Ask HN: Why do so many assume we’re on the cusp of super-intelligent AI?

Two things to consider:

1). No computer system will ever go beyond its programming and for an artificial intelligence of any sort, this will be required.

I have worked in many systems over the last 40 years and all too often, when you are forced by circumstance or direction, the analysis of those systems have been shown to be essentially garbage presenting what appears to be reasonable results when those results are not at all reasonable.

2). No matter how much data we "feed" these systems, the data will contain rubbish in terms of what we are trying to do with it and this leads only to further rubbish being created.

What we need to be cognisant of in regards to these technologies is that they are or will be used by people who do not understand the limitations of these technologies and will believe they are far more capable than they really are.

I don't disagree that these tools can be or will be useful as an adjunct to our capabilities. But unless we are actually stupid, we should not be relying on these systems for critical purposes. Of course, this will happen as it has already happened many times in the past and we have suffered from the inherent stupidity involved - we (as humanity) are just too lazy in so many ways.

I have the privilege of watching my 5 month old granddaughter grow and when you see the intelligence inherent here and then compare with so called machine intelligence, you quickly realise that all of our efforts in machine intelligence development is nothing compared to what we see in the development of intelligence in human beings.

Too many systems rely on people being unaware of exploits, but an AI would never forget something, or get bored or tired of trying, It doesn't need to be smarter than humans, just have enough persistence and attention to detail

BTW: when I posed this question

> how do I use ffmpeg to slice out a video, I only want 3 seconds of video from the middle

to chatgpt4, it did not mention anything about accounting for keyframes. So I'm not sure what version you're using, but it's not the one I have access to :/ Another reason to assume good faith, because you seem to have access to something that I don't.

And, this is now (well before this specific conversation) an expired example because openai's model has been specifically training on this nuance, and thus even if it never made a mistake around it, it still wouldn't be impressive to me; simply because this nuance was directly added to it's model. Remember, we're talking about if the abilities of available models are impressive, what would be impressive to me is if they're able to generalize well enough to know things they haven't been directly taught.

> Why do so many assume we’re on the cusp of super-intelligent AI?

And how "smart" text to text engines can become.

My argument is actually pretty close to yours. People that are impressed, want to be. They're looking for ways to be impressed. Just like you think I'm looking for ways not to be impressed. Which, even if I am, it still should be easy to convince me (or others) that super-intelligent AI is coming soon to an API near you!

Right now, the LLMs that are the new hotness, aren't super intelligent. They're not domain experts, they can't play a simple game that children love without cheating. They're easily distracted if you know how to word a question correctly. While it's cool they can generate language that seems to be true, and useful. It's not as useful as what already exists. (For the context that I care about) And, all of these examples are markers of below average intelligence. What's the argument that would convince me that very soon, we'll take something stupid and make it hyper-intelligent? Because that's no something I've seen happen before.

Still, all of that said. Your comment that seems clearly meant to be insulting, doesn't actually make any other point. Did you mean to imply something else? Or was it just an attempt to throw insults by pretending to make an observation? Because the conversation is about if people should be impressed. Which when it comes down to it an opinion, are opinions bad?