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It may or may not. I mean it’d be pretty hard to increase yields of GPU fabs or data center sizes another 100x. There are logistical limitations. Unless some Apollo level mission is created by a superpower, we will hit bottlenecks. Algorithmic innovation is the only long term bet.
That hasn't been true for optimizing compilers either.
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I believe your ontology is a naively inconsistent overessentialization of miraculous paradoxes that have confounded human thinkers since prehistory.
I’m trying to show you something miraculous. It simply involves understanding that you are not your thoughts.
A rock is also more than it's thoughts, and retains some degree of consciousness. Imagining concepts like souls as a sort of litmus test for consciousness only serves to reinforce a thought-based comprehension.
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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…
Are you saying that consciousness didn’t result from, survival of the fittest, evolutionary pressure but more of a byproduct of a larger brain (network)? Like it emerged because of a larger network but was not selected for through evolution. That makes sense to me. Humans have a grotesquely large brain compared to other animals. Edit: I wonder if there are studies that have determined whether or not new born infants…
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…
AI's a big deal, but there's no reason to suggest that this makes any inroads toward unraveling self or consciousness significantly beyond what we get from books, movies, or perhaps more recently, video games.
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Ooooh and here I was, an ignoramus thinking OpenAI was mostly trying to find a way to milk the generative models cash cow. Silly, cynical me, I should have known better.
Don't worry about it. VERY few people (Sama, Elon, Me) saw this coming and see what is coming next.
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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…
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…
In the US I’ve never seen a BS in computer science that didn’t require calculus. I can’t speak for the UK, but it would surprise me that what you say is true.
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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 dep…
There's also lots of room in applying AI techniques to other areas of science (again, outside of professorships)
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…
OpenAI wasn't created to "Do Science". It was created to give humanity a better chance at navigating the singularity.
That's exactly OP's point
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…