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Cargo Cult AI

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Re: Cargo Cult AI

#31

Post by fzeroracer »

cs702 wrote: post #18

Echoing many who now find themselves blindsided by the emergent abilities and rapid adoption of LLMs, the OP: * complains that we still lack a "comprehensive theory to explain what intelligence is or how it emerges from first principles," * argues that deep neural nets like LLMs may not be capable of artificial general intelligence (AGI), and * contends that achieving AGI will require "new algorithmic paradigms." Ric…

That doesn't refute anything that the OP said at all. You just seem to be pasting that same quotation over multiple posts for disparate reasons.

Re: Cargo Cult AI

#32

Post by Jtsummers »

burnished wrote: post #20
gatkinso wrote: post #13

I think a lot of AI stuff is really cool and promising, but am dismayed by how impressed people are by it sometimes, especially the visual output of systems like DALL-E. Seems like machines are testing our intelligence, rather than the other way around.

People are impressed because its black fucking magic my friend.

Pretty sure it's not magic, black fucking or otherwise, just really complex math, large data sets, and very fast computers.

Re: Cargo Cult AI

#33

Post by progrus »

cs702 wrote: post #18

Echoing many who now find themselves blindsided by the emergent abilities and rapid adoption of LLMs, the OP: * complains that we still lack a "comprehensive theory to explain what intelligence is or how it emerges from first principles," * argues that deep neural nets like LLMs may not be capable of artificial general intelligence (AGI), and * contends that achieving AGI will require "new algorithmic paradigms." Ric…

So there’s no speed of light limit, there’s no speed of clock limit, or else all useful algorithms are parallelizable?

Sounds like bullshit.

Re: Cargo Cult AI

#34

Post by [deleted] »

hospitalhusband wrote: post #12
low_tech_love wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I more or less agree with you, in general, how complex would the AI have to be before you can consider it aware?

I categorically reject the notion that LMMs (Large Markov Models) can ever be aware or intelligent. Comparing weighted next-word-engines to feeling, thinking, aware beings is insulting.

[deleted]

Re: Cargo Cult AI

#35

Post by bmc7505 »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #29
bmc7505 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am disappointed with increasing frequency to learn how certain individuals whom I previously believed to be serious scholars fall for the cargo cult of AI safety. Personally I find it difficult to believe they are willfully participating in such conartistry, and makes me question their views on other subjects. Although I suppose intelligence and gullibility can coexist and some forms of delusion are better pitied t…

Why is your prior belief that AI safety is a cult so strong that even multiple people you would rather assume that multiple people who you previously respected are now delusional than to consider that there might be arguments worth considering?

It’s a LARP at best and a scam at worst. I shared some of my thoughts on the matter in a prior thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35145189#35147288

Re: Cargo Cult AI

#36

Post by fsckboy »

>Is the ability to think scientifically the defining essence of intelligence? ; Physicist Carl Sagan once wrote that "science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking." This type of thinking requires skeptical rigor and brutal honesty to thoroughly investigate,...

I think the key to brutal honesty is the ability to deliver and accept brutal honesty between peers and rivals. This is the skill you f'ing idiots seem to be losing, because it hinders hearing the autistic perspectives which are quite useful in science. I dropped the completely meaningless f-bomb not to insult anybody but to test your ability to read the sentence without the most basic of intensifiers, what I like to call the f-italics. https://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html

Re: Cargo Cult AI

#37

Post by hawski »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #27
hospitalhusband wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I categorically reject the notion that LMMs (Large Markov Models) can ever be aware or intelligent. Comparing weighted next-word-engines to feeling, thinking, aware beings is insulting.

What's an LMM? I've never seen the term. > Comparing weighted next-word-engines to feeling, thinking, aware beings is insulting Why is it reasonable to be so reductionist about e.g. GPT-4 but not be so reductionist about a biological brain? E.g., why can't I say that your brain is nothing but a bunch of biological neurons trained using its input and intialized based on your genetics? It's equally true, and equally mi…

I think that machine learning probably can produce something akin to a brain, but LLMs are not really it even if they use the digital equivalent of a neuron. As much as I understand what I read about LLMs they really seem to be descendants of Markov chains. I think they are valuable and can go a long way, but LLMs themselves will not be "it". I think that we will get to a ceiling with them within 10 years if we will not think about something else. I think the ceiling can be made pretty high though.

However most probably in 10 years we will all laugh how all of our predictions missed by a long shot.

Re: Cargo Cult AI

#38

Post by hospitalhusband »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #27
hospitalhusband wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I categorically reject the notion that LMMs (Large Markov Models) can ever be aware or intelligent. Comparing weighted next-word-engines to feeling, thinking, aware beings is insulting.

What's an LMM? I've never seen the term. > Comparing weighted next-word-engines to feeling, thinking, aware beings is insulting Why is it reasonable to be so reductionist about e.g. GPT-4 but not be so reductionist about a biological brain? E.g., why can't I say that your brain is nothing but a bunch of biological neurons trained using its input and intialized based on your genetics? It's equally true, and equally mi…

LMM = Large Markov Model. I use that term because models like GPT-4 and friends are for all intents and purposes Markov chains with more data, more compute, some lossy compression, and a bit of nearest neighbor search. Next-word-engines.

> why can't I say that your brain is nothing but a bunch of biological neurons trained using its input and intialized based on your genetics?

Because we don't think one word at a time, and we don't restart from scratch for every subsequent word.

Re: Cargo Cult AI

#39

Post by fzeroracer »

gatkinso wrote: post #13

I think a lot of AI stuff is really cool and promising, but am dismayed by how impressed people are by it sometimes, especially the visual output of systems like DALL-E. Seems like machines are testing our intelligence, rather than the other way around.

I've seen a lot of people wow'd and impressed by the AI, acting as if it's sentient etc whom would turn around in a second and argue that animals are flesh robots powered purely by survival instincts.

A lot of this is because I think it sort of wedges a knife into an area of our brain which makes us think it's similar to us. Look at this output, it's able to write about Shakespeare or summarize Beowulf or talk about these topics in a way I can understand. But ultimately it's an affirmative mirror; it will respond exactly as you prompt it. It cannot disagree with you or ask 'why' or synthesize the world beyond what it's told to do.

And it's incredibly hard to get some people to understand this. Even harder when you have companies pushing this because it's trendy even as we see the issues of private data being leaked or the frays in the data sets appearing.

Re: Cargo Cult AI

#40

Post by intalentive »

> What makes human intelligence different from today's AI is the ability to ask why, reason from first principles, and create experiments and models for testing hypotheses.

Too anthropocentric. Here is a video of cats "creating experiments" and "testing hypotheses": https://youtu.be/a_IA-8nQ4FY

Michael Levin has showed that even single-celled organisms have apparently intelligent and goal-directed actions.

Today's AI can't do that stuff either. If it could, we would have Rosie the Robot and C-3PO by now.

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