AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English
scottaaronson.blog
AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English
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Re: AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English
#2The way Scott describes it, AlphaCode appears to be practicing Agile / TDD! All it needs to do now is write its own tests.
Update: See my reply to dudeinjapan's response - I had not been completely clear here.
Re: AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English
#3I love this take. Most AI results provoke a torrent of articles listing pratfalls that prove it's not AGI. Of course it's not AGI! But it is as unexpected as a talking dog. Take a second to be amazed, at least amused. Then read how they did it and think about how to do better.
Re: AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English
#4I still don't believe deep learning is going to take us to AGI. The susceptibility of these systems to completely failing on weird inputs shows that it's a kind of massive memorization going on here, rather than true understanding.
Has anyone tried searching for new basic operations, below the level of neural networks? We've been using these methods for years, and I doubt the first major breakthrough in ML is the most optimal method possible.
Consider the extreme case of searching over all mathematical operations to see if something really novel can be discovered.
How feasible would this be?
Re: AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English
#5I love this take. Most AI results provoke a torrent of articles listing pratfalls that prove it's not AGI. Of course it's not AGI! But it is as unexpected as a talking dog. Take a second to be amazed, at least amused. Then read how they did it and think about how to do better.
It's rarely productive to take internet criticism into account, but it feels like AI is an especially strong instance of this. It seems like a lot of folks just want to pooh pooh any possible outcome. I'm not sure why this is. Possibly because of animosity toward big tech, given big tech is driving a lot of the research and practical implementation in this area?
Re: AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English
#6I love this take. Most AI results provoke a torrent of articles listing pratfalls that prove it's not AGI. Of course it's not AGI! But it is as unexpected as a talking dog. Take a second to be amazed, at least amused. Then read how they did it and think about how to do better.
It's rarely productive to take internet criticism into account, but it feels like AI is an especially strong instance of this. It seems like a lot of folks just want to pooh pooh any possible outcome. I'm not sure why this is. Possibly because of animosity toward big tech, given big tech is driving a lot of the research and practical implementation in this area?
I suspect it is more visceral: AGI would demolish human exceptionalism, and also of the human mind as being the last refuge of vitalism.
Re: AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English
#7I still don't believe deep learning is going to take us to AGI. The susceptibility of these systems to completely failing on weird inputs shows that it's a kind of massive memorization going on here, rather than true understanding. Has anyone tried searching for new basic operations, below the level of neural networks? We've been using these methods for years, and I doubt the first major breakthrough in ML is the mos…
> The susceptibility of these systems to completely failing on weird inputs shows that it's a kind of massive memorization going on here, rather than true understanding.
Isn’t that a truism? “Understanding” is equivalent to AGI. Nobody would argue that we have AGI yet, but the intelligence-sans-understanding is somewhat similar to animal intelligence, which was the precursor to human intelligence. What should scare us is that we know that animal to human was not a difficult step evolutionarily.
Re: AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English
#8I've come up with an algorithm (the same as the AI's) for solving that linear system using a CAS. Feels relevant because this breakthrough is heralding an era of much more powerful CASes.
We're getting close to an era where the drudgery in maths can be automated way.
Re: AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English
#9It would be interesting to know how much of this improvement in the last 25 since he was a student comes from Moore's law, other hardware improvements, various new technologies not related to AI, amount of money being thrown at the problem... and how much of it are advancements in our understanding of AI.
Re: AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English
#10I love this take. Most AI results provoke a torrent of articles listing pratfalls that prove it's not AGI. Of course it's not AGI! But it is as unexpected as a talking dog. Take a second to be amazed, at least amused. Then read how they did it and think about how to do better.
It's rarely productive to take internet criticism into account, but it feels like AI is an especially strong instance of this. It seems like a lot of folks just want to pooh pooh any possible outcome. I'm not sure why this is. Possibly because of animosity toward big tech, given big tech is driving a lot of the research and practical implementation in this area?
AI has been over-hyped, that's all.
The machine learning techniques that were developed and enhanced during the last decade are not magical, like any other machines/software.
But people have different and irrational expectations about AI.