Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

OpenAI seeks to unlock investment by ditching 'AGI' clause with Microsoft

ft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 80 posts

Re: OpenAI seeks to unlock investment by ditching 'AGI' clause with Microsoft

#61

Post by talldayo »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #54
talldayo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because "educating you better than most things" and "unavoidably generating bullshit" are not mutually exclusive. It's entirely possible that AI is better than human conversation on the spectrum of "adhering perfectly to truth" but it's far-and-away less credible than an encyclopedia or even a peer-reviewed paper. Publishers know they cannot publish false information without spoiling their reputation. ChatGPT lies li…

I remember many instances in childhood where I began to realize authority figures, parents/teachers/etc., that I had been trusting to teach me the ways of life weren’t all knowing. Moments of “lies” (using your term, really just being incorrect) where the cracks began to show. I treat ChatGPT like a 90th percentile educator across many problem domains. Is it going to be wrong? Yes. Is to going to be very wrong? Yes.…

> Just because my 8th grade algebra teacher wasn’t as accurate as an encyclopedia or a published textbook didn’t prevent them from filling the role I rely on ChatGPT to fill now.

Sure - but I also cross-referenced my teacher when I was in math class. You know your teacher is wrong because you're also following the steps and showing your work. When your results digress, you cross-reference the steps and determine where you went wrong.

Ultimately that's what I fear people won't do with ChatGPT. When they see an equation up on the digital "whiteboard" they only know how to copy it down, not how to double-check the work. This happens already with code boilerplate, but I see it in HN comments when people have ChatGPT write them a nonsense treatise on whatever the topic-du-jour is. You really cannot "learn" much from a system that has no barriers or alarm system when it's outright fabricating things with no basis in reality.

Re: OpenAI seeks to unlock investment by ditching 'AGI' clause with Microsoft

#62

Post by skepticATX »

tim333 wrote: post #55
skepticATX wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What frustrates me the most about OpenAI is that as recently as this summer they were talking non-stop about how gigantic $100 billion models are all you need for AGI and that it’s just a matter of time until we reach this scale. And if you didn’t see this you’re a simpleton who doesn’t understand how exponential curves work. And then all of the sudden o1 comes out and the narrative from them has shifted entirely. “O…

I don't remember them saying "$100 billion models are all you need for AGI." Don't suppose you have a link?

It’s not an exact figure, but plenty of employees claimed that after we train a model with 2-3 orders of magnitude of compute over GPT-4 we’d reach AGI, which puts us at $10-$100 billion.

See Situational Awareness for one example of this.

Re: OpenAI seeks to unlock investment by ditching 'AGI' clause with Microsoft

#63

Post by tredre3 »

skepticATX wrote: post #37
rgbrenner wrote: post #16

GPT is insufficient for AGI. It might be part of the solution one day, but it's fundamentally incapable of bridging the gap by itself. Despite what Altman/OpenAI says in public, I think he knows this too... That's why they dissolved the Superalignment safety team; and dropping the AGI clause just confirms that. As time goes on, the "AGI is coming" hype machine gets harder to sustain... and their work/company will beg…

What frustrates me the most about OpenAI is that as recently as this summer they were talking non-stop about how gigantic $100 billion models are all you need for AGI and that it’s just a matter of time until we reach this scale. And if you didn’t see this you’re a simpleton who doesn’t understand how exponential curves work. And then all of the sudden o1 comes out and the narrative from them has shifted entirely. “O…

> how gigantic $100 billion models are all you need for AGI and that it’s just a matter of time until we reach this scale. And if you didn’t see this you’re a simpleton who doesn’t understand how exponential curves work.

OpenAI made no such claim. LLM stans on the internet definitely made such claim, that the Stargate project would be AGI and whatnot. But, like crypto bros, GPT hyperfans are just constantly deluded/lying so you shouldn't project their claims onto the corporations they simp for.

That being said, Anthropic's CEO made a claim closer to what you're saying, that a 10-100 billion dollars model would be better than a human in almost every way.

https://www.itpro.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/dol...

