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Do AI companies work?

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Re: Do AI companies work?

#411

Post by js8 »

analog31 wrote: post #40
llm_trw wrote: post #31

I've found that everything that works stops being called AI. Logic programming? AI until SQL came out. Now it's not AI. OCR, computer algebra systems, voice recognition, checkers, machine translation, go, natural language search. All solved, all not AI any more yet all were AI before they got solved by AI researchers. There's even a name for it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect?utm_source=perplex...

On an amusing note, I've read something similar: Everything that works stops being called philosophy. Science and math being the two familiar examples.

This is also true for consciousness or sentience. No matter how surprising abilities of non-human beings (and computer agents), it is something mysterious that only humans do.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#412

Post by jcgrillo »

roenxi wrote: post #347
jcgrillo wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but the post this was in response to was bloviating about all kinds of sci-fi stuff like "super-intelligence" and the like. It was the opposite of "antithetical to their source of income", instead it was playing into some techno-futurist faith cult.

There is a strong argument that super-intelligence is already in the rear-view mirror. My computer is better than me at almost everything at this point; creativity, communication, scientific knowledge, numerical processing, etc. There is a tiny sliver of things that I've spent a life working on where I can consistently outperform a CPU, but it is not at all clear how that could be defensible given the strides AI has…

> given the strides AI has made over the last few decades

This is where I lost the plot. The techno-futurists always seem to try to co-opt Moore's law or similar scaling laws and claim it'll somehow take care of whatever scifi bugaboo du jour they're peddling, without acknowledging that Moore's law is specifically about transistor density and has nothing to do with "strides" in "AI".

> whatever super-intelligence is can't be far away.

How do you figure? Or is it just an article of your faith?

It's been the same old, tired argument for seven decades--"These darned computers can count real real fast so therefore any day now they'll be able to think for themselves!" But so far nobody's shown it to be true, and all the people claiming it's right around the corner have been wrong. What makes this time different?

Re: Do AI companies work?

#413

Post by Ironchefpython »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #311
unoti wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anthropomorphizing algorithms only serves to impair objective analysis of when they are, or are not, applicable. Actually, in this case, comparing how we as humans think to how LLM's work is in fact useful. It's hard for us to eyeball a word and say how many consonants are in it, we need to count. I wouldn't ask a human to eyeball a tax return and tell me what the totals are reliably without giving them the tools t…

> Actually, in this case, comparing how we as humans think to how LLM's work is in fact useful. Agreed. Contemplating the difference between what people and LLM's are is very useful IMHO. Understanding this is key to making informed decisions as to when LLM's can provide real value. The assertion originally proffered, however, is quite different than your nuanced perspective: > > LLMs are pretty human-like in their m…

I think it would be more accurate to say that LLMs are pretty human-like in their limitations.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#414

Post by bsenftner »

shafyy wrote: post #373
bsenftner wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd contribute that we, the engineering class, are as a whole terrible communicators that confuse and cannot explain their own work. LLMs require clear communications, while the majority of LLM users attempt to use them with a large host of implied context that anyone would have a hard time following, not to mention a non-human software construct. The key is clear communications, which is a phrase that many in STEM d…

No, this is absolutely not the reason. The reason is that many people benefit financially as long as the hype train keeps going choo choo. So they lie to our faces and sleep like babies at night.

There is that too, I agree. The hype train is many people's entire careers. But AI does work, is indeed capable of many of the claims, I'm saying the naysayers are using it wrong. But you know who will use it very well? The hype train.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#415

Post by onemoresoop »

janalsncm wrote: post #341
fsmv wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really in context learning though? It's just recalling and interpolating things from the internet which there's quite a lot of.

Someday if we have computers that are capable of doing 100% of the cognitive tasks humans do, better than any human can, we might still say it’s “just” doing X or Y. It might even be disappointing that there isn't a “special sauce” to intelligence. But at the end of the day, the mechanism isn’t important. We are already playing with some incredible ingredients. Machines that can instantly recall information, (in prin…

That special sauce is creating new knowledge.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#418

Post by roenxi »

jcgrillo wrote: post #412
roenxi wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a strong argument that super-intelligence is already in the rear-view mirror. My computer is better than me at almost everything at this point; creativity, communication, scientific knowledge, numerical processing, etc. There is a tiny sliver of things that I've spent a life working on where I can consistently outperform a CPU, but it is not at all clear how that could be defensible given the strides AI has…

> given the strides AI has made over the last few decades This is where I lost the plot. The techno-futurists always seem to try to co-opt Moore's law or similar scaling laws and claim it'll somehow take care of whatever scifi bugaboo du jour they're peddling, without acknowledging that Moore's law is specifically about transistor density and has nothing to do with "strides" in "AI". > whatever super-intelligence is…

> How do you figure?

https://epochai.org/blog/training-compute-of-frontier-ai-mod...

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/test-scores-ai-capabiliti...

We're still seeing exponential upswing in compute and we appear to already be probing around human capacity in the models. Past experience suggests that once AIs are within spitting distance of human ability they will exceed what a human mind can do in short order.

These are not subtle trends.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#419

Post by cubefox »

janalsncm wrote: post #342
hatthew wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about computer characters in video games? They're usually controlled by a system that everyone calls AI, but there's almost never any machine learning involved. What about fitting a line to a curve, i.e. linear regression? Definitely ML, but most people don't call it AI.

The way it was explained to me, ML is a part of AI, but AI also contains things like planning and symbolic reasoning.

Symbolic systems are just called software nowadays. Nobody (?) would call WolframAlpha an AI.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#420

Post by Spacecosmonaut »

ang_cire wrote: post #274
Havoc wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just incredibly hard to innovate on products that fully leverage superintelligence. Once we have actual super intelligence there is no need for humans to innovate anymore. It is by definition better than us anyway. I guess you could still have artisanal innovation

Today I carved a front panel for my cyberdeck project out of a composite wood board. I hand-drafted everything, and planned out the wiring (though I won't be onto the soldering phase for a while now). It felt good . I don't think having a 3d printer + AI designing my cyberdeck would feel the same.

Take a look at Nick Bostrom's new book
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