11–20 of 84 posts
LLMs cannot think, they just guess with some magic with the help of things like softmax ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmax_function ), that makes it seem intelligent. We aren't enslaved or at any risk just yet with this form of "thinking machine", but we do need to culutrally and emotionally come to terms with them. Let's not have any other "jihad" just yet, there's plenty of other jihads going on right now.
It’s as if calling something AI is all that’s needed to justify it being the same thing as Skynet, Dune automation, Terminators, Neuromancer, and every other cultural trope using the label of AI.
The ultimate fact is that LLMs are a pretty powerful technology that has little to nothing to do with most fictional depictions of intelligent machines.
Sloppy thinking all the way down.
LLMs cannot think, they just guess with some magic with the help of things like softmax ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmax_function ), that makes it seem intelligent. We aren't enslaved or at any risk just yet with this form of "thinking machine", but we do need to culutrally and emotionally come to terms with them. Let's not have any other "jihad" just yet, there's plenty of other jihads going on right now.
LLMs cannot think, they just guess with some magic with the help of things like softmax ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmax_function ), that makes it seem intelligent. We aren't enslaved or at any risk just yet with this form of "thinking machine", but we do need to culutrally and emotionally come to terms with them. Let's not have any other "jihad" just yet, there's plenty of other jihads going on right now.
Note that the article doesn’t say that AI itself would do the enslavement; on the contrary: > With the rise of AI came the rise of a technocratic class that created and controlled these machines, leading to oppressive structures over knowledge and the economy. It also quotes Dune, where it is said more directly: > Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Amish ( can't ) enter the chat
Ok, you made me laugh :) I think that most Amish were never used to technology though?
LLMs cannot think, they just guess with some magic with the help of things like softmax ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmax_function ), that makes it seem intelligent. We aren't enslaved or at any risk just yet with this form of "thinking machine", but we do need to culutrally and emotionally come to terms with them. Let's not have any other "jihad" just yet, there's plenty of other jihads going on right now.
When "guess with some magic" can solve long-standing problems in mathematics that no human had been able to, it seems fair to ask whether it's approaching risky levels of intelligence.
Seems like if it was adopted as a policy, there would have to be many gray areas where people pretend that they aren't really using AI - the ship's computer is just a domain specific finetuned version, after all, etc.
Additionally, the transhumanist ambitions represented by the Bene Gesserit or Navigator seem on par with all AI dangers to me. Why would the dangers of an incomprehensible machine mind be worse than the dangers of a transhuman being that was bred and optimized for generations? Who solved the alignment problem for these superhumans?
but you cant ban the math!
the same transformer/attention ideas work great as compressors, function approximators, and surrogate models in physics, chemistry, CFD, etc., where they show up as "PDE‑Transformer", "Neural Operator", or "Hybrid Surrogate Model", and not as "chatbot". ;-)
So even if you outlaw certain AI uses, the core tech will just move into scientific and engineering workflows under different names, where most people won’t recognize it. Would be interesting whether it is possible to write a LLM-like program just using compression and function interpolation algoritms.
just my 2 ct