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There is no A.I.

newyorker.com

61–70 of 523 posts

Re: There is no A.I.

#61

All of these arguments seem to think that the brain isn't also generating a statistical ordering of semantic words and actions. Obviously the brain has a way more complex network of subsystems with various specialties than the artificial models we have today and is able to generalize language, math, and positional reasoning and mix it with the older parts of the brain for reward and training mechanisms and it can do…

And even if something capable of all the aspects of human cognition were created with no internal resemblance to cognition, so what, it still works. There's a reason it's called "artificial" intelligence, not "natural intelligence identical to human brains except in silicon instead of neurons". It's like when the wheel was invented saying it's not "true" transportation because it doesn't involve legs, or when the phone wasn't invented that it isn't "true" communication because you don't see the other person's mouth or physical expressions.

Re: There is no A.I.

#62

My cynical AI opinion is that if it truly was revolutionary, we would be seeing private companies or governments use it internally to massively boost their productivity or achieve otherwise impossible feats. Instead, all we're seeing are consumer products or half-baked integrations that are another way to further centralize data collection. Talks about all-powerful, malevolent AI or requesting to halt AI development…

Revisit this comment in 2 months, 6 months, a year. It’s mainly a matter of when OpenAI allows widespread access to the gpt-4 api and developers have time to build stuff.

Re: There is no A.I.

#63

All of these arguments seem to think that the brain isn't also generating a statistical ordering of semantic words and actions. Obviously the brain has a way more complex network of subsystems with various specialties than the artificial models we have today and is able to generalize language, math, and positional reasoning and mix it with the older parts of the brain for reward and training mechanisms and it can do…

Since LLMs can't do arithmetic, one has to think there's more going on, at least in the arithmetic part of the brain, than is going on in LLMs.

Re: There is no A.I.

#64
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We just can’t accept that we might solve ourselves. People are understandably desperate to understand their experiences as more than an encoding of a thing that might be explained. And all of our surprising wins and awful mistakes had explainable reasons, dammit; it wasn’t just a misfiring of trained statistical networks!

Or we just don't know how brains work very well and we shouldn't act like we do.

Not knowing how something works doesn't necessarily preclude replicating its function a completely different way. You don't have to understand an induction cooktop to hang a pot of water over a campfire.

Re: There is no A.I.

#65

All of these arguments seem to think that the brain isn't also generating a statistical ordering of semantic words and actions. Obviously the brain has a way more complex network of subsystems with various specialties than the artificial models we have today and is able to generalize language, math, and positional reasoning and mix it with the older parts of the brain for reward and training mechanisms and it can do…

I generally agree with you, but I think this argument overlooks the lack of an obvious reward function in large language models. GPT-N has no survival instinct, because there is no existential threat of death, no fitness function to optimize to extend its survival at any cost. Without this need to survive, there can be no motivation, and without motivation there can be no intent. And without intent, can there truly be any action?

Re: There is no A.I.

#66

All of these arguments seem to think that the brain isn't also generating a statistical ordering of semantic words and actions. Obviously the brain has a way more complex network of subsystems with various specialties than the artificial models we have today and is able to generalize language, math, and positional reasoning and mix it with the older parts of the brain for reward and training mechanisms and it can do…

> able to generalize language, math, and positional reasoning and mix it with the older parts of the brain for reward and training mechanisms and it can do it in real time

most brains I run into don't do that much at all, mostly just existing and adaptation-execution

Re: There is no A.I.

#67
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Descartes "evil demon" from 1641 says Wikipedia is the philosophical idea in all it's forms short of "but with a computer" Anyone got anything earlier? Wouldn't surprise me. https://iep.utm.edu/evil-new/

pretty sure first person that had a dream figured out VR.

Or peyote.

Re: There is no A.I.

#68
The elephant in the room in these discussions of AI is the concept of the corporation. Most of the things people are worried about AI doing are things corporations already do. Deceptive marketing, exploiting customer information, conspiring to keep prices high, creating distractions from things companies are doing, setting up monopolies, lying to customers - the usual. With AI, this can be automated.

Most of this is ordinary consumer protection. Regulating AI means regulating corporations. Placing hard limits on what AIs are allowed to do means consumer protection with teeth. Nobody in power wants to talk about that too much.

As for AIs taking over, that will come via the corporate route. Once AI systems can outperform CEOs, investors and boards will insist they be in charge.

Re: There is no A.I.

#69

For those who don’t know about the author, he is most well known a founder of the field of virtual reality. As a full time philosopher in the CTO’s office at MSFT, and the originator of concepts like data dignity, he’s uniquely qualified to write this kind of piece. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaron_Lanier

It should have been obvious to all of us at AlphaZero that Intelligence in a general sense is emergent from large networks of feedback loops. But our monkey brains tell us that we are special so we look for data to confirm that bias. No one is more guilty of that than "Experts".

He is uniquely qualified to be wrong about this in a specific way.

Re: There is no A.I.

#70

My cynical AI opinion is that if it truly was revolutionary, we would be seeing private companies or governments use it internally to massively boost their productivity or achieve otherwise impossible feats. Instead, all we're seeing are consumer products or half-baked integrations that are another way to further centralize data collection. Talks about all-powerful, malevolent AI or requesting to halt AI development…

They are. But you can’t expect something to be released and six month later we’ve completely exhausted all possible value from it. It takes longer than that at most big companies to agree to even use a technology and another six months to pass it through infosec, compliance, legal, fifty tech managers, etc. But as a first party source I can tell you these things are happening, pervasively, at every company, everywhere.
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