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The sigmoids won't save you

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Re: The sigmoids won't save you

#151

Post by ToValueFunfetti »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #31

I think an interesting thing about recent AI developments is that its all happening right as we hit the diminishing returns side of another "exponential that's actually a sigmoid" which is Moore's law. The naive expectation is that AI will slow down b/c Moore's law is coming to an end, but if you really think about the models and how they are currently implemented in silicon, they are still inefficient as hell. At so…

I suspect if you consider neurons as components of computation, you could draw an exponential of total computation in the world that goes back to the dawn of humanity, maybe further. Most of that would just be population, but interesting that digital computers start picking up the slack just as population growth slows.

Re: The sigmoids won't save you

#152

Post by tomhow »

bedobi wrote: post #56

[flagged]

Please don't post like this on HN. The guidelines explicitly ask us not to sneer or be curmudgeonly - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

As for the basis of your objection, this smacks of intellectual gatekeeping. Plenty of good writing is by people who are not academically qualified or a recognized expert in the topic they're writing about. Indeed, very often, this kind of writing is better than writing by experts. Experts often write for other experts, and this can be exclusionary to lay readers. When a non-expert learns about a topic then writes about it for a general audience, they tend to be just a step ahead of the audience, and so the reader is able to learn about the topic by following the process of discovery and reasoning that the author just experienced. Sure, they often get some details or concepts wrong, but the discussion on a site like HN can draw other perspectives, and – very often – contributions from experts, which leads to further expansion in everyone's understanding of the topic.

HN's very ethos is to gratify intellectual curiosity, and this kind of writing is highly compatible with that.

Re: The sigmoids won't save you

#153

Post by whatshisface »

If you want a model, here's one: LLMs have never demonstrated the ability to go obviously beyond interpolating their training data. It takes an army of paid data producers solving homework problems to give ChatGPT the ability to do your homework. All vibecoded apps that turned out to be successful could put on a geological soil chart with other apps, probably on GitHub somewhere, on the corners. The prediction? They won't.

In this model, the exponential growth that everybody is freaking out about is only the realization of the modular software dream ("we'll only have to write an ORM once for all of human history!") and the sheer amount of knowledge in libraries.

It's at least falsifiable.

Re: The sigmoids won't save you

#154

Post by ryeights »

ordu wrote: post #119
andy99 wrote: post #105

AI has scaled well according to convenient measures. It (neural networks) have the property that whatever you define, they can rapidly be trained master it. We’re able to show that various tasks of increasing complication do not require intelligence and can be framed as autoregressive RL problems. I personally don’t think AI is any closer to sentient intelligence than LeNet; it’s almost trivially clear, we know how i…

> We’re able to show that various tasks of increasing complication do not require intelligence and can be framed as autoregressive RL problems. The important thing we can show it in hindsight only. We don't know which other tasks we are currently mistaken about requiring intelligence. Maybe none of them are? We don't know. We don't know what intelligence is. If we look at decades and even centuries of attempts to def…

“AI is whatever hasn't been done yet” — Larry Tesler

Re: The sigmoids won't save you

#155

Post by boxed »

whatshisface wrote: post #153

If you want a model, here's one: LLMs have never demonstrated the ability to go obviously beyond interpolating their training data. It takes an army of paid data producers solving homework problems to give ChatGPT the ability to do your homework. All vibecoded apps that turned out to be successful could put on a geological soil chart with other apps, probably on GitHub somewhere, on the corners. The prediction? They…

Just to play devils advocate: are we sure humans have demonstrated the ability to go beyond their training data? Like.. are we sure-sure about that?

Re: The sigmoids won't save you

#156

Post by boxed »

paulpauper wrote: post #117
Sniffnoy wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wrote articles arguing that pro-AI people are dismissive of risks or even suggesting they are intellectually lazy. He's taken a side. if he's wrong I would hope he owns up to it

> He wrote articles arguing that pro-AI people are dismissive of risks or even suggesting they are intellectually lazy

I mean.. this is 2026 right? You're not writing that comment from 2024 or something?

We see massive problems already where photos are just not believable anymore, nor is audio, and not even video actually with many people falling for AI fake image clips from the Gaza war for example. And since then these tools are MASSIVELY more powerful. Disinformation is essentially free, and the cost of truth has been static. Meaning the "buying power" of truth has collapsed and is falling faster and faster.

Anyone who dismissed AI risks a few years ago IS ALREADY PROVEN WRONG.

Re: The sigmoids won't save you

#157

Post by 1attice »

boxed wrote: post #155
whatshisface wrote: post #153

If you want a model, here's one: LLMs have never demonstrated the ability to go obviously beyond interpolating their training data. It takes an army of paid data producers solving homework problems to give ChatGPT the ability to do your homework. All vibecoded apps that turned out to be successful could put on a geological soil chart with other apps, probably on GitHub somewhere, on the corners. The prediction? They…

Just to play devils advocate: are we sure humans have demonstrated the ability to go beyond their training data? Like.. are we sure-sure about that?

Idk, I mean, Shakespeare never read Shakespeare, so, I mean, unless aliens?

Re: The sigmoids won't save you

#158

Post by whatshisface »

boxed wrote: post #155
whatshisface wrote: post #153

If you want a model, here's one: LLMs have never demonstrated the ability to go obviously beyond interpolating their training data. It takes an army of paid data producers solving homework problems to give ChatGPT the ability to do your homework. All vibecoded apps that turned out to be successful could put on a geological soil chart with other apps, probably on GitHub somewhere, on the corners. The prediction? They…

Just to play devils advocate: are we sure humans have demonstrated the ability to go beyond their training data? Like.. are we sure-sure about that?

I'm not asking for anything close enough to the boundary for questions like that to be difficult. There are some ML systems like AlphaGo that have crossed the line in specific domains. It's just that making self-play and online learning work for huge LLMs is highly non obvious.

The idea is simply that the basic idea behind LLMs, that you're distilling the entropy out of the entire available world of text, is antithetical to creativity.

Further developing on the theme of self-play, humans have the ability to sense what we want (intellectually) and reach for it communally over thousands of years. It's an innate quality, and if AI starts participating (contrast to giving people psychosis) we will all be able to tell.

Re: The sigmoids won't save you

#159

Post by tomhow »

bedobi wrote: post #74
ngriffiths wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are many ways someone with his lack of expertise can still be valuable, including: - Making connections to other subjects that an expert would miss. The hall of fame of sigmoid predictions is just excellent, I already know I'm going to be reminded of it some time in the future. Very entertaining way to get the point across. - Writing about tricky concepts in a very accessible and elegant way, which expe…

[flagged]

> I don't come here for

It's good that you come to HN expecting high standards of content and discussion.

> sCotT aLexAndEr

This counts as a sneer, which is against the guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). You may not owe the writer anything but you owe the audience better than this.

> as close as you can come to the modern dressed up version of a eugenicist

Their writing about genetic determinism is a turnoff to me too. But this essay is about a different topic, and a piece of writing by a writer who is known for writing substantively about a variety of topics should be evaluated on its own terms.

Re: The sigmoids won't save you

#160

Post by Sniffnoy »

dreambuffer wrote: post #144
Sniffnoy wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I don't understand what you're trying to imply here. Yes, he co-authored a report. What is supposed to be dangerous or suspicious about this? What does your statement about "reputational consequences" have to do with your original comment, which implies that this some indicates a bias on his part?

It seems to me like you're trying to somehow imply that writing things to convince people of what you believe is somehow nefarious? It isn't! It's what we're all doing here right now! Putting it in a format that certain people will take more seriously doesn't make it nefarious either. I am quite confused by your point of view here.

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