Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

thenewatlantis.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 231 posts

Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

#151

Post by __loam »

gmerc wrote: post #47
optimalsolver wrote: post #10

What's a large language model doing when it's not being queried? Am I correct that they only compute information when dealing with a prompt? If so, that seems like a fundamental flaw. An actual "thinking machine" would be constantly running computations on its accumulated experience in order to improve its future output.

Our brain is made of interconnected systems but somehow expect LLM architecture to encompass the whole spectrum. Nothing stops you from running a loop that involves other systems such as long term memory (vector /dev storage), visual pre-processor (CNN), auto lora, and more. That’s the fundamental flaw with most of the criticism - the tech is out only a few short months in the hands of everyone. The disruption will c…

Another flaw is trying to anthropomorphize the tech

Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

#152

Post by johnnyworker »

crabmusket wrote: post #50
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the scary scenario. What if AI does out pace humans, but the physical side does not, we don't succeed in making vast quantities of easy to build and maintain robots. Thus to keep industry going, the AI does need humans, and it gives the directions. If you have ever worked in a modern warehouse, it is very evident, the humans are just following instructions from the system. Now scale that up to a manufacturing…

This is what Doctorow refers to as the "reverse centaur"

> The problem here isn't automation, it's power. The workers whom the robots could benefit are instead harnessed to the robot to the benefit of the shareholders.

> Workplace democracy, AKA unionization, AKA the thing Amazon has pulled out every dirty trick to prevent, is the difference between centaur utopia and reverse-centaur dystopia.

-- https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/17/reverse-centaur/#reverse-...

Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

#153

Post by vidarh »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #142
tshaddox wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we can't tell it apart from us.. and if we know it is most definitely not alive or even mysterious.. what does that say about us? That concepts like "consciousness," "free will," and "qualia" are nebulous precisely because they were invented by us to describe things we don't understand yet we feel obligated to insist are special and unique characteristics of our identity.

They aren't nebulous. "Consciousness" means "an existing stream of experiences". "Free will" means "a feeling that one could've made a different choice" (the metaphysical status of the claim still unknown), and "qualia" means "specific characteristics of experiences that one can attend to". One need not "insist" on anything to believe they are unique characteristics of our identity.

None of your definitions are less nebulous than the terms you defined.

Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

#154

Post by janalsncm »

gerad wrote: post #24
apples_oranges wrote: post #4

Where on the S-shaped curve are we? I am curious if one day the paradigm that brought forth the current chatbots has to be abandoned because it's reached his limits, and a new approach will replace it. But certainly it has inspired the field of AI massively and I expect many new developments which will lead is into a future that resembles sci-fi books and movies. I am also interested in what good sci-fi will look lik…

For LLMs and generative AI we’re likely at the start of the curve. Things take longer than you expect in the short-term and less time than you expect in the long-term. After this hype cycle ends, things will probably bump along slowly for a decade or so, then suddenly you’ll look up and they’ll be everywhere, and you’ll wonder “when did that happen?” At least that’s the way it felt for other technologies to me. Inter…

> After this hype cycle ends, things will probably bump along slowly for a decade or so, then suddenly you’ll look up and they’ll be everywhere, and you’ll wonder “when did that happen?”

The reason this is incorrect is that “AI” isn’t one capability. It’s a huge swath of capabilities under the umbrella of “automate X”. All of them have been enabled by software and hardware improvements over the last decades. The underlying technologies aren’t that new in many cases either, it’s just the scale that’s different.

After we get bored of one huge new capability, another comes along. A year ago everyone was talking about automatic image generation. Now it’s automatic text generation. There are plenty of other things we’d like to automate. So the hype train is likely to continue for quite a while.

Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

#155

Post by janalsncm »

apples_oranges wrote: post #4

Where on the S-shaped curve are we? I am curious if one day the paradigm that brought forth the current chatbots has to be abandoned because it's reached his limits, and a new approach will replace it. But certainly it has inspired the field of AI massively and I expect many new developments which will lead is into a future that resembles sci-fi books and movies. I am also interested in what good sci-fi will look lik…

The S curve only makes sense for one technology at a time. AI isn't one technology. It’s a category of technologies.

Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

#156

Post by hodgesrm »

dragonwriter wrote: post #124
hodgesrm wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> There are easily stated problems like “Reduce US car accidents by 50%” that should be solvable with AI as it stands today. IF you really want to solve that, that’s an urban design problem that doesn’t take AI at all; it isn’t solved because there is insufficient desire to solve it, not because of technology. But as far as AI-use-in-cars goes… > This seems like a useful and achievable goal that would save money and…

True, I should properly say that the publicity and a lot of SV focus went to full self-driving. Thank goodness people are actually pushing the less glamorous topics.

That said, it would be great to see more public focus on solving problems like keeping bikes and pedestrians from being run over. In my town there's a lot of talk about the issue but it's not been backed up by initiatives that actually change the numbers. (Which are bad.)

Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

#157

Post by danielbln »

__loam wrote: post #150
danielbln wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you use one of the many other search enabled LLMs (e.g. https://phind.com ) or build your own via langchain etc.

This is just a search engine with a neat wrapper

A wrapper that can ask you questions and that you can ask questions. A LLM makes a pretty neat wrapper or you ask me.

Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

#158

Post by edflsafoiewq »

empath-nirvana wrote: post #95
mercurialsolo wrote: post #62

It'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.

Human-level intelligence.

Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

#159

Post by janalsncm »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #148

LLMs do not understand language. They simulate language. Does language understand itself? Some of it does, and some of it doesn't. Remember, LLMs aren't the person writing.

What does it mean to understand language, and can you test your definition?

I say this because statements like yours are a bit like saying calculators don’t understand arithmetic. In some sense maybe they don’t. But in another sense, they actually understand arithmetic better than anyone on the planet.

So maybe ChatGPT does understand language. Maybe it understands language better than anyone. What it doesn’t have are real-world experiences.

Re: Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

#160

Post by goatlover »

edflsafoiewq wrote: post #158
empath-nirvana wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Human-level intelligence.

Don't we already have enough of that?
Post reply on HN