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Choose Your Weapon: Survival Strategies for Depressed AI Academics

arxiv.org

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

#161

Post by hyperbovine »

jebarker wrote: post #116
hyperbovine wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When you say "come over to science", where are you thinking? My impression is that industry -> academia is an almost impossible jump to make. Do you mean industry doing science?

I'm talking about working in a lab as a staff programmer. Most PIs I know, myself included, would absolutely kill to be able to hire experienced people from industry to write high-quality scientific code for them. The problem is that a) traditionally, it has been hard to get funding for this, though that's slowly starting to change, and b) even when the money is there, it's always going to be a fraction (1/2, often less) of what that person could make in industry.

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

#162

Post by mensetmanusman »

After a PhD@MIT and then entering industry, it has been my general understanding that industry is ahead on any scientific fronts that are profitable in fields that have a progressprofit feedback loop.

Academia still plays an important training ground role, and it could shift focus to those areas that could be profitable but require coordination that is generally not feasible among certain institutions.

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

#164

Post by pixl97 »

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"…

Some things will never be explained... for example what's the last digit of 22/7, and why out of all fractions around it that that particular number decides to extend towards infinity.

Reality can be unsatisfying because it does not owe us explanations.

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

#165

Post by pixl97 »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #67
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there is also some burden on other side to providing a definition of terms for the other party to argue against. I agree the burden of proof is on the AI side, but there is some burden on the deniers to provide some definitions if they wish to continue denying. AI Side: look here is my proof, Deniers: NO That isn't what I meant. I'd say GPT is already by its existence proof enough to start at least discussing c…

> burden on other side to providing a definition of terms The skeptics are really not making any claims are they? If not then there's no burden of proof on them, is there? Whoever says or implies that ChatBots are or are "becoming" "sentient" are the ones making a claim. They should prove it if they make or imply such a claim. Skeptics are rightly skeptical, until they see a proof with clear definitions of terms from…

I'd say this is untrue.

Just as a made up discription lets say this

Them: "If $object does A, B, and C, then it is a bajork"

Me "I have $object that does A, B, and C, it is a bajork"

Them: "No, it also doesn't do D"

Me: "That's goalpost moving"

Them: "Well, it doesn't do B in the way we expected, so it doesn't really do B"

Me: "Maybe we poorly defined what B was in the first place, that doesn't mean we didn't do B, it seems to mean no one understands what B is in the first place"

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

#167

Post by steve_adams_86 »

bheadmaster wrote: post #151
kome wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this might get philosophical quickly, but to really understand where you're at, you need to access all knowledge. Everybody is standing on the shoulder of giants. It's a collective effort that happens through socialization and long-standing institutions like universities. An essential part of doing science is sharing results and waiting for others to challenge, expand, or falsify them. If you skip this step,…

I love to get philosophical, so I'm gonna throw this thought experiment here: Let's say that there was a highly advanced civilization that existed way before the current civilized society. They performed scientific experiments and gained a lot of insight, but a catastrophical event erased them from the face of Earth together with all their knowledge. Did that civilization engage in science? If you think that they did…

> catastrophical event erased them from the face of Earth together with all their knowledge.

This thought experiment seems to introduce a huge variable which eliminates what I think might be a key factor in what many readers believe to be the practice of science.

> what is the difference between them and any other closed community that performs scientific experiments?

That difference here, and the key factor, would be intent. The catastrophic event eliminates any meaning behind what they accomplished or practiced in regards to why they practiced science in the first place.

Practicing it behind closed doors may appear less like science for science's sake and more like, say, an economic pursuit that coincidentally involves the scientific method.

That could be why the conversation appears so split at the moment. It's hard to claim science is about intent or a long-term purpose that, were it removed, it would bar a scientific activity from actually being Science proper. That's a very subjective thing.

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

#168

Post by steve_adams_86 »

rcpt wrote: post #126
kome wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. They are applying the scientific method, but they aren't contributing to science. it will be science when it's open and people can integrate the new knowledge in a broader set of knowledge. Science is knowledge. The etymology of science is to split stuff and understand how it work. But from late 14c in the more specific sense of "collective human knowledge". "Private" science is not science. It's some esoter…

What about scientists that don't publish all their data and code? Are they also not contributing to science? OpenAI, even without saying how the model works, has been hugely influential in science.

Similar to simply seeing animals and insects fly, humans intuited that they too could fly somehow. Seeing what's possible can open someone's mind in an instant. Would humans be capable of flight if other animals didn't fly already?

If science happens behind closed doors but we witness what it makes possible, that influence alone can inspire a lot more effort and discovery with or without the data that lead to the accomplishment.

I think that moment has been profoundly influential due to ChatGPT alone.

Whether or not it's a good thing that it's largely private is very difficult to say. I don't feel great about it, but I also don't think I know enough to have strong opinions yet.

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

#169

Post by jimsimmons »

sgt101 wrote: post #146
jimsimmons wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

10^16 -> 10^24 flops isn't 100x, it's 100,000,000x This happened in 10 years (training cost of largest model according to the batshit crazy god AI article in the FT). On the one hand compute power increased by about 100x and then some lunatics came and spent 10000x on it...

A lot of it is also backlog: modern GPUs are optimised for these workloads in a way old models weren’t

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

#170

Post by loandbehold »

mellosouls wrote: post #153
loandbehold wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectable to whom? That sounds like magic thinking, not science.

Philosophers. That's why I used the word "philosophical" not "scientific". Dismissing serious ideas with thousands of years of philosophical history behind them as "magic thinking" is either a failure of imagination or education; you can rectify the latter by reading up on the subject. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/

There are many things respectable scientists believed thousand years ago that we now know are not true. Vitalist views of life and consciousness are one of those things. As of 2023, believing that consciousness is a distinct phenomenon as fundamental as space or time is a crackpottery at the level of believing 5G causes COVID.
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