31–40 of 96 posts
While AI may not be at human level intelligence, we are already beginning to see what superhuman-level intelligence can look like.
I have yet to speak to any actual expert who believes we will see any of the "I" in "AI" anytime soon, if ever.
Not to call into question your experience, but for gauging this anecdote: what sorts/levels of experts and how many have you been speaking with?
This is one of those such comments. It begs the question: have you actually used any of these "AI"s, or are just reading about them on HN?
I can't believe this article is being published in Nature. The article is flawed, plagued with assumptions that I guess the author doesn't even notice (like what do we really mean by AGI, the epistemological problems/assumptions to intelligence, the real nature of thinking, the real functioning of the human brain). It is really curious that the philosophical community is addressing the debate on what AI really is and…
You are probably thinking of Nature Communications. This article was posted on their more pop-science publishing site. You aren't the first one mislead by the Nature brand btw - if you look into past submissions you will find similar comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nature.com
Sure can. Whole world’s done this every time there’s a major advance in algorithms. We do this with other major advances, too, like how the industrial revolution was going to usher in utopia and GMO was going to end world hunger. Whenever we can’t see the end of something, only half the world figures it’s a vision problem, while the other half figures the end must not exist.
Is there a distinction between LLM’s and AI, or do we consider LLM’s to exhibit intellect? I remeber Sam Altman pointing out in some interview that he considers GPT to be a reasoning machine. I suppose that if you consider what GPT does to be resoning, then calling it AI is not so far fetched. I feel it’s more like pattern recognition though rather than reasoning, since there’s no black box ”reasoning” component in a…
I've been annoyed by the redefinition of artificial intelligence since the LLM boom started. The term AI has no place being used to describe LLMs as far as I can tell, unless what goes on inside the black box of an LLM is drastically different than how they are described to function. Predicting the next token based on a compressed dataset of human generated content isn't intelligence in any meaningful definition of t…
Remember that fools can either be full of horsesh_t, where they don't know that what they believe and repeat is untrue, or bullsh_t, where they know they are lying and doing so for a particular reason.
The first step to being a Dune-style truthsayer is to never lie. The deeper truth to that path (which is possible, but rarely travelled) is that it is possible, but we must purposefully seek ever deeper truths about truth and humanity.
Our world's lack of this deep honesty, first about oneself and then about others, is a major source of our systemic problems. Another major source is selfishness, but I've discussed that elsewhere.
Regardless, most people just love hearing the words flow out of their own mouths, and that tendency seems to be worse for successful tech guys or anyone with a bit of money or with self-righteous fake-religion guys.
General intelligence is an ability to cope, adapt and thrive in an ecology: to start from a limited set of capabilities, and via exploration, acquire a rich competence. To develop conceptualisations, techniques of coordination and control, to form novel goals and strategies to realise them, and so on. General intelligence is a strategy to defer the acquisition of abilities from the process of construction/blueprintin…
Human nature is to have a moral compass (conscience), with a mind to contemplate whether our planned behavior is positive or negative for the happiness of those around us, and a free will to then choose which paths to take. What you describe is all present in the animals, to more or less advanced degree, where chimps and crows can use tools and even pass that knowledge on to others. Yes, our bodies follow the mammali…
We fight to establish hierarchies of dominance called, "monopolies of violence", that we have social allegiance to. If a competing "dominance regime" is in our neighbourhood, we draw territorial boundaries -- and if these fail, riot, and if that fails, kill.
The strategy of intragroup 'mutual aid' is common across the animal kingdom -- and is paired with hostility to 'foreign aid' in its literal sense.
The achievement of the modern world is massive amounts of abundance which increases our generosity beyond typical chimpanzee proportions -- but not by much. And upon a single attack, or moment of scarcity, we return back exactly to our genocidal defaults -- which is to say, group-centred violence.
Abundance and 'wars only on our borders' creates a dangerous illusion of equanimity which is moreso just, "the feeling of an ape fat, tired and safe".
Is there a distinction between LLM’s and AI, or do we consider LLM’s to exhibit intellect? I remeber Sam Altman pointing out in some interview that he considers GPT to be a reasoning machine. I suppose that if you consider what GPT does to be resoning, then calling it AI is not so far fetched. I feel it’s more like pattern recognition though rather than reasoning, since there’s no black box ”reasoning” component in a…
There is no black box 'reasoning' component in humans either. I will grant you that humans are far more intelligent, and after spending thousands of hours playing with LLMs, it's hard not to see their limitations. At the same time... they're dumb like a very dumb person who has (implausibly) read the Library of Congress, not like a rock or a computer. I often use Claude to write short stories, largely just for fun. C…
It's definity capable of human-level stupidity
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no black box 'reasoning' component in humans either. I will grant you that humans are far more intelligent, and after spending thousands of hours playing with LLMs, it's hard not to see their limitations. At the same time... they're dumb like a very dumb person who has (implausibly) read the Library of Congress, not like a rock or a computer. I often use Claude to write short stories, largely just for fun. C…
But it's not reasoning , it's just wordplay, just a gargantuanly complex level of auto-generated ELIZA.
Does it really matter if it's "just wordplay"? I'm not convinced humans are any different, beyond the sheer scale. I certainly don't believe we have a 'reasoning module'.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been annoyed by the redefinition of artificial intelligence since the LLM boom started. The term AI has no place being used to describe LLMs as far as I can tell, unless what goes on inside the black box of an LLM is drastically different than how they are described to function. Predicting the next token based on a compressed dataset of human generated content isn't intelligence in any meaningful definition of t…
What redefinition? SVMs were part of AI and they're far simpler. The field of AI has covered basic algorithms for decades before LLMs.
LLMs are really just fancy (deep) pattern recognizers/predictors, conceptually not so different than rule-based expert systems like CYC, which was never called AI. Of course LLMs learn their own rules, which is extremely useful.
Other than the pop press wanting to talk about futuristic AI, and investors wanting to invest in it, what also provides cover for LLMs as "AI", is that they are trained to predict/copy human training data, and so appear as smart/dumb as that is, even if they are really no smarter than Searle's Chinese room.