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AI 2040: Plan A

ai-2040.com

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Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#431

Post by sudb »

27183 wrote: post #415
sudb wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah it seems you are a stochastic parrot believer ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_parrot ). What are your responses to the Expert Rebuttals section? I find the rebuttals pretty convincing - that there seems to be some emergent behaviour that is not simply just next-token-prediction, or that the ability to do accurate next-token-prediction requires something "extra" that LLMs have. > All the ways they fail t…

> there seems to be some emergent behaviour that is not simply just next-token-prediction, or that the ability to do accurate next-token-prediction requires something "extra" that LLMs have. The next step then would be to design and conduct experiments that isolate this effect. Figure out how to make it happen reliably and in such a way that you know it's actually happening as opposed to just something you're imagini…

> Figure out how to make it happen reliably

And you're happy that the replication of LLMs across many foundation model companies is insufficiently reliable?

> just something you're imagining

So the alternative explanation you're suggesting to emergent LLM behaviour is mass independently-corroborated human hallucination. Which is more likely?

Also it really does seem like you've moved the goalposts a lot here without really giving me a substantive response.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#432

Post by notahacker »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #422
grey-area wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Effective altruism is also very attractive to manipulative sociopaths who want to maximise their power over others whilst appearing virtuous and hoarding wealth and power. Poster boy for this movement is the convicted fraudster SBF. I believe Altman is also a fan. As to a better world or super intelligence, I’ll believe it may be possible when I see some signs of intelligence from what people are calling AI, instead…

And what movement isn’t attractive to manipulative sociopaths who want to maximize their power? That’s unavoidable when dealing with humans.

An important adjacent point is the same people that are insisting that only their research can stop intelligent manipulative computers from controlling the human race are also some of the few people who believed that OpenAI was a philanthropic endeavour and that Sam Bankman Fried was trustworthy...

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#433

Post by zdragnar »

themgt wrote: post #339
davemp wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a vast gulf between theoretically possible and technologically feasible. If you can’t provide a realistic path to achieve something, you’re asking people to believe in science fiction. You could tell me that a rock’s molecules are comprised of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Blood is also entirely protons, neutrons, and electrons; so theoretically, one could rearrange stone into blood. But without an actua…

What's strange to me about these comments is they're timeless. They could have been written in 2026 or 2016 or 1966. Like, afaict, for many on HN going from ELIZA->Fable 5 just didn't cause any update to priors regarding this whole philosophical question. The argument against has remained unchanged. I don't see any point in arguing about it, I just find it very strange.

Fable 5 doesn't represent anything new, other than scale and some refinement techniques, over the original LLMs. In the chase for AGI specifically, LLMs are a dead end, just like all the other AI technologies that died in the AI winter.

What priors should be updated?

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#434

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

taurath wrote: post #267

This is religious fervor folks, as AI 2027 was. I grew up in evangelical christianity, and to them the end of the world is just around the corner, the same way it has been since I was a small child and likely will be when we are all gone. This isn't science. This isn't hypothesis experiment record results. This is very expensive astrology, shiny rock collecting, ritualistic meaning-making and self-justification. Yall…

Imagine observing powered flight for the first time and saying: "This is religious fervor folks. I remember the mythological story of Icarus from when I was younger. Key word, mythological."

The existence of mythology describing Scenario X is not a valid argument against the plausibility of Scenario X.

If we can acknowledge the possibility of nuclear doomsday without running an RCT of sample size 100 Earths, 50 of which undergo nuclear Armageddon, to verify that nuclear holocaust indeed a real phenomenon... then we can do the same for AI. Understand the arguments being made instead of engaging in these guilt-by-association arguments.

Modern AI capabilities are already mind-boggling by the standards of 20 years ago. We should at least prepare for the possibility that trends continue on the current trajectory.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#435

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

skrebbel wrote: post #268
taurath wrote: post #267

This is religious fervor folks, as AI 2027 was. I grew up in evangelical christianity, and to them the end of the world is just around the corner, the same way it has been since I was a small child and likely will be when we are all gone. This isn't science. This isn't hypothesis experiment record results. This is very expensive astrology, shiny rock collecting, ritualistic meaning-making and self-justification. Yall…

It's nuts how well "Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People"[0] aged. That talk is a decade old by now and still hits just as hard as it did back then, despite the incredible advances made in AI in the meantime. [0] https://idlewords.com/talks/superintelligence.htm

>despite the incredible advances made in AI in the meantime

So the goalposts will be moved whenever necessary in that case?

No amount of incredible advances in AI will ever get skeptical HN commenters to take AI's implications seriously?

