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AI 2040: Plan A

ai-2040.com

451–460 of 567 posts

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#451
post #437
post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> To say that LLMs' existence is evidence for emergent phenomena in LLMs is tautological.

This is not at all what I was saying. I think you've already conceded that LLMs demonstrate emergent behaviour but you dismissed it as a "close enough facsimile to intelligence". I was saying that the emergent behaviour is reliably replicable, in response to your following statement:

> 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 imagining.

I think there is real work underway in the area of interpretability. In the meantime, there appears to be plenty of empirical evidence for the claim that LLMs exhibit some sort "intelligence" in the enormous penetration that agentic coding has achieved in software development? Do you deny the usefulness of LLMs here, or are you going to assert that actually software development requires no intelligence of any sort?

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

OpenAI now controls one of if not the largest philanthropic endowments on the planet. They are still a philanthropic endeavor, though I agree the non profit bait and switch as well as the Altman board situation were tragedies.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#453
post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reading code, understanding, hypothesizing, comparing, ...identifying problems and proposing solutions, and more Except it did none of those things, really, because that's not how it works. This might help, it's a good writeup: https://www.0xkato.xyz/how-llms-actually-work/ We know how these machines work, it's not mysterious, there's nothing "extra" happening.

Just a few comments ago you argued that we don't know how to build superintelligence. Now you're saying we know how the (unevenly superintelligent) Fable system works. It doesn't seem like you're being consistent here. I'm concerned there might be some motivated cognition going on. "What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's tru…

I'm not following the "Fable" stuff, what is that? [edit: ah it's a new language model from Anthropic.. yeah still don't see how it's relevant here]

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#454

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…

From TFA

> Plan A is primarily a recommendation, not a prediction.

That sounds nothing like “religious fervor”

The fact that technology can increase existential risk for civilization is not fantasy. It’s a risk that should be reasonably discussed.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#455
> Most of their work is slop.

This opening statement told me the bias that the plan had from the beginning. My experience is that you can make slop and you can make art. Just like a paintbrush. I've done beautiful things, and have gotten increasingly better at using the AI paintbrush.

The author(s) are likely scared. And I'm seeing the divide increase with articles like this. Those who don't understand it and won't use it, or learn more, will ultimately have a story (our human condition).

I think AI is going to make a beautiful future, much better than our current one.

I bet this same thing happened with the advent of electricity.

AI is like Electric 2.0.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#456

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…

The other thing about this article is that it contains falsifiable claims that are, well, false. Consider the following direct quote: "The 2028 election cycle is heated, as usual. AI is the biggest topic." No poll of the American public has AI as one of the top concerns except in polls where the question is specifically about AI. The general polls show topics like healthcare costs, inflation/affordability, government dysfunction, and immigration as the top concerns. AI doesn't even show up in the top 20 in every list I looked at (Gallup, Pew, YouGov).

It sounds more like "everybody I know thinks AI is the top concern" when everybody they know is people like them, i.e. an echo chamber. It gives me no confidence in any other claims.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#457
post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reading code, understanding, hypothesizing, comparing, ...identifying problems and proposing solutions, and more Except it did none of those things, really, because that's not how it works. This might help, it's a good writeup: https://www.0xkato.xyz/how-llms-actually-work/ We know how these machines work, it's not mysterious, there's nothing "extra" happening.

Just a few comments ago you argued that we don't know how to build superintelligence. Now you're saying we know how the (unevenly superintelligent) Fable system works. It doesn't seem like you're being consistent here. I'm concerned there might be some motivated cognition going on. "What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's tru…

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Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#458
Just enforce DMCA and all the Ai super powers will suddenly become more dumb for the next 10 years. Of course that’s for the kids pirating a movie not for trillion dollar companies

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#459
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?

Strong disagree. Fable is first model that actually feels smarter than me in certain non-trivial ways.

It can hold many complex and partially contradictory thoughts in its head at once, in a way that feels significantly superior to Opus (for example). And then can make reasonable syntheses across these.

In a couple rounds of back and forth, with relatively low effort (but strategic) prompting, it produces complex, accurate analyses in 5-10 minutes that would take me multiple hours of hard, very focused work.

I still need to remain tightly in the loop, providing frequent course correction, clarification, high level reframing, nudging, and grounding.

It incorporates my feedback incredibly well.

It’s honestly staggering. Fable has changed my assessment of the current trajectory more than any model since possibly gpt-4. Opus 4.5 of last year might be a close second.

———

My advice for anyone who wants to get more value out of these tools:

When a model does something idiotic, don’t throw your hands up in the air. Be curious. Try to turn it into a puzzle to be solved.

It know it’s hard sometimes, especially if you are drowning in slop from other people… or generated by yourself, heh.

It can be exhausting. I struggle with this also. I have thoughts on how to make it better. We shall see.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#460

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…

[dead]
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