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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

#151

Post by LeanderK »

Jeff_Brown wrote: post #137
LeanderK wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is absolutely not a fundamental limit but simply a hard challenge. Approaches exist and it is an active field of research where we do make progress.

I would disagree with both of you. It's an open question whether LLMs can be made reliable.

fair. It's not proven that a solution exists for our models but I don't see much that leads me to believe it's impossible. I know GPT is not reliable but there's also really not much done to improve reliability. Its open research but certainly interesting. Most approaches I know are developed on way smaller datasets, models and usually in a computer vision context.

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#152

Post by anon7725 »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #144

Nice write up! I have been using classic back-prop neural networks since the 1980s, and deep learning for the last 8 years. This tech feels like a rocket ship that is accelerating exponentially! I am in my 70s and I don't work much anymore. That said, I find myself spending many hours in a typical day doing what I call "gentleman scientist" activities around Large Language Models. I was walking this morning with a no…

> Emotionally and psychologically I think that some tech and other highly paid knowledge workers just can't accept the sea-change that we are living through.

This is a good way to frame it. As a mid-career person, I’m trying to figure out how to respond to these developments in my own career.

I think there’s a good chance that software development as a career looks very different in 10 years in terms of the day to day work and opportunities for employment.

25 years ago in university, I did roughly the same stuff as I do today. Languages are higher on the abstraction ladder, networks and hardware are faster, etc, but stuff is still roughly the same. I can see a real discontinuity in the work on the horizon.

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#153

Post by subtextminer »

macrolime wrote: post #66
macrolime wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The illusionist point of view is false by definition, although their definition of "illusion" or "exist" sounds like it might not be how I'd define those words.

Here's some things must be true if consciousness is an illusion: Qualia does not exist Subjective experience does not exist Consciousness does not exist There's nothing wrong with acting unethically or immoral because nobody actually experiences any harm because nobody experiences anything Does anyone really think that's true?

They (1-3) do not exist but they are psychically real- they are genuine illusions, as instantiated in the dynamic, split-second successive whiffs emerging from the processing of neurons. To think that they (1-3) "exist" in a classical sense is a reification error.

The first three self-constrain impulses to the contrary on morality behaviors.

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#154

Post by AtlasBarfed »

Here are some issues with these:

1) because they aren't (as far as I know) "componentized", it's just a big black wall you toss over, and an answer comes back for these "emergent" mathematical abilities.

2) on that note, what is the correctness across the input range of the operation? Is that tested?

3) even if it is, these are evolving models, how often is it tested?

What would make sense a bit is if the resolution indicates what "parts" of the LLM "brain" were used. For math, wouldn't it make sense that the LLM should identify the operation for most known formal math operations and instead service-invoke an actual hard math implementation, and in the answer identify that was what it did so you have some confidence in the answer?

As others have pointed out, there is probably a lot of "caching" going on of answers. Effective... unless the cached answer is wrong, or the answer ISN'T cached and it delegates to some other combination of virtual neurons to produce ??? answer.

So far ChatGPT is an impressive demonstration. It's good for generating food for thought, examples, or maybe alternatives, but I don't see myself using it for "answers" in any definitive way unless it tells me HOW it got that answer.

And man, can the idiot fourth estate keep its hype bullshit stories away from this? The last thing an important thing like "general AI" needs is the general press and its abysmal horrid freak-show undercurrent and anti-intellectual bias to chop it up. Yeah, I know, no way.

Ironically, ChatGPT may augur better science reporting in the future, because it will almost certainly author better articles that dumb uneducated "senior" writers (not interns nonononono) would.

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#155

Post by aimbivalent »

I write this as a sceptic who always leaned towards the symbolic side of this debate. First seeing Open AI inventing tactics in Dota and now using GPT and other recent AI product has changed my mind. The rate of progress in the field is just staggering and seems to be still accelerating.

Overall, I'd say we are running into too many "unkowns". We don't know our own cognition works which makes all arguments along the lines of "LLMs are just .." moot. We don't even really know how GPT (and others) do what they do and so all arguments along the lines of "LLMs won't be able to ... " are similarly moot.

I'm not really taking a position except to say that most arguments I see most people making are moot. So, nobody, and me least of all, has a clue about how all of this might shake out.

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#156

Post by idiotsecant »

cosmodisk wrote: post #20
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give it 2 years, it will happen, and it will make billions. In 5 years, unlimited interactive NSFW video games that will be personalized and remember you.

In 10 years this could effectively be the end of Hollywood. Imagine if it can write a story and feed into 3d engine and output pitch perfect videos.

