If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason • Hacker News Board

Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason

#211

Post by yifanl » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 3:40 PM UTC

natdempk wrote: post #145

cableshaft wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that he realized that there's money to be made being the professional luddite of the hot thing du jour that talk shows and schools can give him money for (as so many other people have done for other things), and he's taking this simple claim of 'AGI will murder us all' to get on as many talk shows as possible and make as much money off of it. I doubt he's speaking in public out of any concern for humanity's…

FWIW he’s been making these claims well before the current AI hype cycle hit.

Does that make him more credible at all?

Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason

#212

Post by smolder » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 3:41 PM UTC

gspencley wrote: post #94

skocznymroczny wrote: post #54

Am 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…

You don't even have to look at other "fads" like 3D televisions and VR to be skeptical of the claim that recent advancements in ML* represent a major technological revolution that will change society like the Internet or the Printing Press did. Just look at ML's own history. A few years ago we had the "deepfake" scare. People were terrified that now videos are going to surface of politicians saying and doing things t…

> Then again, I am limited by my own imagination.

On that note, it seems clear these models will be disruptive in areas where we previously needed human imagination, and wrongness of outputs can be tolerated or iterated past.

I'd like to see a transformer trained on a massive dataset of MIDI-like quantized piano performances, so it can be my virtual personal classical/jazz/whatever pianist, or play a real mechanized piano at a club or something. Directed auto-composers (music) in general are most likely being worked on.

South Park probably wasn't the first to use some ML to assist in plot development for their show.

A nice ML model to do directed building architecture, ("give the kitchen more natural light" or directed interior design ("more playful furniture") would be very useful.

I've got a pile of ideas, really, but minimal experience and no means (network, resources) to execute. Now that I think about it, ChatGPT could probably synthesize many more decent ideas for ML applications, if so directed.

Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason

#213

Post by JohnFen » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 3:41 PM UTC

gspencley wrote: post #173

l5ymep wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other fads have the disadvantage of being easily identifiable and avoidable. But AI chips away at what it means to be human. Now imagine if every comment in this thread is not a real person, but made by a LLM. Get any Truman show vibes?

> Get any Truman show vibes? No. It's an interesting thought experiment but it changes nothing. Not for me, anyway. Commenting on these threads is an activity that I do for my own entertainment and "mental flexing." If it turns out that I'm not talking to real people then it doesn't make much of a difference because I don't actually perceive these messages as anything other than pixels on a screen anyway. I hope that…

> If it turns out that I'm not talking to real people then it doesn't make much of a difference because I don't actually perceive these messages as anything other than pixels on a screen anyway.

It matters a lot to me because the whole point of commenting here (or anywhere) is to talk to other humans, not just to talk to myself.

Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason

#214

Post by VectorLock » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 3:41 PM UTC

This whole discussion about slowing down AI for safety wonders why this mindset didn't appear during the advent of microchips or the Internet, both of which have had arguably clear downsides.

Which voice is loudest now for the brake-pedal-wishers? "AGI will enslave us" or "everything can be faked now?"

Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason

#215

Post by G_z9 » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 3:42 PM UTC

gspencley wrote: post #173

l5ymep wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other fads have the disadvantage of being easily identifiable and avoidable. But AI chips away at what it means to be human. Now imagine if every comment in this thread is not a real person, but made by a LLM. Get any Truman show vibes?

> Get any Truman show vibes? No. It's an interesting thought experiment but it changes nothing. Not for me, anyway. Commenting on these threads is an activity that I do for my own entertainment and "mental flexing." If it turns out that I'm not talking to real people then it doesn't make much of a difference because I don't actually perceive these messages as anything other than pixels on a screen anyway. I hope that…

This comment is mind blowing

Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason

#216

Post by maroonblazer » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 3:44 PM UTC

virgildotcodes wrote: post #163

maroonblazer wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don’t think it even requires that AI to be sentient or malicious. The humans already are. We are and we aren't. I was struck by this line in the OP: >AI is manifestly different from any other technology humans have ever created, because it could become to us as we are to orangutans; As far as I can tell, we humans treat orangutans quite kindly. I.e., on the whole, we don't go around killing them indiscriminately o…

We’ve wiped out over 60% of the orangutan population in the last 16 years. We’re literally burning them alive to replace their habitat with palm oil plantations. [0] We currently kill more animals on a daily basis than we have at any point in human history, and we are doing this at an accelerating rate as human population increases. The cruelty we inflict on them in industry for food, clothing, animal testing, and ca…

Right, but as you point out, these issues are hotly contested and actively debated. Yes, it may be a minority position at present, but so was the idea of not torturing cats for fun, not to mention abolition, back in the day.

Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason

#217

Post by sharkjacobs » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 3:45 PM UTC

natdempk wrote: post #145

cableshaft wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that he realized that there's money to be made being the professional luddite of the hot thing du jour that talk shows and schools can give him money for (as so many other people have done for other things), and he's taking this simple claim of 'AGI will murder us all' to get on as many talk shows as possible and make as much money off of it. I doubt he's speaking in public out of any concern for humanity's…

FWIW he’s been making these claims well before the current AI hype cycle hit.

I think that's the point, this has been his personal obsession for more than a decade now, and so he's jumping at the opportunity to link it to the latest hot news topic without real consideration for how related LLM AI is to the AGI he's been writing and fantasizing about for so long.

Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason

#218

Post by stametseater » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 3:46 PM UTC

housley wrote: post #177

bnralt wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometime I listen to 90’s AM conspiracy theory radio for fun (Coast to Coast AM). One thing that’s struck me is how much fear there was about the Human Genome Project and designer babies being right around the corner (Gattaca was 1997, for example). Maybe that will come to pass someday. But at the moment, it still seems a long ways off. A lot of groups have some new technology they’re scared of. Tech folks have latch…

The technology for designer babies is here; polygenic embryo selection could do it right now, people just aren't going all the way for various reasons (concern about regulation).

Indeed, and to illustrate the point: He Jiankui infamously created two CRISPR babies in 2018 and for it he was fired and imprisoned. Such regulations and public outcry are the only thing holding us back from Gattaca.

Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason

#219

Post by gspencley » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 3:48 PM UTC

gspencley wrote: post #173

l5ymep wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other fads have the disadvantage of being easily identifiable and avoidable. But AI chips away at what it means to be human. Now imagine if every comment in this thread is not a real person, but made by a LLM. Get any Truman show vibes?

> Get any Truman show vibes? No. It's an interesting thought experiment but it changes nothing. Not for me, anyway. Commenting on these threads is an activity that I do for my own entertainment and "mental flexing." If it turns out that I'm not talking to real people then it doesn't make much of a difference because I don't actually perceive these messages as anything other than pixels on a screen anyway. I hope that…

> It matters a lot to me because the whole point of commenting here (or anywhere) is to talk to other humans, not just to talk to myself.

That's fair, but one of my points was that even prior to ChatGPT the ability existed for you to be "sucked into" a relationship with another under false pretenses. LLMs might make it easier to put this sort of thing on "autopilot", but if what you seek is a guarantee of talking to other humans then I don't see how, in a post-LLM-world, that can't be done. I have no doubt that online forums and communities will come up with methods to "prove" that people are "real" (though I fear this will hurt anonymity online a bit more), but also try going out and meeting people in the real world more.

It's funny, I've been an ultra tech savvy computer nerd since I was a little kid. I owe a lot to the Internet. I was working from home for 20 years before the pandemic, running my own business. Grocery delivery services have been a godsend for me, because I find grocery shopping to be one of the most stressful activities in life. But as I enter middle age I'm becoming less and less enthusiastic about tech and "online existence" in general. The number of things that I would miss if the Internet just went away entirely gets fewer and fewer every year. Working remotely and grocery delivery services are probably the only two things that I couldn't live without. Everything else ... meh. Maybe I'm just getting burned out on tech and hype trains ... but "talking to real people" is something I start to value doing offline more and more when social interaction is what I seek.

Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason

#220

Post by bombcar » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 3:49 PM UTC

osigurdson wrote: post #180

bombcar wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the $100k is just “gpu time” it’s certainly within the reach of many people - not even super rich. And maybe bitcoin miners could be repurposed for it or something.

This may be in the $10^7 category now, but is there any reason to believe it will never be $10^3? Oddly the most pressing concern is “increased productivity”.

Unless it has something like the intentional self-latching of bitcoin mining, I do not see how it wouldn't rapidly drop in price.

And if the models can be built once and then distributed, then it will certainly leak at some point, even if just intentionally by a hostile actor.