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AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English

scottaaronson.blog

131–140 of 263 posts

Re: AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% this. Exponential progress is only a thing if potential progress is infinite. If the potential progress is finite (hint: it is), eventually the rate of progress hit progressively diminishing returns.

What is the limit you foresee on computation, especially when such computations can optimise themselves without human intervention?

The underlying rule here, in my opinion, is the law of diminishing returns. (log shaped curve)

AlphaZero is already capable of optimizing itself in the limited problem space of Chess.

Infinitely increasing the computing power of this system won't give it properties it does not already have, there is no singularity point to be found ahead.

And I am not sure that there are any singularities lying ahead in any other domains with the current approach of ML/AI.

Re: AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English

#132
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is overhyped because in the end it has failed to deliver the breakthrough promised years ago. Car drinking cars are a great example. The AI that has taken over google search has made a great product kinda of awful now. What breakthroughs are you referring to?

A. Most people still think Google search is good. B. Unless you work for Google specifically on that search team I'm going to say you don't know what you're talking about. So we can safely throw that point away. I've implemented a natural language search using bleeding edge work, the results I can assure you are impressive. Everything from route planning to spam filtering has seen major upgrades thanks to ML in the l…

Why would you discount someone who has been measuring relevancy of search results and only accept information from a group of people who don't use the system? You are making the mistake of identifying the wrong group as experts.

You may have implemented something that impressed you but when you move that solution into real use were other's as impressed?

That's what is probably happening with the google search team. A lot of impressive demos, pats on the back, metrics being met but it falls apart in production.

Most people don't think Google's search is good. Most people on Google's team probably think it's better than ever. Those are two different groups.

Spam filtering may have had upgrades but it is not really better for it and in many cases worse.

Re: AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly work with data mining on my personal projects(which is a couple of hours every day), and I'm pretty sure I didn't have to write a single regex since I've started using Copilot. It's hard for me to even imagine how I used to do it before, and how much time I've wasted on stupid mistakes and typos. Now I just write a comment of what I want and an example string. It does the job without me having to modify anyt…

How do you know the regular expressions are correct, without understanding them?

All regular expressions are incorrect, but some are useful.

Re: AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The machine learning techniques that were developed and enhanced during the last decade are not magical, like any other machines/software. You might be using a different definition of "magical" than what others are using in this context. Of course, when you break down ML techniques, it's all just math running on FETs. So no, it's not extra-dimensional hocus pocus, but absolutely nobody is using that particular defi…

I strongly disagree that we've seen anything unexpected so far. AlphaGo is nothing else than brute force. And brute force can go a long way, it should not be underestimated. But so far, this approach has not let to emergent behaviors, the ML blackbox is not giving back more than what was fed.

> AlphaGo is nothing else than brute force.

This statement is completely false with accepted definitions of "brute force" in the context of computer science.

Re: AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English

#135
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're on that curve, it's indistinguishable until you hit the plateau. We're in an era where AI is continuing to improve and has already surpassed a level that many people doubted was achievable. Nobody knows when that progress will plateau. It's entirely possible that we plateau _after_ surpassing human-level intelligence.

Exactly correct. We really don't know if the progress is exponential or like a Sigmoid squashing function. You just changed my opinion, a bit, on this.

If we're limited to Earth and fossil fuels, then it's a sigmoid.

Re: AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English

#136

I 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.

Marketing people love to make false claims, setting crazy expectations. Increased competition encourages these small lies, and sometimes even academic fraud. This hurt and will continue to hurt the ML field.

I agree. The talking dog analogy deflates those claims while still pointing out what is unique and worth following up on about the results.

Meanwhile, the chorus of "look this AI still makes dumb mistakes and is not AGI" takes has gotten louder in many circles than the marketing drumbeat. It risks drowning out actual progress and persuading sensitive researchers to ignore meaningful ML results, which will result in a less representative ML community going forward.

Re: AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English

#137
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so certain. Seems like the owner is doing a lot of work to make sense out of those utterances. I'd like to see Bunny say what he's about to do, then do it. Or watch his owner do something with something, then describe it. edit: or just have a conversation of any kind longer than a 2 minute video. Or one without the owner in the room, where she talks back with the dog using the same board. That would at least…

The larger word array is... yea, it allows for a lot more interpretation of variation of intent and interpetation. Consider this older one where there weren't as many words - https://youtu.be/6MMGmRVal6M and https://youtu.be/FPC6ElzSdxM Or for billie the cat - https://youtu.be/DiuQqgTw-jY The point with these is that there is language related thought going on there and an attempt to communicate from the dog (or cat)…

I'm trying, but I don't see it at all with these examples.

