How to build a thinking AI • Hacker News Board

Re: How to build a thinking AI

#61

Post by ryanklee » Sat, Jan 06, 2024, 12:27 AM UTC

gremlinsinc wrote: post #48

ryanklee wrote: post #21

> simulate human-like thought processes It ought to be clear to a cognitive scientist (which the author is) that we do not know how human thought processes work except at a very course level. The idea that we have an understanding refined enough to take the next step and "simulate" these processes is just pure crackpot bunk.

If we only get it partially figured out, we can still get a vastly more intelligent artificial intelligence system, and then IT will figure out what we missed, especially if it is self-improving.

Get what partially figured out? We are nowhere close to understanding how human cognitive processes are constituted. We are farther away from that than we are from AGI.

These are not interdependent enterprises.

Re: How to build a thinking AI

#62

Post by kelseyfrog » Sat, Jan 06, 2024, 1:20 AM UTC

pfisch wrote: post #3

At best we invite a dystopian future. At worst our own annihilation. It is crazy how powerless we are to stop it from happening.

State your priors, rationalist.

Re: How to build a thinking AI

#63

Post by digitcatphd » Sat, Jan 06, 2024, 1:23 AM UTC

Seems promising but I don’t think we will achieve production ready thinking AI with current state of LLMs.

We will need some form of Q-Learning and possibly or a world model to arrive at optimal outcomes otherwise random choices are made absent of at least one that would be suboptimal.

Consider that life is a giant game of Chess with a massive yet finite scenarios, a grounding agent must have knowledge of each potential scenario and its effects as well as the probability of winning from each subsequent move.

Otherwise the best we can get at is the emulation of reasoning which is a kind of pseudo reasoning that may indeed work in some cases like literal chess where the logic and knowledge can be sufficiently isolated, but not in a general sense.

Re: How to build a thinking AI

#64

Post by lijok » Sat, Jan 06, 2024, 1:31 AM UTC

Before engaging with the comments here, keep in mind: This article is at least a 4 hour reading exercise and at least a week long endeavour to comprehend it. Few if any in the comments have actually read it, let alone understood it.

Re: How to build a thinking AI

#65

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 06, 2024, 1:32 AM UTC

lijok wrote: post #64

Before engaging with the comments here, keep in mind: This article is at least a 4 hour reading exercise and at least a week long endeavour to comprehend it. Few if any in the comments have actually read it, let alone understood it.

[deleted]

Re: How to build a thinking AI

#66

Post by dTal » Sat, Jan 06, 2024, 1:39 AM UTC

hathawsh wrote: post #41

zaking17 wrote: post #27

I like the process that goes into these "imagine the architecture of AGI" articles. It's all hypothetical, but it's really fun. But it's a missed opportunity if you don't embed LLMs in some of the core modules -- and highlight where they excel. LLMs aren't identical to any part of the human brain, but they do a remarkable job of emulating elements of human cognition: language, obviously, but also many types of reason…

I like to think we could quickly create a next-level AI (maybe AGI?) if we simply model it on the Pixar movie "Inside Out". The little characters inside the girl's brain are different LLMs with different biases. They follow a kind of script that adapts to the current environment. They converse with each other and suggest to the girl what she should do or say. I'd try the idea myself, but I have a job. :-)

This sounds a lot like the mixture-of-experts architecture, and the current best-performing language models (GPT-4, mixtral-8x7b) already use this architecture.

So congratulations, you win!

Re: How to build a thinking AI

#67

Post by peyton » Sat, Jan 06, 2024, 1:48 AM UTC

lijok wrote: post #64

Before engaging with the comments here, keep in mind: This article is at least a 4 hour reading exercise and at least a week long endeavour to comprehend it. Few if any in the comments have actually read it, let alone understood it.

Not really, it’s a bunch of slightly outdated cognitive psych/neural computation stuff. It’s looking plausible that neurons use transponsons etc and subtle timing effects to do an extreme amount of processing. I mean, what’s happening when you sit down at a piano and warm up? We just don’t have access to that amount of computation in silico.

Re: How to build a thinking AI

#68

Post by tuatoru » Sat, Jan 06, 2024, 2:47 AM UTC

blackbear_ wrote: post #38

TaupeRanger wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same hyperbolic nonsense we've seen from hundreds of other confident "researchers" over the past 50 years. Eliasmith has a book called "How to Build a Brain", Hawkins built an entire company, Numenta, around a theory that hasn't created anything remotely useful or interesting in almost 2 decades and has pivoted to creating tools for current ML zeitgeist methods. This unknown researcher is exactly the same. W…

You really don't need to be so cynical, some things just need time. Light bulbs were patented only after 40 years of work by multiple researchers, and it took another half a century of work to achieve decent efficiency. Neural networks themselves have been in development for 50 years before taking off recently, and for most of that time people working in the field were considered nuts by their peers. But if you have…

> Light bulbs were patented only after 40 years of work by multiple researchers

Not actually true. The early ones were patented, but used filaments made of materials like platinum, and glass-blowing and evacuation were costly as well at the time.

Edison's genius was for innovation rather than invention: making things manufacturable at scale, reducing costs, and setting up profitable sales systems. A systems man.

Re: How to build a thinking AI

#69

Post by zaking17 » Sat, Jan 06, 2024, 2:54 AM UTC

ilaksh wrote: post #45

zaking17 wrote: post #27

I like the process that goes into these "imagine the architecture of AGI" articles. It's all hypothetical, but it's really fun. But it's a missed opportunity if you don't embed LLMs in some of the core modules -- and highlight where they excel. LLMs aren't identical to any part of the human brain, but they do a remarkable job of emulating elements of human cognition: language, obviously, but also many types of reason…

I think LLMs did not exist or barely existed at the time he wrote this.

Makes sense!

Re: How to build a thinking AI

#70

Post by zaking17 » Sat, Jan 06, 2024, 2:58 AM UTC

gremlinsinc wrote: post #49

zaking17 wrote: post #27

I like the process that goes into these "imagine the architecture of AGI" articles. It's all hypothetical, but it's really fun. But it's a missed opportunity if you don't embed LLMs in some of the core modules -- and highlight where they excel. LLMs aren't identical to any part of the human brain, but they do a remarkable job of emulating elements of human cognition: language, obviously, but also many types of reason…

one important thing you left out - the ability to reproduce and thus "evolve" naturally, and at scale, to essentially keep improving its own brain to the point it outpaces current human researchers in self-improvement. If not reproduce, maybe reincarnate itself in version 2.0, 3.0, etc...

Yeah, I guess I was heading in that direction with the last point. Earth organisms have a separation between lifetime learning (brain modification) and genetic evolution, but, for AGI, these could be combined into one, or further separated into three or more methods of goal-directed modification.