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Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#91

Post by guns »

mpalmer wrote: post #59

I'd like to see posts on LLMs written from a different perspective. For me, the surprise comes not from the sudden emergent capability of language models, but that the understanding (and synthesis!) of ideas encoded in language has succumbed to literally nothing more than statistical analysis. Or at least come that much closer to doing so. That it bears so close a resemblance to actual thinking says more about the im…

This is what Stephen Wolfram concludes in a recent article about ChatGPT:

> The specific engineering of ChatGPT has made it quite compelling. But ultimately (at least until it can use outside tools) ChatGPT is “merely” pulling out some “coherent thread of text” from the “statistics of conventional wisdom” that it’s accumulated. But it’s amazing how human-like the results are. And as I’ve discussed, this suggests something that’s at least scientifically very important: that human language (and the patterns of thinking behind it) are somehow simpler and more “law like” in their structure than we thought.

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-is-chatgpt-...

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#92

Post by HervalFreire »

legulere wrote: post #19
mmaunder wrote: post #14

There is a startling acceleration of innovation in the field that GPT-4 illustrates. According to NVidia, LLM sizes have been increasing 10X per year for the last few years. This tech is going to hit every aspect of society like a sledgehammer over the next 48 months.

The same was said 10 years ago. It's astonishing what can be done, but you can already see fundamental limits. I think it will raise productivity for some tasks, but not fundamentally change society.

What they said 10 years ago was correct. It did hit society like a sledge hammer. Machine learning basically took over the AI space and penetrated the consumer space with applications that were all but impossible in the previous decade. There's AI chips in smart phones now.

What you're seeing here with LLMs is sledge hammer number 2.

It's understandable how most people don't notice the sledge hammer. The decade prior to 2010 there was another sledge hammer had no smart phones. We were hit with a smart phone hammer AND an AI sledge hammer and the integration was so seamless we didn't even notice.

Much of the same will happen with LLMs. In 5 years it's so normal, nobody cares and likely we will forget what life was like before LLMs.

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#93

Post by datpiff »

danielbln wrote: post #21
legulere wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same was said 10 years ago. It's astonishing what can be done, but you can already see fundamental limits. I think it will raise productivity for some tasks, but not fundamentally change society.

Can you elaborate on fundamental limits?

> According to NVidia, LLM sizes have been increasing 10X per year for the last few years.

Clearly this cannot continue, as the training costs will exceed all the compute capacity in existence.

The other limit is training data, eventually you run out of cheap sources.

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#94

Post by christiangenco »

HervalFreire wrote: post #87
pedrovhb wrote: post #10

This caught my attention as I found it implausible: > One DeepMind engineer even reported being able to convince ChatGPT that it was a Linux terminal and getting it to run some simple mathematical code to compute the first 10 prime numbers. Remarkably, it could finish the task faster than the same code running on a real Linux machine. Following the link, there's a screenshot to a screenshot [0] of a code-golf solutio…

[flagged]

Rude.

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#95

Post by HervalFreire »

maxdoop wrote: post #23
curiousgal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you perception of society is severely limited if you think a fancy autocomplete is capable of changing every aspect of it.

I have fun on these HN chats responding to comments like yours . It’s just fancy auto complete to you? You honestly can’t see the capability it has and extend it the future? What’s that saying about “it’s hard to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on their not understanding it”.

[flagged]

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#97

Post by anon7725 »

tosser0001 wrote: post #47
namaria wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So on the one hand, these newly publicized models can render convincing representations of realities we used to get from deterministic processes. On the other hand, it's probabilistic and fails to conform to logic quite often, and in a confident way. We're building systems capable of programing computers non-deterministically. I think this is huge. But not because ChatGPT23 will be a CEO or a politician. But because…

I'm sort of glad to be retiring soon. I have a feeling everything I enjoy about programming is going to be going away.

I'm about 10-15 years from retiring, and lately, I've been thinking a lot about how to handle the rest of my career with all these new AI advancements.

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#98

Post by _dain_ »

HervalFreire wrote: post #95
maxdoop wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have fun on these HN chats responding to comments like yours . It’s just fancy auto complete to you? You honestly can’t see the capability it has and extend it the future? What’s that saying about “it’s hard to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on their not understanding it”.

[flagged]

> When these LLMs get normalized probably 5 years from now I'm going go back to these old threads and contact these people who are in self denial and throw it in their face. I'll just link this comment and be like I TOLD YOU, I TOLD YOU, YOU WERE WRONG.

this isn't a kind thing to do.

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#99

Post by mostlysimilar »

HervalFreire wrote: post #87
pedrovhb wrote: post #10

This caught my attention as I found it implausible: > One DeepMind engineer even reported being able to convince ChatGPT that it was a Linux terminal and getting it to run some simple mathematical code to compute the first 10 prime numbers. Remarkably, it could finish the task faster than the same code running on a real Linux machine. Following the link, there's a screenshot to a screenshot [0] of a code-golf solutio…

[flagged]

Equally interesting is the psychology of people who take the time to write long posts borderline gloating about tools making software engineers obsolete.

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#100

Post by HervalFreire »

_dain_ wrote: post #98
HervalFreire wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> When these LLMs get normalized probably 5 years from now I'm going go back to these old threads and contact these people who are in self denial and throw it in their face. I'll just link this comment and be like I TOLD YOU, I TOLD YOU, YOU WERE WRONG. this isn't a kind thing to do.

[flagged]
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