The Intelligence Age • Hacker News Board

Re: The Intelligence Age

#71

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 23, 2024, 6:09 PM UTC

lxgr wrote: post #49

codingwagie wrote: post #32

“This may turn out to be the most consequential fact about all of history so far. It is possible that we will have superintelligence in a few thousand days (!); it may take longer, but I’m confident we’ll get there.” I am a believer that people like sam are not lying. Anyone using these models daily probably believes the same. The o1 model, if prompted correctly, can architect a code base in a way that my decade+ of…

I'm using these models daily, and I don't believe that they're a direct path to superintelligence (unless you'd consider something like the printing press to have been a direct path to, say, the integrated circuit or the Internet). > Prompted incorrectly, it looks incompetent. The abilities of the future are already here, you just need to know how to use the models. Something purportedly intelligent shouldn't need "c…

[deleted]

Re: The Intelligence Age

#72

Post by ToucanLoucan » Mon, Sep 23, 2024, 6:09 PM UTC

dartos wrote: post #55

rossdavidh wrote: post #44

"humanity discovered an algorithm that could really, truly learn any distribution of data (or really, the underlying “rules” that produce any distribution of data)..." This statement is manifestly untrue. Neural networks are useful, many hidden layers is useful, all of these architectures are useful, but the idea that they can learn anything, is based less on empirical results and more on what Sam Altman needs to con…

The entire vocabulary around machine learning is and always has been really weird. We don’t personify database interactions the same way we personify setting weights in a neural network.

> The entire vocabulary around machine learning is and always has been really weird.

I would argue it took a staggeringly weird turn around 2022/23. Machine learning has been around for a long time and only recently since OpenAI and it's slavish desire to harness true AI (which thanks to their horseshit now has to be called AGI) and Sam Altman in particular's delusional ramblings upon the topic that he clearly barely understands beyond it's ability to get his company fantastical amounts of capital has it truly gone off the rails.

I cannot wait to watch this bubble pop.

Re: The Intelligence Age

#73

Post by layer8 » Mon, Sep 23, 2024, 6:10 PM UTC

sdenton4 wrote: post #52

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be brutally frank we should focus on energy, as we definitely need way more of that (with less carbon) even if LLMs don't improve any more.

Fusion power is just eight minutes away...

The issue is that we re-eject too little of that energy back into space again.

Re: The Intelligence Age

#74

Post by AyyEye » Mon, Sep 23, 2024, 6:11 PM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #44

"humanity discovered an algorithm that could really, truly learn any distribution of data (or really, the underlying “rules” that produce any distribution of data)..." This statement is manifestly untrue. Neural networks are useful, many hidden layers is useful, all of these architectures are useful, but the idea that they can learn anything, is based less on empirical results and more on what Sam Altman needs to con…

> the idea that they can learn anything, is based less on empirical results and more on what Sam Altman needs to convince people of to get this capital investments.

Techbros love to pretend that they created digital gods (and by extension are gods themselves). We should all be thankful, worship, and of course surrender unconditionally -- Sam's will be done, amen.

Re: The Intelligence Age

#75

Post by tptacek » Mon, Sep 23, 2024, 6:11 PM UTC

I like ChatGPT 4o just fine, but the whole lamplighter bit is a bit Whig-history, right? The lamplighters were better off in the long run. We might not be. You can't just blow the problems off.

Re: The Intelligence Age

#76

Post by highfrequency » Mon, Sep 23, 2024, 6:12 PM UTC

sharkjacobs wrote: post #20

> Deep learning works, and we will solve the remaining problems. We can say a lot of things about what may happen next, but the main one is that AI is going to get better with scale I'm not an AI skeptic at all, I use llms all the time, and find them very useful. But stuff like this makes me very skeptical of the people who are making and selling AI. It seems like there was a really sweet spot wrt the capabilities AI…

Progress might be logarithmic in compute, but compute (transistors/sqinch and transistors/$) is growing exponentially with time.

Despite what skeptics have been saying for decades, Moore's Law is alive and well - and we haven't even figured out how to stack wafers in 3 dimensions yet!

Re: The Intelligence Age

#77

Post by layer8 » Mon, Sep 23, 2024, 6:12 PM UTC

codingwagie wrote: post #36

schmidtleonard wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy for him to say: AI is almost guaranteed to hand a massive W to capital and L to labor. He is holding a title to rule over hell in one hand and promising to lead us to heaven with the other.

Actually not sure about this, with the leverage of AI, its easier than ever to start a company

There is no evidence that it has made it easier to end up with a successful company, however.

Re: The Intelligence Age

#78

Post by Bjorkbat » Mon, Sep 23, 2024, 6:13 PM UTC

brotchie wrote: post #67

For somebody who likes building things and has many side projects Claude and ChatGPT have been huge productivity multipliers. For example, I’m designing and 3D printing custom LED diffuser channels from TPU filament. My first attempt was terrible, because I didn’t have an intuition for how light propagates through a material. After a bit of chatting with ChatGPT, I had an understanding and some direction of where to…

As much of a curmudgeon as I am on AI I do sincerely believe that one area that it's effective at is going from absolute beginner to decent understanding on something completely new and foreign.

Recently I've been somewhat curious about Skia, the graphics library that Google uses. A while back I fielded a few questions about Skia to Claude. Nothing crazy, just questions on how to draw a few primitive shapes, but I felt it would have taken some effort to find the answers on my own.

And I must say I was pretty satisfied with what it gave me back.

Re: The Intelligence Age

#79

Post by layer8 » Mon, Sep 23, 2024, 6:14 PM UTC

kazcaptain wrote: post #10

The most interesting bit I find is the time period mentioned until super-intelligence: “thousands of days (!)” aka 6-9 years or more? With the current hype wave it feels like we’re almost there but this piece makes me think we’re not.

I would presume that that’s the time period he’s currently trying to fund.

Re: The Intelligence Age

#80

Post by hnlmorg » Mon, Sep 23, 2024, 6:14 PM UTC

Bjorkbat wrote: post #60

A complete tangent, but I think a big reason why I'm kind of dismissive of AI is because people who speculate on what it would enable make it honestly sound kind of unimaginative. > AI models will soon serve as autonomous personal assistants who carry out specific tasks on our behalf like coordinating medical care on your behalf. I get it, coordinating medical care is exhausting, but it's kind of amusing that rather…

I think the reason for that is because people are fearful of change.

Talking about AI as assistants means people still have their jobs but now their life is easier. Whereas saying AI will completely change the way we do X then makes AI scary and a threat to our jobs.