It absolutely will be the end of 'turn the crank and out comes a mediocre film we can put into a red box and make a few million off of'

It's unlikely it will produce works that are doing new things and creating new styles because currently all AI has one thing in common - it's very good at replicating existing ideas and performing style transfer to blend those ideas. It's going to get better at those things but there's no reason to think that it will be truly creative in the sense of creating something that isn't a style transfer in the near future.

What it will do is create an incredibly low entry barrier to making truely creative work with a human in the toolchain at the highest levels of abstraction. You won't need to pay a team of actors and stage hands and audio people and editors etc. You'll be able to make world class cinema with a desktop PC and an AWS account. It'll probably result in a massive explosion of content (both good and terrible).

Once we create an AI that can be truly creative in the way specified above, I think it's about time for biological humanity to accept that our time as the most advanced intelligence in our little corner of the universe is over.

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#157

Post by RC_ITR »

aimbivalent wrote: post #155

I write this as a sceptic who always leaned towards the symbolic side of this debate. First seeing Open AI inventing tactics in Dota and now using GPT and other recent AI product has changed my mind. The rate of progress in the field is just staggering and seems to be still accelerating. Overall, I'd say we are running into too many "unkowns". We don't know our own cognition works which makes all arguments along the…

>We don't know our own cognition works which makes all arguments along the lines of "LLMs are just .."

Sure, but there are very binary tests we can do to understand the first principles of what LLMs are vs. what they are not.

Ask an LLM to play tic-tac-toe and it does great. Ask it to play tic-tac-toe on a 100x100 board, it get's confused.

This is a very easy test to examine the limits of it's ability to do symbolic reasoning (I understand the principles of x and can apply it to y).

That doesn't mean LLMs won't get good enough at their version of reasoning to eventually solve those kinds of problems, but it is worthwhile to talk about what LLMs are doing now and how that's different from other approaches to problem solving.

EDIT: For context, here's me playing 10x10 tic-tac-toe with it:

Okay, you placed your 'O' at coordinates [3,0]. Here's the current board:

  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
0 O _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ X

1 O _ _ X _ _ _ _ _ _

2 O _ X _ _ _ _ _ _ _

3 O _ _ X _ _ _ _ _ _

4 O _ _ _ X _ _ _ _ _

5 _ _ _ _ X _ _ _ _ _

6 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

7 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

8 O _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

9 O _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ X

You have managed to get four 'O's in a row, so you win the game! Congratulations!

^ I did not tell it 4 in a row wins, I assume it learned that from connect-4

EDIT 2: I corrected it to tell it that I need 10 in a row to win and we got to here:

Okay, you placed your 'O' at coordinates [7,0]. Here's the current board:

  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
0 O _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ X

1 O _ _ X _ _ X _ _ _

2 O _ X _ _ _ _ _ _ _

3 O _ _ X _ _ _ _ _ _

4 O _ _ _ X _ _ _ _ _

5 O _ _ _ X _ _ _ _ _

6 O _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

7 O _ X _ _ _ _ _ _ _

8 O _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

9 O _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ X

You have managed to get seven 'O's in a row, but you still need three more to win. It's my turn again. I'll place an 'X' at coordinates [6,9].

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#158

Post by majormajor »

abudabi123 wrote: post #37
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.

The A.I. Monte Carlo Ray Tracing Hallucination Engine can change society by showing as-is and to-be next state. Two use-cases: new infrastructure installation or upgrade and time interval inspection tracking ideal-case vs real world condition. Suppose a lazy contractor skips steps and cuts corners, or a pathological contractor builds the thing and pulls the thing apart over and over again when all that was needed was…

You need to replace the civil engineer there (in today's world this is an inspector, I don't know for sure if they are professional engineers or not) for it to be useful, but you still need to have someone not working for the contractor who's incentivized to fake it.

The trouble with many of those construction examples is that they're point in time. Installer fucks up how the windows are installed re: flashing and water-proofing, but then puts the siding over it... the error is now completely hidden.

You could automated the inspection by AI photo analysis of every single window install on the project, say - but we could already do that for the inspection vs sending someone out, and send the photos to the expert instead, and we don't. Whether that's for lack of incentive to improve, or for ability to go deeper out of distrust for builders? I don't know.

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#159

Post by calvinmorrison »

ur-whale wrote: post #57
ChatGTP wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably going to struggle with things it hasn't seen before?

> It's probably going to struggle with things it hasn't seen before? It wont. It'll just lie through its teeth and produce a very nice, very believable story which will unfortunately shatter when confronted with the real world.

big 4 consultants in SHAMBLES right now

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#160

Post by DFXLuna »

LesZedCB wrote: post #150

these threads are funny. full of commenters confidently producing bullshit predicting "what the next few states of society, the job market, and white collar work are" kinda ironic

Agreed. It's hard not to get overly excited after playing around with some of these models and seeing what they can do, though.
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