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Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

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Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#261

Post by ttlei »

tim333 wrote: post #213
pron wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It comes down to whether you believe AGI is achievable. No, it does not. I very much believe AI (or AGI, as you call it) is achievable, but may I remind you that some years after the invention of neural networks, Norbert Wiener, one of the greatest minds of his generations, said that the secret of intelligence would be unlocked within five years, and Alan Turing -- a component of your very own post-pre-AGI era's AG…

>we are not even close to achieving insect-level intelligence Then again I don't know many insects that drive cars, beat the champions at chess and go or similar.

I say insect intelligence is good enough to at least drive car. Bee, for example, is pretty damn amazing at flying & navigation. I mean flying and avoiding obstacles through miles of forest to find food is no easy task.

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#262

Post by mikorym »

gonehome wrote: post #237
pron wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It comes down to whether you believe AGI is achievable. No, it does not. I very much believe AI (or AGI, as you call it) is achievable, but may I remind you that some years after the invention of neural networks, Norbert Wiener, one of the greatest minds of his generations, said that the secret of intelligence would be unlocked within five years, and Alan Turing -- a component of your very own post-pre-AGI era's AG…

If AGI is achievable (seems likely given brains are all over the place in nature) and achieving it will have consequences that dwarf everything else then doesn't it make sense to focus on it? Yes, historically people were way too optimistic and generally went down AI rabbit holes that went nowhere, but two years before the Wright flyer flew, the Wright brothers themselves said it was 50 years out (and others were sti…

Why would AGI dwarf anything?

There are at least 7 billion beings on the planet with AGI already. I think a bigger problem is the general well being of the aforementioned 7 billion entities.

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#263

Post by pron »

breck wrote: post #227
pron wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was actively engaged in the field in the late-nineties when AI was also five years around the corner. I’ve mostly lost interest since then, and the disappointment that is deep learning has only dulled my enthusiasm further (not that it hasn’t achieved some cool things, but it’s a long way from where we’d thought we’d be by now).

> I was actively engaged in the field in the late-nineties So was Geoffrey Everest Hinton > I’ve mostly lost interest since then but he didn't give up. If you expect someone to just hand us AGI in a nicely wrapped package with a bow, with all the details neatly described, you are absolutely right, that's really far off! But for the record there are many people actively grinding it out in the field, day in and day out…

The kind of language used in this release has actually hurt AI considerably before, so by pointing out that it's delusional I am not giving up and helping save AI from the research winter that OpenAI seems to be working on. You're welcome, AI!

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#264

Post by mikorym »

arugulum wrote: post #250
pron wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It comes down to whether you believe AGI is achievable. No, it does not. I very much believe AI (or AGI, as you call it) is achievable, but may I remind you that some years after the invention of neural networks, Norbert Wiener, one of the greatest minds of his generations, said that the secret of intelligence would be unlocked within five years, and Alan Turing -- a component of your very own post-pre-AGI era's AG…

Allow me to repost Altman's wager: - If OpenAI does not achieve AGI, and you invested in it, you lose some finite money (or not, depending on the value of their other R&D) - If OpenAI does not achieve AGI, and you did not invest in it, you saved some finite money, which you could invest elsewhere for finite returns - If OpenAI achieves AGI and you invested in it, you get infinite returns, because AGI will capture all…

This does not presuppose any kind of precise definition of infinity.

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#265

Post by sgt101 »

JamesBarney wrote: post #204
pron wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I haven't been clear. I have no issue with the research OpenAI is performing, nor with anyone's beliefs in AI's imminence or their personal role in bringing it about. However, no one knows whether what they're doing is even on the right path towards AI, and certainly not when it will be achieved, plus the topic has been subject to overoptimism for decades now, so I do take issue with publicly calling what you…

I think you're issue with the language is not shared by most people. In research we rarely know beforehand what research is on the right or wrong path. But we are comfortable with someone saying they are researching something even if they don't know beforehand whether the research will be useful or a wild goose chase. For example most people's first though to hearing "I'm researching ways to treat Alzheimer's" isn't…

Although, perhaps you would agree that someone saying "my work on Alzheimer's might help your friend" would be behaving in a cruel and unprofessional way unless the treatment was indeed in human trials?

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#266

Post by breck »

oldmanhorton wrote: post #218
breck wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I say "most of them"? Basically it simplifies ARM and the Azure API significantly and makes Azure operate more like "infrastructure as code". But I'd need to look at the latest version of Azure to see specifically what the remaining pain points are now. I could have a more specific conversation in a different setting. I remember the first meetings about ARM when the resource IDs were presented, and a few people i…

If you manually rename a resource and refer to it by resource ID, I don't think ARM understands anything about it and assumes it's a new resource. That's just from using ARM, though, I don't know it's internals. They are investing a good amount in ARM lately though. The vs code language server is pretty good and export template got much better

> They are investing a good amount in ARM lately though. The vs code language server is pretty good and export template got much better

Awesome! I sheepishly have been using GCP, AWS, and DO. Last gave Azure a shot last year, but perhaps it's time to take another look.

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#267

Post by woopwoop »

thfuran wrote: post #147
gdb wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I work at OpenAI.) It comes down to whether you believe AGI is achievable. We've talked about why we think it might be: https://medium.com/syncedreview/openai-founder-short-term-ag... , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHCSNsLKHfM And we certainly have more of a plan for building it than warp drives :). EDIT: I personally think the case for near-term AGI is strong enough that it'd be hard for me work on any other pro…

>It comes down to whether you believe AGI is achievable How could it possibly not be achievable? We know for certain general intelligence is physically realizable - we exist.

The means to recreating human level intelligence could be out of reach of human beings for the same reason that the means of recreating cat level intelligence is out of reach of cats.

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#269

Post by breck »

pron wrote: post #263
breck wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was actively engaged in the field in the late-nineties So was Geoffrey Everest Hinton > I’ve mostly lost interest since then but he didn't give up. If you expect someone to just hand us AGI in a nicely wrapped package with a bow, with all the details neatly described, you are absolutely right, that's really far off! But for the record there are many people actively grinding it out in the field, day in and day out…

The kind of language used in this release has actually hurt AI considerably before, so by pointing out that it's delusional I am not giving up and helping save AI from the research winter that OpenAI seems to be working on. You're welcome, AI!

okay I'll concede your point that perhaps being bold could be bad publicity for the field. I think that's a reasonable position to take. I don't think it is correct, but I think it's reasonable. Even if it were the precursor to a drop in funding, I don't think the previous "AI Winter" was so long, in comparison to the century-long gaps in the advance of other technologies in history, (binary was invented hundreds of years before the computer).

I would definitely not call OpenAI delusional. I would say all OpenAI is being here is "honest".

They are simply stating what the math tells them.

"E pur si muove"

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#270

Post by breck »

bo1024 wrote: post #239
breck wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> calling it "pre-AGI" pretentious to the level of delusion. I don't think you know what you are talking about. Do you do Deep Learning? If you are not actively engaged in the field, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss others who are (especially not others who are at the top of the field). That being said, you brought up some interesting points, even if I think your overall position is wrong--I think OpenAI is definite…

I study ML, and I completely agree with the quoted statement. Deep networks have gotten pretty good at recognizing correlations in data. That's not on the same map as AGI. I don't know what "pre-AGI" means exactly, but I would include things like counterfactual reasoning or ability to develop and test models of the world, which are far from our AI capabilities so far. (edit: yes I am including RL, considering the rel…

To be clear, I don't think Deep Learning = AGI. I think it's just one important piece, but I think we are also making many other rapid advances in relevant areas (neuralink's 10x+ improvement in electrodes, for one).
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