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Choose Your Weapon: Survival Strategies for Depressed AI Academics

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Re: Choose Your Weapon: Survival Strategies for Depressed AI Academics

#31

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

bangkoksbest wrote: post #27
southernplaces7 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing about current AI models profoundly challenges the unknowns of what makes consciousness work in any mystery-resolving way. People who confuse plainly programmed algorithmic systems like GPT 4 or Midjourney with the still unresolved issues of sentience as we know it so far are drinking far too much of the current batch of AI punch. Sadly, it's a sentiment I see all too often on HN, a site in which i'd assume mo…

Yeah, it reads so bizarrely to me... How are we confusing biological human (or other animal) sentience in some embodied creature with queries as a service to some model instance. I cannot see anything that remotely makes these two contexts architecturally, practically, or ethically similar, except in the narrow sense of query responses that might have been mistakenly thought of as defining sentience in earlier decade…

It's a function of the people who hang out here. If you like reading and text in general, you are both more likely to comment here and additionally regard language as the most important part of sentience/consciousness.

This leads to believing that GPT has solved many of these issues.

Re: Choose Your Weapon: Survival Strategies for Depressed AI Academics

#32

Post by fancyfredbot »

I think this paper is a joke but like all good jokes has a grain of truth. I would imagine that most AI academics are very excited by recent developments, if you worked on conversational language models you are more likely to view recent progress at OpenAI as a vindication than a threat. That said there must be some sadness that it wasn't you.

Re: Choose Your Weapon: Survival Strategies for Depressed AI Academics

#33

Post by FrustratedMonky »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #24
MrScruff wrote: post #13

Obviously AI academics are uniquely challenged by the 'scaling is (nearly) everything' reality, but I feel like a lot of the mixed emotions being expressed towards the latest results are also because we're actually seeing the mystery of self starting to unravel. Like any good mystery, the fun was in the build up and as we move towards a resolution there's a bitter sweet aspect to the slightly mundane reality of it 'm…

Nothing about current AI models profoundly challenges the unknowns of what makes consciousness work in any mystery-resolving way. People who confuse plainly programmed algorithmic systems like GPT 4 or Midjourney with the still unresolved issues of sentience as we know it so far are drinking far too much of the current batch of AI punch. Sadly, it's a sentiment I see all too often on HN, a site in which i'd assume mo…

That is pretty dismissive, do you have anything to back that up? Just saying one group is so out there it isn't worth arguing is typical when someone doesn't actually have an answer. I have found the opposite, the people that are dismissing that AI can be conscious or sentient, also don't have any definition for those terms. It's just the same "i think therefore i am" self viewpoint. I've found this typically with programmers that have never been introspective. Since they are familiar with programming, and GPT is programmed, thus obviously it can't be conscious, that's ridiculous. They don't take the time to try and understand where their own thoughts come from and then turn around and are dismissive that thoughts can be had by anything other than a carbon based animal.

Re: Choose Your Weapon: Survival Strategies for Depressed AI Academics

#35

Post by MrScruff »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #24
MrScruff wrote: post #13

Obviously AI academics are uniquely challenged by the 'scaling is (nearly) everything' reality, but I feel like a lot of the mixed emotions being expressed towards the latest results are also because we're actually seeing the mystery of self starting to unravel. Like any good mystery, the fun was in the build up and as we move towards a resolution there's a bitter sweet aspect to the slightly mundane reality of it 'm…

Nothing about current AI models profoundly challenges the unknowns of what makes consciousness work in any mystery-resolving way. People who confuse plainly programmed algorithmic systems like GPT 4 or Midjourney with the still unresolved issues of sentience as we know it so far are drinking far too much of the current batch of AI punch. Sadly, it's a sentiment I see all too often on HN, a site in which i'd assume mo…

I think the mystery of why we're not just philosophical zombies was never going to have some eureka moment, given that it's quite plain it's an emergent property. Was there a creature in history that wasn't sentient that gave birth to a creature that was? Clearly not.

The reason recent results are significant in this discussion is because:

- Larger networks are already displaying emergent behaviours that couldn't have been predicted beforehand. It doesn't have to be 'human-like' intelligence for that to be significant.

- We're getting close to a point where our models will start exhibiting something of the order of the same level of intelligence of primitive creatures.

So the wide-eyed hysteria you're seeing is really just new data points confirming what many of us always assumed would be the case.

Re: Choose Your Weapon: Survival Strategies for Depressed AI Academics

#36

Post by FrustratedMonky »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #31
bangkoksbest wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it reads so bizarrely to me... How are we confusing biological human (or other animal) sentience in some embodied creature with queries as a service to some model instance. I cannot see anything that remotely makes these two contexts architecturally, practically, or ethically similar, except in the narrow sense of query responses that might have been mistakenly thought of as defining sentience in earlier decade…

It's a function of the people who hang out here. If you like reading and text in general, you are both more likely to comment here and additionally regard language as the most important part of sentience/consciousness. This leads to believing that GPT has solved many of these issues.

