Every time I read about AI I am reminded of the mouse running a maze. Any AI algorithm can learn to complete a maze in record time. It can memorize every corner. It can run a search pattern perfectly and improve that pattern iteratively, to the point that it may create new search patterns, applying what appear to be novel ideas. But the mouse actually understands the concept of a maze. It knows that the cheese exists…
An interesting fallacy I see emerging is 'this system doesn't have animal-style intelligence, therefore it is lesser' The entire point of neural nets is removing the biases of animal intelligence and letting the computer brute force solutions during training. We are now learning the early stages of the amazing things that can lead to. From an outside perspective, it's not crazy to argue that symbolic reasoning is a c…
Cargo Cult AI
61–70 of 191 posts
Re: Cargo Cult AI
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 tim…
GPT is not Markovian; it has state.
A truck towing a trailer isn't just a car because it pivots in the middle and has more wheels. It's fundamentals of operation are still closer to a car or truck without trailer than a bicycle.
Humans can form thoughts and get to mostly correct answers even as a gut feeling, and the language to explain why/how need not even be present. We don't form thoughts one word at a time.
Re: Cargo Cult AI
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you know it's actually conducting the proofs and not that the proofs and related data were already part of the dataset? Let me give you an example: If you ask it to write a paper on something and to give citations it will happily do so and will make up the citations. It will link you to websites that don't exist, or papers that are completely wrong. This is because it doesn't actually synthesize what you're as…
You don't, at this point. You also don't know whether a person is lying to you or not. Or whether the person believes and replicates some utter nonsense. Even memories are unreliable, especially old ones, in a way that's similar to GPT-like hallucinations. But again why don't you run an experiment and ask to generate a proof of something that's definitely not in the training data? Like try something scientific instea…
The only thing that marginally stops it from going off the rails is the extensive prompting they do under the hood because otherwise it would spew out all kinds of garbage. Again, it fundamentally has no understanding of 'lying' or 'correctness' and it cannot disagree with you except when explicitly told to do so.
The limitations of ChatGPT should be obvious the more you play with it. And they are fundamental limitations of LLMs.
Re: Cargo Cult AI
#64> 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'i…
There's absolutely no reason to be "brutally" honest. It's entirely possible to be respectful, clear, and concise all at the same time. And yes, as easy it is to read that sentence without the intensifier, it's also easy to write it without it as well.
You mean to say there's no absolute reason to be "brutally" honest, because then you can see there's no absolute reason to be smotheringly polite either. (did you read the brief piece I linked?)
There absolutely is a reason to say what springs to your mind, it's quick and efficient, and that's something that people who quickly come up with quality thoughts prize as the ultimate. Laboring over how to say something a different way is very time-consuming, and unnecessary especially if you are addressing people who think-speak the way you do.
And, you're saying people like me should change? Why? Why not suggest that people like you change? (did you read the brief piece I linked? included here for the lazy or those who think there is absolutely no reason they should need to read links)
the following Copyright © 1996, 2006 by Jeff Bigler. https://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html
All people have a "tact filter", which applies tact in one direction to everything that passes through it. Most "normal people" have the tact filter positioned to apply tact in the outgoing direction. Thus whatever normal people say gets the appropriate amount of tact applied to it before they say it. This is because when they were growing up, their parents continually drilled into their heads statements like, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all!"
"Nerds," on the other hand, have their tact filter positioned to apply tact in the incoming direction. Thus, whatever anyone says to them gets the appropriate amount of tact added when they hear it. This is because when nerds were growing up, they continually got picked on, and their parents continually drilled into their heads statements like, "They're just saying those mean things because they're jealous. They don't really mean it."
When normal people talk to each other, both people usually apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they say, and no one's feelings get hurt. When nerds talk to each other, both people usually apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they hear, and no one's feelings get hurt. However, when normal people talk to nerds, the nerds often get frustrated because the normal people seem to be dodging the real issues and not saying what they really mean. Worse yet, when nerds talk to normal people, the normal people's feelings often get hurt because the nerds don't apply tact, assuming the normal person will take their blunt statements and apply whatever tact is necessary.
So, nerds need to understand that normal people have to apply tact to everything they say; they become really uncomfortable if they can't do this. Normal people need to understand that despite the fact that nerds are usually tactless, things they say are almost never meant personally and shouldn't be taken that way. Both types of people need to be extra patient when dealing with someone whose tact filter is backwards relative to their own. Reflections on this Essay after Ten Years
Re: Cargo Cult AI
#65Echoing 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…
I don't see how that at all counters point 1 or maybe even point 2. Although LLMs are incredible feats of engineering, they're useless scientifically. The hallmark of a good scientific theory is that it not only explains what's true but that it fails to predict what's false. There are constraints that all human languages obey [1]. Humans are incapable of learning languages that violate these constraints (i.e. we don'…
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2022/09/20/bionemo-large-langu...
Re: Cargo Cult AI
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty sure it's not magic, black fucking or otherwise, just really complex math, large data sets, and very fast computers.
Magic is that which can not be explained. Could you explain GPT-4's results if you saw them a few years ago?
To be very blunt: If you believe that GPT and the like are magic, then you're not thinking clearly. You're blinded by the results (which are impressive).
Re: Cargo Cult AI
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
What exactly is it that makes you so confident?
Re: Cargo Cult AI
#68> 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'i…
This is also why I believe brutal honesty for some works better coming from rivals, there is that shared assumption that both of you (or more) are going to disregard niceties.
Unrelated, f'ing was more difficult to read than the alternative using your name (fscking) or even f*cking. Yet f-bomb was easy to read, but I didn't mentally substitute it with the word. I wonder where I picked up these assumptions.
Re: Cargo Cult AI
#69Man (and other animals) have Life -> Awareness -> Will -> Speech -> Power. ChatGPT only has Speech that is subject to our prompts.
Re: Cargo Cult AI
#70I 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 like how suddenly the image generation state of the art made unexpected and significant progress. One can witness something like that only time to time.
What I don't get at all is that there are people like you, who are frowning upon and somehow disgusted by people like me.