"The Gish gallops will continue until the nagging doubts have been silenced"

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#436

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

beshrkayali wrote: post #285
skrebbel wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nuts how well "Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People"[0] aged. That talk is a decade old by now and still hits just as hard as it did back then, despite the incredible advances made in AI in the meantime. [0] https://idlewords.com/talks/superintelligence.htm

This is hilariously true > AI risk is string theory for computer programmers. It's fun to think about, interesting, and completely inaccessible to experiment given our current technology. You can build crystal palaces of thought, working from first principles, then climb up inside them and pull the ladder up behind you. People who can reach preposterous conclusions from a long chain of abstract reasoning, and feel co…

Theorizing about nuclear winter is somewhat similar, in the sense of being inaccessible to experiment. Does that mean we should disregard the possibility of nuclear winter?

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#437

Post by 27183 »

sudb wrote: post #431
27183 wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there seems to be some emergent behaviour that is not simply just next-token-prediction, or that the ability to do accurate next-token-prediction requires something "extra" that LLMs have. The next step then would be to design and conduct experiments that isolate this effect. Figure out how to make it happen reliably and in such a way that you know it's actually happening as opposed to just something you're imagini…

> Figure out how to make it happen reliably And you're happy that the replication of LLMs across many foundation model companies is insufficiently reliable? > just something you're imagining So the alternative explanation you're suggesting to emergent LLM behaviour is mass independently-corroborated human hallucination. Which is more likely? Also it really does seem like you've moved the goalposts a lot here without…

To say that LLMs' existence is evidence for emergent phenomena in LLMs is tautological. I'm merely suggesting if you want to make a claim about emergence it would be best, especially in absence of a convincing theory, to demonstrate it experimentally. Otherwise probably better not to claim it's actually happening.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#438

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

zdragnar wrote: post #433
themgt wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's strange to me about these comments is they're timeless. They could have been written in 2026 or 2016 or 1966. Like, afaict, for many on HN going from ELIZA->Fable 5 just didn't cause any update to priors regarding this whole philosophical question. The argument against has remained unchanged. I don't see any point in arguing about it, I just find it very strange.

Fable 5 doesn't represent anything new, other than scale and some refinement techniques, over the original LLMs. In the chase for AGI specifically, LLMs are a dead end, just like all the other AI technologies that died in the AI winter. What priors should be updated?

>Fable 5 doesn't represent anything new, other than scale and some refinement techniques, over the original LLMs.

Yet it is generating billions in revenue which Eliza did not.

Perhaps all we need is scale and some refinement techniques to eat a big fraction of the economy.

If unimpressive inputs lead to impressive outputs, that should make you more worried, not less.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#439

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

kypro wrote: post #140
a_vanderbilt wrote: post #24

I found the AI 2027 paper to be overly optimistic, but not wholly fantastical. This paper feels wildly speculative, and relies on premises I am not confident even pass surface reasoning. Even under optimistic conditions, we are not going to see robots "capable of 95% of all cognitive and physical tasks" by 2035. Nor do I think a 74% unemployment rate is even remotely possible. Economic collapse would implode AI devel…

If I took you back to 2020 and said in a little over 5 years there will basically be no human coders writing code anymore you'd almost certainly not believe me. And similar things can be said about many technologies in recent history – cars replacing the horse, first flight to man on the moon, even the creation of early internet to its mass adoption. You're talking generally a decade or 2 for society to completely ch…

> "If I took you back to 2020 and said in a little over 5 years there will basically be no human coders writing code anymore you'd almost certainly not believe me."

It's 2026, one year after your predicted date, and that still hasn't happened though.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#440

Post by notahacker »

themgt wrote: post #391
beepbooptheory wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpack this a little bit. Why is it strange or interesting to you? What specific priors need to be updated for us here? What is the philosophical questions at play for you?

To meta-unpack a little bit ... it is strange to me that Fable is far more capable of discussing these questions than apparently 99% of humans. Along with being more capable at quite a lot else than most humans.

It doesn't seem at all strange to me that a chatbot trained by true believers in an AI singularity and the importance of safety guardrails will give more satisfying answers to true believers in an AI singularity and the importance of safety guardrails than talking to humans who might ask questions they're not prepared to answer (or might say nasty sceptical things or just not seem interested)

As for "updating priors", that goes both ways. There's plenty more reason to think "hey, transformers and RLHF might actually make some killer products" but certainly no reason to think the few people who didn't realise that "GPT3 is too dangerous to release" and "all software engineers will be replaced within 6-12 months" were marketing rather than prophecy have some kind of special insight into how it's all going to pan out. Clock's ticking to the promised 2027 reckoning too...

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