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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

#311

Post by UncleOxidant »

roflyear wrote: post #287
UncleOxidant wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this stuff is fun to work with and use as an aid to programming. But I think what's dawning on a lot of us is that it seems to be able to facilitate a large increase productivity. And given that large productivity increase will industry need as many software developers (and other knowledge workers)?

I mean, people aren't going to be able to solve 100x as many problems because of this.

I don't think anyone is claiming that. But 2 or 3X? Possibly. And that would be enough to be a game changer.

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#312

Post by zzleeper »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #293
zzleeper wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Mark, One question out of academic curiosity: I'm exploring ways to use these tools for research projects in econ and am struggling to see a good angle. For instance, suppose I have lots of PDF reports on how firms have evolved on each quarter (10,000 reports or any other number beyond what I can read). Can LLMs be used to spit out variables based on these reports? EG: indicator variables (optimistic-vs-pesimistic…

Look at the LangChain and Llama-Index (used to be called GPT-Index) projects that make smaller projects that need to use a large amount of text data do-able. There is also support for reading PDF files (and many other data sources), and pre-computing embeddings. If you spend a short while looking at example code in the documentation, find something that is similar to your requirements (e.g., semantic search, conversa…

Amazing; thanks a lot!

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#313

Post by saiojd »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #310
saiojd wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your tone comes off as very adversarial/angry. Intentional or not? The claim is about the likelihood of more efficient approaches existing, not about the subjective qualifier preceding it (misunderstanding?). Yes, NNs have existed for a while now, but they will also exist for a long time forward in the future (hence the perhaps poor choice of word: infancy). "if you want to know whether neural nets are in their 'infa…

My problem is that I read what people write on HN and treat it with the same seriousness and respect I want people to treat my comments, when the majority are only saying whatever comes to their mind just to make some sort of impression. Then when I point out some obvious error, people freak out and get defensive because they never expected anyone to take them seriously, they're just spouting off whatever without rea…

I feel very sad reading this. You are absolutely correct that I view HN as watercooler where I make hyperbolic statements, but incorrect when you say that that I did not take you seriously. I was frustrated because I felt like you were latching on to a figure of speech just to be argumentative instead of trying to understand what I meant (I was not trying to say that neural networks are literally new, I was trying to say that we have no proof that the parameter to flop ratio is even close to optimal because architectures are still changing a lot).

You are right that neural networks are not in their infancy. Best wishes.

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#314

Post by HyperSane »

fulafel wrote: post #297
HyperSane wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He supported the communist though. He also supported Pol Pot. You can predict his opinions of foreign policy if you understand that he bases them on the "US is evil" axiom and therefore anyone who opposes it is good, no matter how actually evil they may be.

The Pol Pot thing seems debunked: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-01/brull---the-boring-tr... The communism support doesn't seem to quite stick either if WP is to be believed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Noam_Ch... In Britannica and WP he's labeled an anarcho-syndicalist, so seems to be against both capitalism and noncapitalist authoritarian systems.

Chomsky absolutely was a Cambodian Genocide denailist at the time. He very arrogantly dismissed actual eyewitness testimony of the genocide from refugees purely for ideological reasons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chom...

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#315

Post by roflyear »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #311
roflyear wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, people aren't going to be able to solve 100x as many problems because of this.

I don't think anyone is claiming that. But 2 or 3X? Possibly. And that would be enough to be a game changer.

Yeah maybe, but will it lead to less jobs? I am not convinced.

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#316

Post by grugagag »

ImHereToVote wrote: post #279
hgsgm wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overproduce so that the plebs have something after the elites seize the lion's share

Who needs plebs? I mean, a couple of thousand. Maybe, But beyond that?

Who needs people? Elites or not, what use will they bring? To do what? And elites do need plebs without which they’d have no point of reference to set themselves apart

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#317

Post by fulafel »

HyperSane wrote: post #314
fulafel wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Pol Pot thing seems debunked: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-01/brull---the-boring-tr... The communism support doesn't seem to quite stick either if WP is to be believed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Noam_Ch... In Britannica and WP he's labeled an anarcho-syndicalist, so seems to be against both capitalism and noncapitalist authoritarian systems.

Chomsky absolutely was a Cambodian Genocide denailist at the time. He very arrogantly dismissed actual eyewitness testimony of the genocide from refugees purely for ideological reasons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chom...

(Disclaimer: i'm just reading up about this now)

Did you skip my first link or are you disagreeing with it? It's about the same subject. And in your WP link has a second quote writing about the genocide as fact.

Another I think credible seeming article about it that seems to judge against denialism in an academic journal called "Genocide Studies and Prevention": https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1...

Chomsky's skepticism in the media criticism article talking (among other things) about a book about the then-contemporary events of course looks quite unfortunate in retrospect, but given the volume of work and constant writing about world events over a long career it seems to be a error in judgement in the moment, rather than denying history, especially as he evidently updated his views later as more evidence came about.

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#318

Post by HyperSane »

fulafel wrote: post #317
HyperSane wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chomsky absolutely was a Cambodian Genocide denailist at the time. He very arrogantly dismissed actual eyewitness testimony of the genocide from refugees purely for ideological reasons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chom...

(Disclaimer: i'm just reading up about this now) Did you skip my first link or are you disagreeing with it? It's about the same subject. And in your WP link has a second quote writing about the genocide as fact. Another I think credible seeming article about it that seems to judge against denialism in an academic journal called "Genocide Studies and Prevention": https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti…

"looks quite unfortunate in retrospect"

It was completely unjustified at the time. There was absolutely no reason to doubt the testimony of refugees coming from Cambodia, other than they didn't fit into Chomsky's strange worldview that the US is the cause of all problems in the world.

Even today his views on Russia's invasion of Ukraine are completely moronic.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/22/russia-ukraine-war-left...

For ‘Peace Activists,’ War Is About America, Never Russia Their own hard-left worldview is so absorbing that they will take the side of any aggressor in the anti-Western camp.

https://www.e-flux.com/notes/470005/open-letter-to-noam-chom...

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#319

Post by [deleted] »

HyperSane wrote: post #318
fulafel wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Disclaimer: i'm just reading up about this now) Did you skip my first link or are you disagreeing with it? It's about the same subject. And in your WP link has a second quote writing about the genocide as fact. Another I think credible seeming article about it that seems to judge against denialism in an academic journal called "Genocide Studies and Prevention": https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti…

"looks quite unfortunate in retrospect" It was completely unjustified at the time. There was absolutely no reason to doubt the testimony of refugees coming from Cambodia, other than they didn't fit into Chomsky's strange worldview that the US is the cause of all problems in the world. Even today his views on Russia's invasion of Ukraine are completely moronic. https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/22/russia-ukraine-war-l…

[deleted]

Re: Unpredictable abilities emerging from large AI models

#320

Post by BeFlatXIII »

felipeerias wrote: post #211
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…

Some anthropologists suggest that our main evolutionary advantage was not so much our individual ability for reasoning, but our collective capacity to accumulate, evolve and transmit cultural knowledge over the centuries and millennia. Skills like fire or language, for example, had a major influence in the development of our species and are mainly culturally transmitted: trying to reason your way into creating one or…

To use my favorite Stephen Hawking quotation (that's also been sampled by Pink Floyd), "for millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals, then something happened that unleashed the power of our imagination: we learned to talk."
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