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DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

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Re: DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

#111

Post by gurkendoktor »

hans1729 wrote: post #5

I’m not sure how to word my excitement about the progress we see in AI research in the last years. If you haven’t read it, give Tim Urbans classic piece a slice of your attention: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revol... It’s a very entertaining read from a couple of years ago (I think I’ve read it in 2017), and man, have things happened in the field since then. If feels like things truly start…

Not you specifically, but I honestly don't understand how positive many in this community (or really anyone at all) can be about these news. Tim Urban's article explicitly touches on the risk of human extinction, not to mention all the smaller-scale risks from weaponized AI. Have we made any progress on preventing this? Or is HN mostly happy with deprecating humanity because our replacement has more teraflops?

Even the best-case scenario that some are describing, of uploading ourselves into some kind of post-singularity supercomputer in the hopes of being conscious there, doesn't seem very far from plain extinction.

Re: DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

#112

Post by gcheong »

axg11 wrote: post #22

Slowly but surely we're moving towards general AI. There is a marked split across general society and even ML/AI specialists between those who think that we can achieve AGI using current methods and those who dismiss the possibility. This has always been the case, but what is remarkable about today's environment is that researchers keep making progress contrary to the doubter's predictions. Each time this happens, th…

I don’t know if we could sufficiently prepare ourselves for such a world. It would seem almost as if we have to build it first so it could determine the best way to prepare us.

Re: DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

#113

Post by tsimionescu »

ReadEvalPost wrote: post #53
dekhn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assumption of will is unfounded, scientifically speaking. Your entire argument is philosophical, not scientific. The subjective experience of free will is in no way unrefutable proof that will is required for intelligence.

Do you love? Do you dance? Do you desire? Do you rage? Do you weep? Do you choose? Every moment of your existence you exert your will on the world. A denial of will is a denial of humanity. I want nothing of a science that would do such a thing.

Why would an AGI be unable to do these things? Sure, if you believe in a transcendental soul (mind/body dualism) then you can argue that it can't because Divinity has simply not endowed it with such, and that claim can neither be proven nor disproven. But it's an extra assumption that gets you nothing.

Note that I personally believe we are more than a century away from an AGI, and think the current models are fundamentally limited in several ways. But I can't imagine what makes you think there can't be a Ghost in the Machine.

Re: DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

#114

Post by rictic »

mhitza wrote: post #50
axg11 wrote: post #22

Slowly but surely we're moving towards general AI. There is a marked split across general society and even ML/AI specialists between those who think that we can achieve AGI using current methods and those who dismiss the possibility. This has always been the case, but what is remarkable about today's environment is that researchers keep making progress contrary to the doubter's predictions. Each time this happens, th…

I'm skeptical because we are building black boxes. How do you fix something you can't reason about? These billion parameter boxes are outside the reach of your everyday developers. In terms of cost of propping up the infrastructure makes them tenable only for megacorps. Most of us aren't moving goal posts, but are very much skeptic at the things we are being oversold on. I personally think we are still far away from…

You're talking about a different sort of skepticism, about whether the effects of an AGI would be good or bad if one was produced with these methods.

The skepticism that the parent comment was discussing was skepticism about whether we're on a path to AGI, for good or for ill.

Re: DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

#115

Post by kaivi »

Before you visualize a straight path between "a bag of cool ML tricks" and "general AI", try to imagine superintelligence but without consciousness. You might then realize that there is no obvious mechanism which requires the two to appear or evolve together.

It's a curious concept, well illustrated in the novel Blindsight by Peter Watts. I won't spoil anything here but I'll highly recommend the book.

Re: DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

#116

Post by Jensson »

VikingCoder wrote: post #54
rsfern wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - "AI/ML can't solve scientifically useful problems" - then AlphaFold changed the protein folding field AlphaFold is a big deal, but AI in science has been a really hot topic in the past almost decade. Also, I still wouldn’t call AlphaFold really “intelligence”, it’s doing structure prediction which is cool but it’s a long way to scientific intelligence

I wonder if you get how much we've moved the goalposts on "intelligence." Once upon a time, it was considered "intelligent" to be able to add. Then "intelligence" was tool use, which we thought only humans could do. Then we swore it took "intelligence" to play Go as well as a beginner human. What set of tasks would you, right now, consider to be demonstrative of "intelligence" if a computer can do them? Then we can l…

> What set of tasks would you, right now, consider to be demonstrative of "intelligence" if a computer can do them?

Be able to apply for, get and hold a remote job and get paid for a year without anyone noticing, or something equivalent to that. I said this many years ago and it still hasn't happened.

The people who are moving the goalposts aren't the sceptics, it is the optimists who always move the goalposts to exactly where we are right now and say "see, we reached this incredible goalpost, now you must concede that this is intelligent!".

Re: DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

#117

Post by soperj »

axg11 wrote: post #22

Slowly but surely we're moving towards general AI. There is a marked split across general society and even ML/AI specialists between those who think that we can achieve AGI using current methods and those who dismiss the possibility. This has always been the case, but what is remarkable about today's environment is that researchers keep making progress contrary to the doubter's predictions. Each time this happens, th…

>- "ML models can't perform creative work" - then came GANs, large language models, DALL-E, and more.

I don't think copying other people's style of artwork is considered creative work, otherwise art forgers would be able to actually make a living doing art, since some of them are really phenomenal.

Re: DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

#118

Post by oldstrangers »

kaivi wrote: post #115

Before you visualize a straight path between "a bag of cool ML tricks" and "general AI", try to imagine superintelligence but without consciousness. You might then realize that there is no obvious mechanism which requires the two to appear or evolve together. It's a curious concept, well illustrated in the novel Blindsight by Peter Watts. I won't spoil anything here but I'll highly recommend the book.

You just reminded me I have that book sitting on my shelf. Guess I'll give it a read.

Re: DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

#119

Post by gitfan86 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #108
gitfan86 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla FSD is quickly becoming less of a software problem and more of a problem of semantics. If the car drives someone to and from work 30 days in a row without a problem, is it truly FSD? What about 300 days? Where do you draw the line? 1000x safer than the average human? Same thing here will AI. How many conversations with GTP-X need to happen without a stupid response from GTP before we call it real world AI?

How about first getting to "as safe/performant as a non-drunk, non-sleep-deprived, non-brand-new driver with 0 human intervention" before asking more advanced questions? Tesla FSD is definitely nowhere near that level.

Exactly, your definition of True FSD seems to be when it doesn't ever make mistakes that a drunk or inexperienced person makes.

Other people's definition of True FSD comes down to safety (Rate of FSD caused deaths vs Rate of Human caused deaths).

Re: DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

#120

Post by adamsmith143 »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #93
adamsmith143 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there's no evidence that this isn't just what Human Brains are doing either.

There it is. The person who think human minds are python programs doing linear algebra.

There's no evidence otherwise. You have to believe that the mind has a materialist basis or else you believe in woo woo magic.
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