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AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

tomwphillips.co.uk

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Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#241

Post by daveguy »

IgorPartola wrote: post #21

It is ultimately a hardware problem. To simplify it greatly, an LLM neuron is a single input single output function. A human brain neuron takes in thousands of inputs and produces thousands of outputs, to the point that some inputs start being processed before they even get inside the cell by structures on the outside of it. An LLM neuron is an approximation of this. We cannot manufacture a human level neuron to be s…

Minor correction here. You are correct about hardware being an issue, but the magnitude is much greater. You have a lot more than "thousands" of inputs. In the hand alone you have ~40,000+ tactile corpuscles (sensing regions). And that's just one mode. The eye has ~7 million cones and 80 million rods. There is processing and quantization performed by each of those cells and each of the additional cells those signal, throughout the entire sensory-brain system. The amount of data the human brain processes is many orders of magnitude greater than even our largest exascale computers. We are at least 3 decades from AGI if we need equivalent data processing as the human brain, and that's optimistic.

Like you mention, each individual neuron or synapse includes fully parallel processing capability. With signals conveyed by dozens of different molecules. Each neuron (~86 billion) holds state information in addition to processing. The same is true for each synapse (~600 quadrillion). That is how many ~10 Hz "cores" the human computational system has.

The hubris of the AI community is laughable considering the biological complexity of the human body and brain. If we need anywhere close to the same processing capability, there is no doubt we are multiple massive hardware advances away from AGI.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#242

Post by dmix »

I always found it funny OpenAI staff tried to delay the release of GPT to the world because they feared the consequences of giving the public such a power. Hearing stuff like this makes it even funnier:

> In the pit, [Sutskever] had placed a wooden effigy that he’d commissioned from a local artist, and began a dramatic performance. This effigy, he explained represented a good, aligned AGI that OpenAI had built, only to discover it was actually lying and deceitful. OpenAI’s duty, he said, was to destroy it. … Sutskever doused the effigy in lighter fluid and lit on fire.

Sutskever was one the people behind the coup of Sam Altman over AI safety concerns. He also said this in 2022:

> "It may be that today's large neural networks are slightly conscious." [1]

A good question is are these AI safety proponents a bit loony or do they actually believe this stuff. Maybe it's both.

[1] https://futurism.com/the-byte/openai-already-sentient

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#243

Post by mikemarsh »

danielbln wrote: post #188
mikemarsh wrote: post #149

The idea of replicating a consciousness/intelligence in a computer seems to fall apart even under materialist/atheist assumptions: what we experience as consciousness is a product of a vast number of biological systems, not just neurons firing or words spoken/thought. Even considering something as basic as how fundamental bodily movement is to mental development, or how hormones influence mood ultimately influencing…

I don't see a strong argument here. Are you saying there is a level of complexity involved in biological systems that can not be simulated? And if so, who says sufficient approximations and abstractions aren't enough to simulate the emergent behavior of said systems? We can simulate weather (poorly) without modeling every hydrogen atom interaction.

The argument is about causation or generation, not simulation. Of course we can simulate just about anything, I could write a program that just prints "Hello, I'm a conscious being!" instead of "Hello, World!".

The weather example is a good one: you can run a program that simulates the weather in the same way my program above (and LLMs in general) simulate consciousness, but no one would say the program is _causing_ weather in any sense.

Of course, it's entirely possible that more and more people will be convinced AI is generating consciousness, especially when tricks like voice or video chat with the models are employed, but that doesn't mean that the machine is actually conscious in the same way a human body empirically already is.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#245

Post by cesarb »

simonw wrote: post #12

Tip for AI skeptics: skip the data center water usage argument. At this point I think it harms your credibility - numbers like "millions of liters of water annually" (from the linked article) sound scary when presented without context, but if you compare data centers to farmland or even golf courses they're minuscule. Other energy usage figures, air pollution, gas turbines, CO2 emissions etc are fine - but if you com…

Some time ago, I read the environmental impact assessment for a proposed natural gas thermal power plant, and in it they emphasized that their water usage was very low (to the point that it fit within the unused part of the water usage allowance for an already existing natural gas thermal power plant on the same site) because they used non-evaporative cooling.

What prevents data centers from using non-evaporative cooling to keep their water usage low? The water usage argument loses a lot of its relevant in that case.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#246

Post by ACCount37 »

chriswarbo wrote: post #125
fallingfrog wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some idea of what the way forward is going to look like but I don't want to accelerate the development of such a dangerous technology so I haven't told anyone about it. The people working on AI are very smart and they will solve the associated challenges soon enough. The problem of how to slow down the development of these technologies- a political problem- is much more pressing right now.

> I have some idea of what the way forward is going to look like but I don't want to accelerate the development of such a dangerous technology so I haven't told anyone about it. Ever since "AI" was named at Dartmouth, there have been very smart people thinking that their idea will be the thing which makes it work this time. Usually, those ideas work really well in-the-small (ELIZA, SHRDLU, Automated Mathematician, et…

Far more common are ideas that don't work on any scale at all.

If you have something that gives a sticky +5% at 250M scale, you might have an actual winner. Almost all new ML ideas fall well short of that.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#247

Post by grokgrok »

eucyclos wrote: post #205
lkey wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

| Drop the politics Politics is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of status or resources . Most municipalities literally do not have enough spare power to service this 1.4 trillion dollar capital rollout as planned on paper. Even if they did, the concurrent inflation of energy costs is about as polit…

There are politics and there are Politics, and I don't think the two of you are using the same definition. 'Making decisions in groups' does not require 'oversimplifying issues for the sake of tribal cohesion or loyalty'. It is a distressingly common occurrence that complex problems are oversimplified because political effectiveness requires appealing to a broader audience. We'd all be better off if more people withh…

The negatively coded, tribal/political speech can be referred to as 'Polemic' which stems from 'warlike' expression.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#248

Post by clown_strike »

the__alchemist wrote: post #97
simonw wrote: post #12

Tip for AI skeptics: skip the data center water usage argument. At this point I think it harms your credibility - numbers like "millions of liters of water annually" (from the linked article) sound scary when presented without context, but if you compare data centers to farmland or even golf courses they're minuscule. Other energy usage figures, air pollution, gas turbines, CO2 emissions etc are fine - but if you com…

I will go meta into what you posted here: That people are classifying themselves as "AI skeptics". Many people are treating this in terms of tribal conflict and identity politics. On HN, we can do better! IMO the move is drop the politics, and discuss things on their technical merits. If we do talk about it as a debate, we can do it when with open minds, and intellectual honesty. I think much of this may be a reactio…

[dead]

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#249

Post by ACCount37 »

fallingfrog wrote: post #75
fallingfrog wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some idea of what the way forward is going to look like but I don't want to accelerate the development of such a dangerous technology so I haven't told anyone about it. The people working on AI are very smart and they will solve the associated challenges soon enough. The problem of how to slow down the development of these technologies- a political problem- is much more pressing right now.

[flagged]

You're being downvoted for displaying the kind of overconfidence that people consider shameful.

Everyone in ML has seen dozens to thousands of instances of "I have a radical new idea that will result in a total AI breakthrough" already. Ever wondered why the real breakthroughs are so few and far in between?

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#250

Post by bigbuppo »

9rx wrote: post #217
buellerbueller wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the value of datacenters is dubious. the value of agriculture, less so.

I make use of AI in my farming operation. Now what?

Yeah, but the AI you use in your farming operation is running on that tiny little box behind the buddy seat.
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