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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

#71

Post by dontupvoteme »

jksk61 wrote: post #22
mr_gibbins wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone in this space I can attest that AI teaching in most (UK) universities is generally poor on detail, abstract and behind industry by at least 3-5 years. Not to mention that there is zero appetite from undergrads or postgrads to get into the nitty-gritty of it. To learn CNNs at the deep-dive level you need calculus, at least differentiation and integration. Calculus or even pre-calculus doesn't form part of t…

lmao even in my university (the serbian uni), we have at least calculus+linear algebra before any nn course. also to "learn" what's a cnn you just need gradients not integrals (unless you use some kind of non-lipschitz function as activation?), plus the idea of what a convolution is... but even Mobius knew it back in the 800s. anyway i think your statement that industry is light years away from unis is just misleadin…

>just my two cents, to conclude i think a good analogy to the current climate is the 700-800s with electromagnetism: plenty of people discovered "empirical" laws but didn't understand really the phenomenon.

Sounds dead on. Do these large """language""" models actually even implement any concepts from linguistics? Or is the entire "language" part of the model merely derived from the fact that it's inherently part of the training data?

I don't fault Chomsky at all for being fed up with the hype here.

The entire field is also glossing over the fact that other languages which aren't English exist.

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

#72

Post by lo_zamoyski »

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…

> we're actually seeing the mystery of self starting to unravel.

This seems like a change of topic. And vague.

But since you bring it up, I don't see anything threatening about AI.

First, if something is true, then, as a matter of principle, we have an obligation to believe it. Thus, the only threat the truth can pose is to falsehood, which is not a threat, but liberation. The truth shall set you free. Now, it may be uncomfortable is the truth is at odds with what you want to believe (a phenomenon very much present in the linguistic engineering we're seeing in the political sphere w.r.t. political correctness and its dishonest and obfuscating euphemisms), but unpleasantness isn't a threat.

Second, if we replace "threaten" with "challenge", then we might as what beliefs does AI actually challenge? How does it challenge this "mystery of the self"? That we can simulate human discourse or behavior with greater sophistication? That machine automation is becoming more sophisticated? I see no mystery where AI per se is concerned, only the mystification of those who wish attribute to it properties it does not possess, or those with intellectually superficial metaphysical commitments, like mechanistic materialism. AI cannot abstract from particulars, it has no true capacity for intentionality, to name two features central to intelligence. All of what the undiscerning and those given oven to fanciful notions see in AI is a projection.

And I do not think the classical[0] and traditional[1] thinkers viewed intelligence in the obfuscating manner that moderns infected by reductive, mechanistic materialism seem to.

[0] https://a.co/d/hynqHxV

[1] https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2019/03/artificial-intellig...

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

#73

Post by sanderjd »

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…

HN was not always skeptical about crypto. We're just at a different point in the hype cycle with generative AI.

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

#74

Post by galaxyLogic »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #36
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I think everybody agrees it looks lively. And that discussion about it is good. That is why we ARE discussing it.

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

#75

Post by CuriouslyC »

hyperbovine wrote: post #58
bo1024 wrote: post #52

As a theorist in AI, the premise is funny but also really sad. And yet it is a very pervasive premise in the field. OpenAI is not doing science. They are building a big shiny thing, showing it off, keeping it closed, and making money off of it. That is not part of the scientific process. It is as if, every time SpaceX launched a rocket a little bit higher, every aerospace department ooh'd and aah'd and threw up their…

Conversely: if you’re a depressed AI researcher: come on over to science, the water’s fine! We have centuries worth of open problems that are not going to be solved by ChatGPT, and need more smart technical people than we can hire.

What an opportunity! I get to spend most of my time writing grant proposals, compete with 30 other associate professors for 1 tenure track job, then when I get tired of that I can switch to a marginal wage industry job because AI researchers are the only scientists that get good compensation as a group, and the 28 other people who didn't get that tenure position are probably also trying to do the same thing (thus depressing wages)? Sign me up /s.

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

#76

Post by mythrwy »

leroy-is-here wrote: post #53
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…

We are not our thoughts. We are not the thinking machines in our heads. We control our thoughts, so we are more than them. These machines are merely thinking machines.

Who is this "we" you are referring to?

In other words, when I control my thoughts, what is doing the controlling?

(see George Gurdjieff's philosophy which speaks to this issue of the `mechanical vs the conscious`, but please don't run off and join a crazy cult and ruin your life).

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

#77

Post by numbers_guy »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #40
numbers_guy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, th…

OK, I agree with you. But this sort of struggle that you highlight is common in many aspects of research. As a researcher you are conflicted between your curiosity instinct to explore new paths, and your desire to also have big results. Ideally you would have a balance between the two, although you can definitely make a career out of only one.

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

#78

Post by MrScruff »

Version467 wrote: post #64
MrScruff wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hav…

> given that it's quite plain it's an emergent property. This explains nothing. Stating it's an emergent phenomenon gives us just as much information as saying it's magic. Arguably even less, because it sounds like an explanation, whereas "magic" doesn't pretend to explain anything. > displaying emergent behaviours that couldn't have been predicted beforehand. Same problem here. You say "couldn't have been predicted"…

> This explains nothing. Stating it's an emergent phenomenon gives us just as much information as saying it's magic. Arguably even less, because it sounds like an explanation, whereas "magic" doesn't pretend to explain anything.

I don't think that's the case. Of course at one level we can understand how GPT4 works, we have a working implementation of it after all. But that doesn't help us predict how it will behave, because its properties are emergent, and have to be studied separately at that level. That's not saying it's magic.

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

#79

Post by leroy-is-here »

mythrwy wrote: post #76
leroy-is-here wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are not our thoughts. We are not the thinking machines in our heads. We control our thoughts, so we are more than them. These machines are merely thinking machines.

Who is this "we" you are referring to? In other words, when I control my thoughts, what is doing the controlling? (see George Gurdjieff's philosophy which speaks to this issue of the `mechanical vs the conscious`, but please don't run off and join a crazy cult and ruin your life).

When I say “we”, I mean each of us. You control your thoughts. You are the doing because you choose the thought to act on.

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

#80

Post by galaxyLogic »

hakuseki wrote: post #14
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…

> 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 'merely' being an emergent property of large networks. I would disagree with this description. An "emergent property of large networks" would be something that just appears when you wire together a large network. To get intelligent behavior, it's not sufficient t…

I think "Dial F For Frankenstein" makes your point clear. It is absurd to think the telephone network would just emergently become conscious when there are enough phones it connects together.

https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=2137

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