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Rodney Brooks on limitations of generative AI

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Re: Rodney Brooks on limitations of generative AI

#91

Post by jsemrau »

ianbicking wrote: post #88

"He says the trouble with generative AI is that, while it’s perfectly capable of performing a certain set of tasks, it can’t do everything a human can" This kind of strawman "limitations of LLMs" is a bit silly. EVERYONE knows it can't do everything a human can, but the boundaries are very unclear. We definitely don't know what the limitations are. Many people looked at computers in the 70s and saw that they could on…

I am a perfectly healthy human being, but I can't climb Mount Everest (right now). I might be capable with more training.

Re: Rodney Brooks on limitations of generative AI

#92

Post by christianqchung »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #86

The iPod didn't stop growing. It turned into an iPhone - a much more complex system which happened to include iPod features, almost as a trivial add-on. If you consider LLMs as the iPod of ML, what would the iPhone equivalent be?

I'd rather consider the current generation of LLMs as the first iPhone (or maybe flip phone, depends on where you stand), given that hundreds of billions of dollars in private money is already going into developing them.

Re: Rodney Brooks on limitations of generative AI

#93

Post by christianqchung »

aetherson wrote: post #31

We'll see GPT-5 in a few months and that will be vastly more useful information to update your sense of whether the current approach will continue to work than anyone's speculation today.

In a few months, or in 18 months? Mira Murati said this month that the next "PhD level intelligence" models will be released in a year or a year and a half. Everything points to GPT-5 not happening this year, especially given that they've only started the training officially last month.

Re: Rodney Brooks on limitations of generative AI

#94

Post by threeseed »

theteapot wrote: post #90
aurareturn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has not been my experience with GPT4 and GPt4o. Maybe you’re using worse models? The point is that the more context an LLM or human has, the better decision it can make in theory. I don’t think you can debate this. Hallucinations and LLM context scale are more engineering problems.

I think the argument was, GPT4 can't learn to do Math from more data. I'd be surprised if that's not true.

ChatGPT makes mistakes doing basic arithmetic or sorting numbers.

Pretty sure we have enough data for these fundamental tasks.

Re: Rodney Brooks on limitations of generative AI

#95

Post by threeseed »

Propelloni wrote: post #89
aurareturn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m still waiting for SalesForce to integrate an LLM into Slack so I can ask it business logic and decisions long lost. Still waiting for Microsoft to integrate an LLM into outlook so I can get a summary of a 20 email long chain I just got CCed into. I don’t think the iPod comparison is a valid one. People only have so much time to listen to music. Past a certain point, no one has enough good music they like to put i…

Most data around is junk and the internet produces junk data faster then useful data and current GPT AIs basically regurgitate what someone already did somewhere on the internet. So I guess the more data we feed into GPTs the worse the results will get. My take to improve AI output is to heavily curate the data you feed your AI, much the like expert systems of old (which were lauded as "AI" also.) Maybe we can break…

> My take to improve AI output is to heavily curate the data you feed your AI

This is what OpenAI is doing with their relationships with companies like Reddit, News Corp etc:

https://openai.com/index/news-corp-and-openai-sign-landmark-...

Problem is that we have a finite amount of this type of information.

Re: Rodney Brooks on limitations of generative AI

#96

Post by ilaksh »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #86

The iPod didn't stop growing. It turned into an iPhone - a much more complex system which happened to include iPod features, almost as a trivial add-on. If you consider LLMs as the iPod of ML, what would the iPhone equivalent be?

Large multimodal models. Maybe using diffusion transformers. Possibly integrated into lightweight comfortable AR glasses via Wifi so they can see everything you can, optionally automatically receiving context such as frame captures. Optionally with a very realistic 3d avatar "teleported" into your space.

Re: Rodney Brooks on limitations of generative AI

#97

Post by danielmarkbruce »

ianbicking wrote: post #88

"He says the trouble with generative AI is that, while it’s perfectly capable of performing a certain set of tasks, it can’t do everything a human can" This kind of strawman "limitations of LLMs" is a bit silly. EVERYONE knows it can't do everything a human can, but the boundaries are very unclear. We definitely don't know what the limitations are. Many people looked at computers in the 70s and saw that they could on…

It might seem silly... but that's likely because you understand them better than most. He is talking about a real human problem - we see a thing (or person) do X well, and assume it's the result of some very general capability. With humans we tend to call it "halo effect". People are seeing LLMs to some insanely good stuff but don't know how they work and assume all kinds of stuff. It's an "AI halo effect".

Re: Rodney Brooks on limitations of generative AI

#98

Post by enragedcacti »

ianbicking wrote: post #88

"He says the trouble with generative AI is that, while it’s perfectly capable of performing a certain set of tasks, it can’t do everything a human can" This kind of strawman "limitations of LLMs" is a bit silly. EVERYONE knows it can't do everything a human can, but the boundaries are very unclear. We definitely don't know what the limitations are. Many people looked at computers in the 70s and saw that they could on…

I don't think you and him are in disagreement. I read it as him saying "evaluating LLMs is extremely difficult and a big problem right now is that many people are treating them as basically human in capability".

Its the opposite problem to the perception of computers in the 70s, early computers were seen by some as too alien to be as useful as a person across most tasks, llms are seen by some as too human to not be as useful as a person across most tasks. They are both wrong in surprisingly complex ways.

Re: Rodney Brooks on limitations of generative AI

#99

Post by ilaksh »

locallost wrote: post #33

After using Copilot that is pretty bad at guessing what I exactly want to do, but still occasionally right on the money and often pretty close: AI is not really AI and it won't kill us all, but the realization is that a lot of work is just repetitive and really not that clever at all. If I think about all the work I did in my life it follows the same pattern: a new way of doing things comes along, then you start figu…

Have you ever used gpt-4o, voice mode or Claude 3.5 Sonnet, or any other leading models, or are you really basing your entire assessment on Copilot?

OoenAI hasn't even released their best model/capabilities to the public yet. Their text to image capabilities they show in their gpt-4o page are mine-blowing. The (unreleased) voice mode is a huge step up in simulating a person and often quite convincing.

Re: Rodney Brooks on limitations of generative AI

#100

Post by ilaksh »

oska wrote: post #51
bubblyworld wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll happily engage in specifics if you provide an argument for your position. Here's mine (which is ironically self-defeating but has a grain of truth): single-sentence theories about reality are probably wrong.

I just went back and added a parenthetical statement after my first sentence before seeing this reply (on refresh). > The creation of consciousness is impossible. That's where I'd start my argument. Machines can 'learn', given iterative training and some form of memory but they can not think nor understand. That requires consciousness, and the idea that consciousness can be emergent (which it is my understanding that…

You can start to refine your incorrect thinking on this by decomposing these associated characteristics and terms rather than conflating all of them.

Thinking, understanding, self-aware, awake, integrated sensory stream, alive, emotional, visual, sensory, autonomy, adaptiveness, etc.

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