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If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
241–250 of 475 posts
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if governments start regulating and locking down advanced computing in the same way they locked down medicine and advanced weapontry?
Well they do of course. There are export restrictions on supercomputers now, including many NVIDIA GPUs. I contend that doesn't matter. There is sufficient compute available now at consumer levels to make it too late to stop training LLMs. If cloud A100s became unavailable tomorrow it'd be awkward, but there is enough progress being made on training on lower RAM cards to show it is possible.
> I contend that doesn't matter.
Slowing things down is a real effect that will impact how circumstances unfold.
Do I trust that a "slow down / pause" would be done robustly and sensibly? I wish I was more optimistic about that.
At the very least, we should definitely continue having this conversation.
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#243We're not even talking about AGI or an entity that is "smart" somehow. It's a bloody algorithm. The danger has been the people who use it and find ways to abuse other people with it. This whole idea that we're going to suddenly have HAL 9000 or Terminators running around is mob hype mentality. The responsible thing to do here is to educate. AGI isn't likely to destroy humanity. Humanity is already doing a good job of…
The danger is socioeconomic. AI will displace many, many jobs (it already does). Many people will claim that we will simply create different, new jobs. However, we have to think about what kind of job ja now viable for the average person? Typewriter used to be a decent job. Now, kids is probably expected to know how to do it. Can we keep up? Folks at HN seems to overestimate what the general population is capable of.
Should “jobs” be required for participation in society?
Even Keynesian capitalists predicted we’d be working less by now with all the increases in productivity yet here we are with massive corporations continuing on union busting and all that.
I agree there isn’t going to be a BS white collar job to replace the ones lost by advances like this.
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#244I'm not in favor of pausing AI development right now, but this article is a poor argument. This is the most superficial objection:
> Why six months? Why not six weeks or six years?
The duration of pause to assess things must necessarily be a guess. Also, basic logic tells you that six months does not preclude six years, so I don't know why that is even suggested as an alternative. The stuff about publishing papers may be true (or not, supported by it is by an anonymous anecdote), but entirely besides the point.
> 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.
To the extent those people exist, it's because they are scared.
IDK, I guess this is far from the dumbest thing I've seen written about chatgpt, but this response is weak and ill-considered.
I'm really expecting more from the people who are supposed to be the smart ones in the room.
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#245Here is a coherent reason : Just to know where we are standing in our ability to control AI. Like an alcoholic saying he is in control and that he can stop whenever he wants, can try to go dry for a month (or 6) to show that he still somewhat is. If Covid exposed only one thing : it is humanity total failure to control global phenomenons for positive outcomes. It is becoming evident to everybody, and this open-letter…
There was never any realistic possibility of controlling a highly contagious respiratory virus, so COVID-19 didn't expose anything about humanity's ability to control global phenomenons. What it did expose was the tendency of many people to irrationally overreact to a relatively minor risk, mostly because the risk was novel .
"overreact to a relatively minor risk, mostly because the risk was novel.". yep, and here we go again with LLMs...
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am young, but still lived through several hype phases. My impression is that this is a tech revolution unlike any that has gone before allowing for absolutely massive concentration of power and wealth. The previous tech revolutions have shown the downsides of such concentration and I'm quite sure that the people that are currently in the driving seat of how, when and where this tech gets used and/or weaponized ar…
> Extrapolating from the last two years Therein lies the error. People forget reality is finite and just because it improved now doesn't mean it will continue indefinitely. An exponential curve is just a sigmoid curve in disguise. Most AI I've seen suffer from catastrophic errors in the tail end (famous example of two near identical cat pictures classified as cat and dog respectively).
Why do you believe there will be no significant improvements beyond SOTA in the coming years / decades?
That's an incredibly strong stance...
I’d love to hear your assessment of the improvements from gpt-3.5 to gpt-4. Do you not think it is a large jump?
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am young, but still lived through several hype phases. My impression is that this is a tech revolution unlike any that has gone before allowing for absolutely massive concentration of power and wealth. The previous tech revolutions have shown the downsides of such concentration and I'm quite sure that the people that are currently in the driving seat of how, when and where this tech gets used and/or weaponized ar…
> So far tech was doing what it was told, within certain boundaries. This is the kind of tech that will end up telling you what to do, either directly or through some intermediary The financial crisis in 2008 was caused by investors who made risky bets based on models they built telling them that mortgage-backed securities were a safe investment. Our understanding of the world is guided by social science that seems t…
Indeed it does, and we haven't got that under control yet, not by a very long distance. So I figure better take it easy before adding an even more powerful tool to the mix.
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
On Twitter, it was "multi-blillionaires [Elon Musk] want to keep us down!" In the HN open letter thread it was "All the companies falling behind want a chance to catch up." Now it's "Gary Marcus". The letter was signed by a lot of people, including many AI researchers, including people working on LLMs. Any dismissal that reduces to [one incumbent interest] opposes this" is missing the mark. A lot of people, incumbent…
There are actually no relevant experts in the field of artificial general intelligence, or the safety thereof. No one has defined a clear path to build such a thing. Claiming to be an expert in this field is like claiming to be an expert in warp drives or time machines. Those calling for a halt in research are merely ignorant, or attention seeking grifters. Their statements can be dismissed out of hand regardless of…
You clearly have not read anything regarding the capabilities of GPT-4 and also clearly have not played around with ChatGPT at all. GPT-4 has already displayed a multitude of emergent capabilities.
This is incredibly ignorant and I expect better from this forum.
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am young, but still lived through several hype phases. My impression is that this is a tech revolution unlike any that has gone before allowing for absolutely massive concentration of power and wealth. The previous tech revolutions have shown the downsides of such concentration and I'm quite sure that the people that are currently in the driving seat of how, when and where this tech gets used and/or weaponized ar…
> Extrapolating from the last two years Therein lies the error. People forget reality is finite and just because it improved now doesn't mean it will continue indefinitely. An exponential curve is just a sigmoid curve in disguise. Most AI I've seen suffer from catastrophic errors in the tail end (famous example of two near identical cat pictures classified as cat and dog respectively).
Why is that an error? This is very new tech, if anything the rate of change is accelerating and nowhere near slowing down. That it will flatten at some point goes without saying (you'd hope!), but for the time being it looks like we're on the increasing first derivative part of the sigmoid, not on the flattening part, and from two years to a decade takes you roughly from '2 kg luggable' to 'iphone' and that was a sea change.
Re: If AI scaling is to be shut down, let it be for a coherent reason
#250Am 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 should be concerned. You need to reframe this technological shift.
At some point these AI's will no longer be tools. They will be an alien intelligence that is beyond our intelligence in the way that we are beyond an amoeba.
Perhaps we should tread carefully in this regard, especially considering that the technologies that are public (GPT-4 specifically) have already displayed a multitude of emergent capabilities beyond what their creators intended or even thought possible.