1) just seemed like random pressing until the dog pressed "paw", then the owner repeated loudly "something in your paw?" The dog presented its paw, then the owner decided "hurt" "stranger" "paw" was some sort of splinter she found there. The dog wasn't even limping.

2) I didn't get any sense of the presses relating to anything the dog was doing, and since the owner was repeating loudly the thing she wanted the dog to find, I was a bit surprised. Then the dog presses "sound," the owner connects this with a sound I can't hear, then they go outside to look for something I can't see.

Billie the Cat: I simply saw no connection between the button presses and anything the cat did. The cat pressed "outside" but didn't want to go outside. The cat presses "ouch noise" and the owner asks if a sound I didn't hear hurt her ears. Then the cat presses "pets" and the owner asks if the cat wants a pet? The cat presses "noise" and the owner continues the monologue apologizing for the painful noise and offering to buy her cat a pet. Sorry to recount most of the thing, but I don't get it at all.

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Not trying to debunk talking pets, but I'm not seeing anything here. I at least expected the dog to be smart enough to press particular buttons for particular things, but I suspect the buttons are too close together for it to reliably distinguish them from each other. I'd be pretty easy to convince that you could teach a dog to press a button to go outside, a different button when they wanted a treat, and a different button when they wanted their belly rubbed. In fact I'd be tough to convince that you couldn't teach a dog to do that. Whatever's being claimed here, however, I'm not seeing.

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edit: to add a little more, I'm not even sure that *I* could reliably do what they're claiming the dog is doing. To remember which button is which without being able to read is like touch typing, but worse because the buttons seem to be mounted on re-arrangeable puzzle pieces. Maybe I could associate the color of those pieces with words, but that would only cover the center button on each piece.

If a dog were using specific buttons for language (or if I were doing the same thing) I'd expect the dog to press a lot of buttons, until he heard the sound he was looking for, then to press that button over and over. Not to just walk straight to a button and press.

I think the cat just presses the buttons when it wants the owner to come, and presses them again when the owner says something high pitched at the end and looks at it in expectation.

Re: AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English

#138
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem is that doing so is, I expect, harder for the human than writing the code in the first place. Programming is mostly about writing boilerplate code using well-known architectural patterns and technologies, nothing extraordinary but which takes time (at least in my experience). If I can describe a project in a few abstract words, and the AI generates the rest, it can considerably improve my productivity, a…

If a junior dev writes truly head-scratching code, you could ping that person and ask why they wrote this line a certain way, as opposed to a more straight-forward way. Correct me if I'm wrong but you can't ask an ML model to do that (yet).

In ten years ML models may be "thinking" the same thing about us. Our "more understandable" code is full of inefficiencies and bugs and the bots wonder why we can't see this.

Re: AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English

#139
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A. Most people still think Google search is good. B. Unless you work for Google specifically on that search team I'm going to say you don't know what you're talking about. So we can safely throw that point away. I've implemented a natural language search using bleeding edge work, the results I can assure you are impressive. Everything from route planning to spam filtering has seen major upgrades thanks to ML in the l…

Why would you discount someone who has been measuring relevancy of search results and only accept information from a group of people who don't use the system? You are making the mistake of identifying the wrong group as experts. You may have implemented something that impressed you but when you move that solution into real use were other's as impressed? That's what is probably happening with the google search team. A…

Maybe because a single anecdote isn't really useful to represent billions of users? They have access to much more information.

I used it in real use, the answer was still a hard yes.

Re: AlphaCode as a dog speaking mediocre English

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you'd be wrong. The key part here is "live in real time video" Photoshop definitely cannot do that, I know that for a fact. https://towardsdatascience.com/virtual-background-for-video-... There's an example article on the subject.

I just don't see how that's AI , sorry. Machine learning to recognize a background isn't AI.

ML is most certainly AI. I had a visceral feeling you'd respond with this. Sorry but what ever magic you have in your head isn't AI -- this is real AI and you're moving goal posts like alot of people tend to do.
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