I tend to think people who are out to profit from AI, like to push the powerful and dangerous narrative. They want the notoriety.
If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
191–200 of 475 posts
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#192Why are we even bothering talking about this? It's Gary Marcus "neural networks don't really work" suddenly discovering they do, and literally trying to shut down research in that area while keeping his prefered research areas funded. We know a bunch of the people whose names are on the letter didn't sign it (eg Yann Lecunn who said he disagreed with the premise and didn't sign it). I'm so offended by the idea of thi…
> It's Gary Marcus "neural networks don't really work" suddenly discovering they do, and literally trying to shut down research in that area while keeping his prefered research areas funded
Gary Marcus has been aware that neural nets work for a while now, but he is only in the spotlight for his contrarian take, if he stops having a contrarian take he disappears, because it's not like he is producing any research worth of discussion otherwise. So you can expect him to stay contrarian forever. What might have been a genuine take initially is now his job, that's how he makes money, and it's so associated with him that it's probably his identity as well.
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#193It seems as though Scott just rejects the idea of the singularity entirely. If an AI gets advanced enough to improve itself, it seem entirely reasonable that it would go from laughable to godlike in a week. I don’t know if the singularity is near, inevitable at some point, or really even possible, but it does seem like something that at least could happen. And if it occurs, it will look exactly as what he describes n…
>it seem entirely reasonable that it would go from laughable to godlike in a week. Not if it has a power cord.
It just needs to convince once human to connect it to the grid which wouldn't be a difficult feat for a super-intelligent AI.
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#194Am I the only one who's not very concerned about ChatGPT and "AI" in general? I am young, but still lived through several hype phases. I remember when 3D TVs were going to be mainstream and 2D was considered legacy. I remember when PC was to die soon and to be replaced by smartphones. I remember when VR was to become as common accessory as a game controller. It's 2023, and I still don't have automated self driving ca…
The thing about predicting doom is that you're wrong often--until one day you're not. Most hype cycles involve people at the top making wild claims that fail to deliver. I don't know anyone outside the industry who ever thought 3D TVs were worth anything, and barely anyone who thought VR was worth anything. Google pitched AI making appointments, but that never made it off a stage. Hype? Only for some definition of hy…
> I think having an LLM offer up a first pass approximation for any given problem definition helps.
This is, strictly scoped, true. But the future is people with capital deciding that the computer output is Good Enough because it costs 0.1% as much for maybe 60-70% the value. People who write code are probably not sufficiently upstack to escape the oncoming Enshittification of Everything that this portends, either in terms of output or in terms of economic precarity.
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#195prompt: what is the third word in this sentence
gpt4: third
why are we afraid of this thing exactly?
sure, it will improve, especially with the plugin story, but the fundamental shortcomings that underpins how it actually works won't go away anytime soon.
Many people are spooked, because for the first time ever a computer can somewhat coherently understand and output natural language.
As Stephen Wolfram pointed out, all that means is we've proved natural language is a shallow problem.
GPT4 can't effing solve problems though.
To me "intelligence" is about the latter, not being able to use language (this categorization, btw, also - rather unfortunately - applies to humans).
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#196Why are we even bothering talking about this? It's Gary Marcus "neural networks don't really work" suddenly discovering they do, and literally trying to shut down research in that area while keeping his prefered research areas funded. We know a bunch of the people whose names are on the letter didn't sign it (eg Yann Lecunn who said he disagreed with the premise and didn't sign it). I'm so offended by the idea of thi…
This is my view too. The perceived value of LLMs relative to everything that came before is staggering. I wouldn’t expect any regulation or laws to slow it down at this point. You might get the U.S. to crack down on it and stop innovation, GPL or proprietary license holders might win a lawsuit, etc. But I suspect the net effect would be to push research and innovation out of the jurisdiction that made that decision a…
> I’d likely move jurisdictions if the U.S. cracked down on AI progress
This is my overriding concern. This is a wave crest that if you don't ride it, it may well crush you or take the ocean with it and leave you in a desert. It is as interesting as fire as a tool for civilization going forward.
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
A great many would likely join you, making this entire fiasco a time-wasting distraction, at best, and grave risk at worst. The technologies will continue to be developed, moratorium or not. A moratorium only enables the hidden to get there first. The risks need to be discussed and understood, along with the benefits, and publicly. That's the only sensible way forward. Denying that the technology is here already and…
There is already public discussion - even here - about benefits and risks, and I hope also some understanding. Otherwise the general public doesn't have a good understanding of too many issues anyway, so... what else would you suggest can be done for this particular matter? When the discussion is over and everything understood? Can such a moment actually exist? I think now is just as good as last/next year.
I hope that we'll eventually reach a point where a good public discussion about the risks/benefits can be had. Right now, though, it's simply impossible. The fog of hype actively prevents it.
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Responding here since it won't let me continue your thread any more. No, there's a fundamental misunderstanding here. I'm not saying the model will tell you the truth about its internal state if you ask it (it absolutely will not.) I'm saying it has no internal state , and no inner high level processes at all other than it's pre-baked, immutable parameters.
Whether it has inner state is highly relevant to my claim, which was that the only state a LLM has (aside from its parameters) is transparent and readable in English. Which the context is.
You're the one who put state in the conversation. State is part of the whole, and not the whole. It's not enough to understand state if you want to understand why they work. I feel like you're trying to muddy the waters by redirecting the problem to be about the state - it isn't.
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#199> On the other hand, I’m deeply confused by the people who signed the open letter, even though they continue to downplay or even ridicule GPT’s abilities, as well as the “sensationalist” predictions of an AI apocalypse. Says the quantum computing professor turned so-called 'AI safety employee' at O̶p̶e̶n̶AI.com who would rather watch an unregulated hallucination-laden language model run off the rails to be sold as th…
> Once again, he hasn't disclosed that he is working for O̶p̶e̶n̶AI.com again. From the article: > ... and while I’ve been spending the year at OpenAI to work on theoretical foundations of AI safety, I’m going to answer strictly for myself. (Not to say that OpenAI's name isn't dumb, or that there won't be issues from people directly plugging LLMs into important decisions.)
No conflict, no interest?
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm so offended by the idea of this that I'll personally fund $10k of training runs myself in a jurisdiction where it isn't banned if this ever became law in the US. And this is exactly the risk. These things will just go other places while the US trips over its salty billionaires trying to create political red tape to allow their own businesses to catch up. Surely Elon has no reservations about putting premature s…
>last decade of his business failures What world are you living in if you think Tesla and SpaceX have been in the past 10 years business failures?
When people don't like Musk for whatever reason but usually it's political alignment, they just make up things. I see people continue to claim that Twitter is failing, even though it's been working fine every time I log into. With Tesla, they'll just ignore the thousands of happy customers and focus on the bad stories like the occasional exploding car. It's quite sad to see normally reliable technical people go off the rails on these issues.