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The sigmoids won't save you

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Re: The sigmoids won't save you

#141

Post by the8472 »

Brendinooo wrote: post #36

> then what is their model? My mental model has been 3D computer graphics: doubling the polygon count had huge returns early on but delivered diminishing returns over time. Ultimately, you can't make something look more realistic than real. I don't know what the future holds, but the answer to the question "can LLMs be more realistic than real" will determine much about whether or not you think the curve will level o…

The equivalent bar in this domain would be human intelligence, and we already have growing lists of tasks where machines outperform humans. We even known of natural systems that outperform humans on some metrics, e.g. bird-brains have higher neuron density than ours because evolution had to optimize more for weight.

Re: The sigmoids won't save you

#142

Post by btilly »

t43562 wrote: post #131
jfjfnfnttbtg wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The law only applies for certain types of processes Did you even read the post? It’s an estimate in the context where you have zero information on which to base an accurate estimate. The author’s point is that if you’re making a different estimate you need to actually say what information is informing that. Human lifespan is obviously not a case where we have zero information, so what is your point in bringing that…

The lifespan argument shows how important it is to have more than zero information.

Yes, it is valuable to have more than zero information.

But often we don't have the information that we wish. Even more often, the information that we have leads us to a story, that severely misleads us. Reminding ourselves of the zero information version of the story, can be an antidote to being mislead that way.

Therefore it is valuable to know how to make the most out of zero information. And if we have information, to think about exactly why it leads to a different conclusion.

Re: The sigmoids won't save you

#144

Post by dreambuffer »

Sniffnoy wrote: post #113
dreambuffer wrote: post #99

FYI: The author has predicted that "AGI" will be here in 1-2 years and has staked his public reputation on it. He is personally invested in trendlines being lindy rather than sigmoid. I don't think you can use lindy on trends as if trends are static objects, but that's another conversation.

> FYI: The author has predicted that "AGI" will be here in 1-2 years and has staked his public reputation on it. He is personally invested in trendlines being lindy rather than sigmoid. I mean, that's called "having an opinion".

He co-authored a report, which is something more than an opinion. It may be used to inspire policy. There should be greater reputational consequences for publishing something you spent a few months studying and writing about along with several experts. Just my opinion.

Re: The sigmoids won't save you

#145

Post by dado3212 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #100
btilly wrote: post #37

Lindy’s Law is an absolute gem, that I'm keeping. If we don't understand the fundamental limits to any particular kind of trend, our default assumption should be that it will continue for about as long as it has gone on already. We can, in fact, easily put a confidence interval on this. With 90% odds we're not in the first 5% of the trend, or the last 5% of the trend. Therefore it will probably go on between 1/19th l…

While this is very fun as a mathematical exercise, it's completely irrelevant as a real tool for getting a better understanding of unknown processes in the real world. The law only applies for certain types of processes, and is completely wrong for other types (e.g. a human who has lived 50 years may live 50 more, but one who has lived 100 years will certainly not live 100 more). So the question becomes: what type of…

But if you met an alien who said they'd been alive for 100 years you wouldn't assume they're on the verge of dropping dead: you would assume they live longer. It's a rough rule for when you don't have other information, and if you're arguing against it you need to specify what other information you're using to make that argument.

Re: The sigmoids won't save you

#146

Post by Scene_Cast2 »

noosphr wrote: post #122

This article answers the question in the second paragraph then completely ignores the answer for the rest of it. >My understanding is that this represents 3-4 “generations” of different technology (propellers, turbojets, etc). Each technology went through normal iterative improvement, then, when it reached its fundamental limits, got replaced by a better technology. The last technology, ramjets, reached its limit at…

Something that deeply frustrates me, as someone who did R&D on model architectures, is how similar the modern LLM model architectures are to GPT2.

(This is a bit disingenuous, as lots/most of work is spent on the scaling and training side of things.)

Re: The sigmoids won't save you

#147

Post by ryeights »

pron wrote: post #140

1. Scott Alexander is famous for writing about topics he knows little about. I'm glad to see he's found a subject he knows little about but so does everyone else. 2. What's even worse than predicting that some growth curve flattens before X happens is predicting it will flatten before X happens but after Y happens, which is what we see when it comes to AI in software development. Too many people predict that AI will…

>1. Scott Alexander is famous for writing about topics he knows little about. I'm glad to see he's found a subject he knows little about but so does everyone else.

This is kinda laughable. Scott has been thinking and writing about AI for a long time

Re: The sigmoids won't save you

#148

Post by crazygringo »

achierius wrote: post #136
noosphr wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only so long as you can keep inventing the next sigmoid in the stack.

Sure, but we have no prior reason to expect that the 'rate of discoveries' is going to drop off significantly in the next few years. Certainly not stop entirely.

Overall in the economy, no, rate is discoveries is not going to drop off.

But in any specific industry or area? You often get a bunch of big discoveries, and then there is a long period of no important discoveries, because we've figured out the main aspects of that technological paradigm. The technology becomes commoditized and standard.

And that's the trillion dollar question with AI right now -- will we soon exhaust the potential of the current LLM paradigm? And we'll just have 20 or 30 years of figuring out mainly how to make LLMs cheaper and how integrate them into business processes, before somebody comes up with another fundamental breakthrough?

Or are we only 10% of the way in developing the current LLM paradigm? Where a decade from now models virtually never make mistakes and are smarter than basically any tenured faculty member in their field?

Re: The sigmoids won't save you

#149

Post by leoc »

Hmm. What’s the general belief about Toby Ord’s “Are the Costs of AI Agents Also Rising Exponentially?” https://www.tobyord.com/writing/hourly-costs-for-ai-agents among those who are well-equipped to judge? Is it seen as wrong or disproven or unlikely? Because if not—if indeed recent LLM capability advances have likely relied on increases in inference cost per run which can’t be much further sustained—then it seems remiss not to mention that if you point to those advances to claim that the exponential trend remains on track.

Re: The sigmoids won't save you

#150

Post by lovich »

I wonder how the graph would look like if cost and/or profitability was taken into account.

I could probably make increasingly larger fires for years if I was willing to burn the entire world.

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