Re: OpenAI seeks to unlock investment by ditching 'AGI' clause with Microsoft

#64

Post by TeMPOraL »

talldayo wrote: post #36
bloomingkales wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This glorified Markov chain educates me better than many things. Why are people so intent on calling bullshit on AI? It might be a disease honestly.

Because "educating you better than most things" and "unavoidably generating bullshit" are not mutually exclusive. It's entirely possible that AI is better than human conversation on the spectrum of "adhering perfectly to truth" but it's far-and-away less credible than an encyclopedia or even a peer-reviewed paper. Publishers know they cannot publish false information without spoiling their reputation. ChatGPT lies li…

> Publishers know they cannot publish false information without spoiling their reputation.

How did that saying go? You sweet summer child...

Reputation doesn't matter. It hasn't mattered for a while. There's too much confusion, you can't get no relief, and there's definitely not enough time in a day to care.

Most non-fiction publishing either is, or is funded by, advertising industry. I.e. pathological liars. You better believe most of the stuff those people publish is intentionally at the very least bullshit (in the sense of not caring whether it's true or false -- see most content marketing), and a lot of it is plain lies.

ChatGPT gets confused and fabricates stuff as much as a person speaking whatever comes to their mind. But at the very least, it's not lying to you intentionally. Which is why it's, for now, useful as a bullshit filter for the rest of the Internet.

Re: OpenAI seeks to unlock investment by ditching 'AGI' clause with Microsoft

#65

Post by bloomingkales »

grayhatter wrote: post #49
bloomingkales wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This glorified Markov chain educates me better than many things. Why are people so intent on calling bullshit on AI? It might be a disease honestly.

Imagine telling on yourself like this...

Are you referring to me? What the hell do you mean lol

This is the closest thing you are going to get to say it to my face buddy on HN you are gonna get.

Re: OpenAI seeks to unlock investment by ditching 'AGI' clause with Microsoft

#66

Post by BoiledCabbage »

skepticATX wrote: post #62
tim333 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't remember them saying "$100 billion models are all you need for AGI." Don't suppose you have a link?

It’s not an exact figure, but plenty of employees claimed that after we train a model with 2-3 orders of magnitude of compute over GPT-4 we’d reach AGI, which puts us at $10-$100 billion. See Situational Awareness for one example of this.

Two years ago Altman made clear that progress needs more than model scale / parameter count to scale.

https://www.reddit.com/r/mlscaling/comments/12mktym/sam_altm...

This summer he made a comment saying "we can make GPTs 5,6,7 more powerful" and someone editorialized it as being "via parameter count/scale" which he didn't say.

Re: OpenAI seeks to unlock investment by ditching 'AGI' clause with Microsoft

#67

Post by TeMPOraL »

skepticATX wrote: post #37
rgbrenner wrote: post #16

GPT is insufficient for AGI. It might be part of the solution one day, but it's fundamentally incapable of bridging the gap by itself. Despite what Altman/OpenAI says in public, I think he knows this too... That's why they dissolved the Superalignment safety team; and dropping the AGI clause just confirms that. As time goes on, the "AGI is coming" hype machine gets harder to sustain... and their work/company will beg…

What frustrates me the most about OpenAI is that as recently as this summer they were talking non-stop about how gigantic $100 billion models are all you need for AGI and that it’s just a matter of time until we reach this scale. And if you didn’t see this you’re a simpleton who doesn’t understand how exponential curves work. And then all of the sudden o1 comes out and the narrative from them has shifted entirely. “O…

> how gigantic $100 billion models are all you need for AGI and that it’s just a matter of time until we reach this scale

> Obviously massive models aren’t enough to get to AGI, but all we have to do is scale up inference time compute and we’ll get there!”

Corporate wants you to tell the difference between these two pictures...

Obviously the latter was a step required to make former work. Always has been.

