. So it could perhaps be called an “integrated ANN system” or “integrated MLP system”, or acronymized, an “IANN” or “IMLP”. But these suggestions seem klunky. They don’t seem as easy to say or understand as a “neuro-scaffold”, so “neuro-scaffold” is probably a better term despite the issues I have with the words “neuro” and the words “scaffold”.
“Scaffold” sounds very natural to me, because it’s been common parlance on LessWrong for at least a year. A while ago, I Googled “LLM scaffold” and was surprised to find that all of the top results are LessWrong-adjacent. Before that, I just assumed everyone in AI called it a “scaffold,” but “AI agent” is actually more common. Maybe it didn’t catch on here because it would cause too much confusion when we talk about “agency” and “agent foundations.”
IMO, “neuro-scaffold” is clearer than the existing options and pretty easy to say. I strong-upvoted the post because I think having a Schelling point for what to call these things would be good. (Even if it may not be the very first thing I’d pick—for instance, “neural scaffold” sounds slightly less neologism-y to me.)
The term I’ve seen on the software industry user side for that thing is “harness”. but “harnessed AI” sounds like something else (horseGPT?)
This is good context to have. If it is a Schelling point on LW that’s probs a good enough reason to choose it as the term to adopt, although some consideration might be warranted for it’s adoption in wider communities, but I can’t think of any other term would work better for that.
Agreed that having a common term would be really nice, and this is more specific than the very broad LLM agent or AI agent.
But neuro-scaffold feels really wrong. It is not a scaffold made of a neural substance. It is a neural substance with a scaffolding around it, or a neural substance that is scaffolded. The tense of neuro-scaffold is wrong.
I don’t know how much of a blocker that would be, but for me it feels much better to continue saying scaffolded LLM. I’ve also wondered about LHLLM for long horizon (agentic) LLM or ALLMA for agentic LLM (based) architecture.
Those don’t feel quite right either. But an acronym expanding on LLM does. They do look like they could be quite a mouthful, but for me LLM is now one thought, not an expansion to large language model, so those feel fairly compact.