Maybe its degrees. Sure, GPT does not have a body, does not have all the senses. But that doesn't mean we aren't on the leading edge of developing a consciousness. Maybe next year someone will add camera visual inputs, and someone will add sound. Eventually, we'll have all the sense, and someone will put it in a body. So GPT, is rudimentary and we can still argue it isn't conscious, because when compared to a human that can run and play, it still has limitations. But it is amazing enough to start thinking those things will be possible. So why not discuss it, do you just want to dismiss it out of hand all the way until the end, what amazing thing would it take to have people admit it looks pretty lively.

Re: Choose Your Weapon: Survival Strategies for Depressed AI Academics

#37

Post by stereolambda »

MrScruff wrote: post #13

Obviously AI academics are uniquely challenged by the 'scaling is (nearly) everything' reality, but I feel like a lot of the mixed emotions being expressed towards the latest results are also because we're actually seeing the mystery of self starting to unravel. Like any good mystery, the fun was in the build up and as we move towards a resolution there's a bitter sweet aspect to the slightly mundane reality of it 'm…

I agree with some siblings that it's better not to overstate the consequences for our knowledge of mind and consciousness, at least just yet. This level is still half promises. Not saying this can't change a year from now.

On the other hand, it is fascinating how much interesting work and theories in the field will be retired, at least for a long time (I allow for a likelihood that some of that could return eventually as better, more concise generalizations). Ten years ago Chomsky and various GOFAI-related stuff could still sound respectable and somewhat plausible. Plenty of people were/are wedded to the concept that you can build machine intelligence as an abstract and intellectually stimulating gentleman pursuit. It was a comfy position in a way. Not surprised about the resistance they are mounting now, though I think academic inertia will allow them to exist for quite some time. They can just move to doing some kind of philosophy also.

Re: Choose Your Weapon: Survival Strategies for Depressed AI Academics

#38

Post by caddemon »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #31
bangkoksbest wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it reads so bizarrely to me... How are we confusing biological human (or other animal) sentience in some embodied creature with queries as a service to some model instance. I cannot see anything that remotely makes these two contexts architecturally, practically, or ethically similar, except in the narrow sense of query responses that might have been mistakenly thought of as defining sentience in earlier decade…

It's a function of the people who hang out here. If you like reading and text in general, you are both more likely to comment here and additionally regard language as the most important part of sentience/consciousness. This leads to believing that GPT has solved many of these issues.

As someone very language-focused, it has actually done the opposite for me: challenged some of my beliefs about how language enables intelligence. It's obviously skilled at language use, but most of its outputs where it has to make any sort of arguments or inferences read as incredibly stupid to me (even the ones that "tricked" people early on, some of them tricked me but in a way where I was about to write a response because I was annoyed at how bad the reasoning was).

Of course that's not a criticism of the ML achievement, except that everyone and their mother has started making some extreme arguments about the thing.

Re: Choose Your Weapon: Survival Strategies for Depressed AI Academics

#39

Post by layer8 »

MrScruff wrote: post #13

Obviously AI academics are uniquely challenged by the 'scaling is (nearly) everything' reality, but I feel like a lot of the mixed emotions being expressed towards the latest results are also because we're actually seeing the mystery of self starting to unravel. Like any good mystery, the fun was in the build up and as we move towards a resolution there's a bitter sweet aspect to the slightly mundane reality of it 'm…

While I agree that it will unravel in the end, we still haven’t learned much at this point about how the self actually works.

I would also disagree that ChatGPT constitutes a self. If anything, it constitutes a normal distribution over possible selves, where you get a random pick at the start of each conversation, and confined to the length of its token buffer.

Re: Choose Your Weapon: Survival Strategies for Depressed AI Academics

#40

Post by matthewdgreen »

numbers_guy wrote: post #17
jimsimmons wrote: post #3

Academics can’t put themselves on a pedestal for being revolutionaries who care about the ultimate truth the most and at the same time whine when an advance comes along. These CS academics need to understand that this is what it feels like to be in other fields like physics or bio where you can’t do jack unless you have costly equipment. This is what people in developing countries deal with all the time. And people w…

I don't think they are putting themselves on a pedestal. It's more that they made the choice to remain in academia, because they believed that were trading a higher salary for the academic freedom and the chance to work with really cool problems. And then it turns out, industry are the ones really working with the really cool problems. (Disregarding the fact that ~85% of machine learning academics do not have what it…

I think your response is very narrow in defining what a "really cool problem" is. If in the 1970s you imagined that the cool problem in ECE/CS was "building ever-more-powerful computer processors" then you basically got smoked by Intel and other industry labs.

But there's a different way to look at it. Because industry went off and solved the now-"boring" problem of building ever-more-powerful computer processors, the people left behind in academia got to invent machine learning, public-key cryptography, modern coding theory, distributed systems... and so on. What makes academic research valuable is not the freedom of "I get to plan my own day", but the freedom of "I get to work on the weird problems that industry doesn't even realize are problems."

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