Re: OpenAI seeks to unlock investment by ditching 'AGI' clause with Microsoft

#68

Post by LPisGood »

bloomingkales wrote: post #24
guluarte wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yep, it is just a glorified markov chain

This glorified Markov chain educates me better than many things. Why are people so intent on calling bullshit on AI? It might be a disease honestly.

I wouldn’t say it’s instant. These kinds of models have been out for at least 6 years (depending on if you think BERT, or GPT-2, or whatever is the first).

Their capabilities and short comings, at least in a general sense, are pretty well known.

Re: OpenAI seeks to unlock investment by ditching 'AGI' clause with Microsoft

#69

Post by mrandish »

blueprint wrote: post #42
CamperBob2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point out what he did that couldn't be done by Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, or Mark Zuckerburg, or in fact that was done by Jeff Bezos with his own company. "If you were going to start Facebook, you'd have started Facebook." - apocryphally credited to Zuckerberg. You do know that Bezos started his rocket company before SpaceX, right? If he could beat SpaceX, why hasn't he? As for sex bots, that'll happen soon enough, b…

> If he could beat SpaceX, why hasn't he? Because Elon lied to humanity about their mission, in order to secure his position. Bezos didn't. Can't you find any other examples of this in history? Yeah, there are a lot of them, and it's probably why humanity are effectively still slaves and stuck on this planet, years behind where we should be. Time to wake up. Humanity can't blame anyone else anymore. As an aside... th…

> Because Elon lied to humanity about their mission, in order to secure his position.

Setting aside feelings about Elon and whether he misled anyone about the mission of SpaceX, saying "Our mission is to put humans on Mars" didn't help secure any position, except some popularity with the Mars Society, sci-fi fans and nerds. It certainly didn't help SpaceX get financial support from big money hedge funds, governments, Wall Street analysts or NASA administrators.

If anything, setting a goal of what was then only a nerd fever dream, and which even today has no clear path to profitability, hurt SpaceX's early position substantially. The only thing that eventually turned around that "screwball billionaire blowing his money on a vanity project" perception was developing a launch system able to deliver orbital payloads at a dramatically lower cost per pound than anyone else.

As to whether Elon misled anyone about SpaceX's long-term Mars goal, anyone who listened to his in-depth interviews from early on heard him repeatedly say that getting there would first require making SpaceX a highly profitable commercial enterprise because Elon didn't have enough money himself, NASA payloads alone wouldn't be enough and government can't tax a meaningful portion of GDP only to spend it on a goal most people don't value much. Even if Elon hadn't said it, it was already obvious to anyone who understands how government, finance and funding multi-billion dollar projects work. There's no other realistic way it could happen. Starlink and payload delivery are on track to make SpaceX profitable, so how was anyone misled about SpaceX's objectives?

Personally, Elon's Mars talk turned me off too. While a permanent Mars colony is inspirational for sci-fi fans and Singularity types, there are much more productive things to focus on first if the goal is to accelerate humans becoming a space-faring species. The hardest part is lifting large amounts of mass out of this planet's gravity well economically. To then immediately go drop that astronomically expensive mass down another planet's gravity well seems kind of... unproductive?

Re: OpenAI seeks to unlock investment by ditching 'AGI' clause with Microsoft

#70

Post by RaftPeople »

lolinder wrote: post #50
rgbrenner wrote: post #16

GPT is insufficient for AGI. It might be part of the solution one day, but it's fundamentally incapable of bridging the gap by itself. Despite what Altman/OpenAI says in public, I think he knows this too... That's why they dissolved the Superalignment safety team; and dropping the AGI clause just confirms that. As time goes on, the "AGI is coming" hype machine gets harder to sustain... and their work/company will beg…

Yep. The current wave of "AI" startups are going to totally burn through the terms "AI" and "AGI", with one of two possible outcomes: * We enter another "AI Winter" of sorts. People will continue to work on LLMs and other deep learning applications because they're legitimately useful in moderation, but they'll distance themselves from the label "AI" or "AGI" because it will start sounding like "I work on blockchain"…

I'm already working on AGI++
Post reply on HN