Something I’ve realized in the midst of all this hype is that many, many people seem to actually want to build AGI, for its own sake, and many take for granted that this is a goal. I don’t understand why. It seems like we’re racing right past using the tools we already have to solve humanity’s many very real and solvable problems, in favor of trying to invent something just because it sounds neat.
Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal
111–120 of 231 posts
Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal
#112It's not combining an LLM with data/memory recollection and infinite agency that will lead to leaps in cognition. Complex systems still can do that and still not have self-awareness / cognition. We will need to take some more fundamental leaps to synthesize memory, agency and prediction to operate within a single system where self-awareness resides in the entity and not in the building blocks. LLM's represent a build…
what is the 'real deal', exactly? I feel like people have this vague idea in their head of what everyone is trying to build, but don't really have it defined in a concrete way.
The fundamental issue is that all the talk of "self-awareness", "cognition", "souls", whatever you want to call it, is all beating around the bush to describe what we presumably each subjectively experience in our own minds but which cannot be empirically tested for in others. We generally assume that other people experience the same, but cannot empirically prove it and some people speculate that others might lack it (P-zombies, "NPCs", etc). And then when it comes to animals, a huge portion of the population refuse to believe animals can possess it. I think the majority belief is that some animals definitely have it (dolphins) and some animals probably do not (jellyfish? corals?), but there's no empirical test for it. On the fringes, some people believe only humans (or even only themselves personally) possess it, while other people believe that even inanimate rocks could possess it.
So basically we're never going to achieve some consensus about whether an LLM/AI could have it, because we can't even agree on whether dogs and cats have it. We can't even all agree on whether all humans have it.
Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal
#113Something I’ve realized in the midst of all this hype is that many, many people seem to actually want to build AGI, for its own sake, and many take for granted that this is a goal. I don’t understand why. It seems like we’re racing right past using the tools we already have to solve humanity’s many very real and solvable problems, in favor of trying to invent something just because it sounds neat.
AGI sounds neat because the hype says that it will solve all human problems at once. That's obviously fake and wrong, but so is the idea of solving current human problems with current tools.
Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal
#114Side note: this publication, The New Atlantis, has been a very satisfying subscription. It's not too technical to casually read and consistently mixes together an interesting collection of essays, opinions, reviews, etc. I've passed every copy I receive to friends and then regret not having them around six months later when the ideas I read are still lodged in my brain.
Do you find it to be a conservative publication?
Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal
#115This is the Real Deal, but not in away you would imagine. So far "nigerian email spam" was easy to recognize. Grammar mistakes, bad translation, very bad wording... But now every fringe group, can generate gigabytes of text and arguments that make sense! This is the end of debate, consensus and interactive communication, as we know it! Similar moment was in Africa in 1960, after they got AK45 and other cheap weapons.…
> So far "nigerian email spam" was easy to recognize. Grammar mistakes, bad translation, very bad wording... But now every fringe group, can generate gigabytes of text and arguments that make sense! "nigerian email spam" contains grammar mistakes, bad translation, vary bad wording... by design. To weed out those unlikely to end up sending money. I don't know how you can make an argument that makes sense about being c…
It's amusing to see this popular "by design" explanation take hold with no evidence whatsoever.
Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Consider for a moment that the language generation neural network in your brain may not have continuity, and that it may exist elsewhere in your brain.
I don't find that particularly relevant to the questions at hand. Even if it's true, then at best it means that the LLMs that we've created are only a small part of what's necessary for an AGI that functions as an "artificial brain": that not only are they not conscious, they are fundamentally incapable of it, and in order to create artificial consciousness, we have now gone as far along that particular path as we ca…
I'm not sure that consciousness is anyone's goal here is it? Can you have a useful intelligence without consciousness?
Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal
#117I wish people would stop with the bizarre AI-latry that has gripped them en masse and realize that if its a "moment" at all, its a human moment. The impressive feat is the ability of researchers to manipulate a generic statistical model paradigm to fit large amounts data and be reused for something apparently useful. Whether that path has a future depends not on AI bootstraping itself but on said researchers to keep…
> AI-latry
Nice neologism! But wouldn't "AI-dolatry" be even better?
Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal
#118It's not combining an LLM with data/memory recollection and infinite agency that will lead to leaps in cognition. Complex systems still can do that and still not have self-awareness / cognition. We will need to take some more fundamental leaps to synthesize memory, agency and prediction to operate within a single system where self-awareness resides in the entity and not in the building blocks. LLM's represent a build…
I am an absolute layman when it comes to AI topics, but I have been wondering about this lately. A lot of the hopes in regard to AGI in LLMs seem to focus on just making the models bigger, or feeding them even more information. On the other hand, some researchers in the AGI space seem to move in a completely different direction, trying to use neural networks to simulate different parts of a brain, moving away from la…
Seems like there's a little bit of Assembly Theory in there as well.
Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
I for one welcome measuring compute power in chess ELO over FLOPS. Let's me know which devices I can trounce and which ones to pay respect to.
Agreed. Although my ego might not be able to take it if it turns out I can be outplayed by my IKEA smart lamp.
I can program an IKEA smart lamp to be better at chess then I am; I see this as a win.
Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal
#120Something I’ve realized in the midst of all this hype is that many, many people seem to actually want to build AGI, for its own sake, and many take for granted that this is a goal. I don’t understand why. It seems like we’re racing right past using the tools we already have to solve humanity’s many very real and solvable problems, in favor of trying to invent something just because it sounds neat.
AGI sounds neat because the hype says that it will solve all human problems at once. That's obviously fake and wrong, but so is the idea of solving current human problems with current tools.
> That's obviously fake and wrong, but so is the idea of solving current human problems with current tools.
There are easily stated problems like "Reduce US car accidents by 50%" that should be solvable with AI as it stands today. This seems like a useful and achievable goal that would save money and lives. I've never understood why full self-driving was the problem most people chose to solve instead.
But perhaps I'm misunderstanding your point.