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I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

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Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#101

Post by [deleted] »

drcode wrote: post #46
rocmcd wrote: post #38

It's hard to read Gwern's accompanying article without seeing this for what it is, which is a kind of mania. I'm sure he means well and is genuine in his aspirations, but what's outlined for GA is framing LLM's as quasi-gods, which they absolutely are not. I wish him the best, and look forward to being proven wrong.

An LLM just solved 10 top tier math problems this week. It seems very likely that in 6 months they will solve 100 top tier math problems, maybe 1 millenium math problem, maybe 10 top tier physics problems, etc. It's only going to get crazier.

[deleted]

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#102

Post by edot »

MichaelDickens wrote: post #96
edot wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Math is verifiable. LLMs will continue to make strides in such search spaces where all they need to do is try->verify->repeat. You can't train an LLM on how to end the war in Iran or Ukraine, nor how to solve hunger, nor climate change, etc. Real issues. And LLMs still suck at art and writing.

Three years ago, people were saying "LLMs just generate plausible-sounding text, they don't understand the notion of truth so they can't do verifiable work like math proofs."

Right, which was true at the time. So hundreds of billions of dollars have been poured into making LLMs better at these tasks via pretraining, RL, RLHF, post training, etc. again all with something verifiable in the loop. In order to improve the thing in the loop, the loop itself needs to be verifiable.

There have only been a few thousand wars, and they’re all different and all different in the world in which they occurred. The dimensionality is absurd, which is not a problem for LLMs if there’s enough data, but in this case there isn’t.

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#104

Post by radicality »

thin_carapace wrote: post #92

honestly i dont blame smart people for cashing in, because there is no inherent reward for behaving goodly/smartly. in this instance gwern is a particularly smart individual and has contributed a lot so i especially shouldnt judge him. straight up ripping off a black mirror episode (s02e07) is a bit heinous for my liking though. digital twins are inevitable but that doesnt make this any less wrong. "AI poses threats…

Which black mirror episode are you talking about? White Christmas? S02E07 afaik does not exist - Series 2 had 3 episodes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Black_Mirror_episodes

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#105

Post by cure_42 »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #85
amazingamazing wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose LLM solved all math problems. So what? It’s not like diplomacy and war will end. Are humanity’s problems really constrained on our intellectual ability? If anything most evidence points to cultural failing and all AI will do is enable unprecedented oppression due to said skills at intellectual tasks. As you read this some poor person is starving. Humanity already possesses the ability to identify said person…

It's an interesting time when the bar has moved to "It’s not like diplomacy and war will end". But that is on the table. Nuclear weapons caused the end of wars as we know them. Great powers no longer directly attack each other. And AI is much more powerful than nuclear weapons, with an equal capacity for damage and a much greater capacity for good. By the way, I donate monthly to GiveWell and the shrimp welfare proje…

Yikes

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#106

Post by cure_42 »

MichaelDickens wrote: post #96
edot wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Math is verifiable. LLMs will continue to make strides in such search spaces where all they need to do is try->verify->repeat. You can't train an LLM on how to end the war in Iran or Ukraine, nor how to solve hunger, nor climate change, etc. Real issues. And LLMs still suck at art and writing.

Three years ago, people were saying "LLMs just generate plausible-sounding text, they don't understand the notion of truth so they can't do verifiable work like math proofs."

They still can't. But very smart humans constructed ways to use the monkeys with typewriters (with a statistical advantage) to find correct answers to problems where they already knew how to verify the answer.

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#107

Post by thin_carapace »

radicality wrote: post #104
thin_carapace wrote: post #92

honestly i dont blame smart people for cashing in, because there is no inherent reward for behaving goodly/smartly. in this instance gwern is a particularly smart individual and has contributed a lot so i especially shouldnt judge him. straight up ripping off a black mirror episode (s02e07) is a bit heinous for my liking though. digital twins are inevitable but that doesnt make this any less wrong. "AI poses threats…

Which black mirror episode are you talking about? White Christmas? S02E07 afaik does not exist - Series 2 had 3 episodes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Black_Mirror_episodes

i misread the ongoing episode counter on wikipedia, it is the 7th episode of the entire series, indeed named white christmas

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#108

Post by Jach »

OuterVale wrote: post #86

Of all the news I've heard of recent, this one has flipped my world upside down the most. Gwern dropping his pseudonymity isn't something I thought would happen. I suppose we can't expect any more entries to his blackmail page: https://gwern.net/blackmail

Some people predicted it and related things (like less writing output) after his Dwarkesh interview, especially with his flirtations with moving to SF and ever-increasing frequency of visits.

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#109

Post by jacquesm »

amazingamazing wrote: post #79
drcode wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An LLM just solved 10 top tier math problems this week. It seems very likely that in 6 months they will solve 100 top tier math problems, maybe 1 millenium math problem, maybe 10 top tier physics problems, etc. It's only going to get crazier.

Suppose LLM solved all math problems. So what? It’s not like diplomacy and war will end. Are humanity’s problems really constrained on our intellectual ability? If anything most evidence points to cultural failing and all AI will do is enable unprecedented oppression due to said skills at intellectual tasks. As you read this some poor person is starving. Humanity already possesses the ability to identify said person…

All technological progress will benefit an increasingly smaller (and wealthier) slice of mankind.

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#110

Post by AndrewKemendo »

reasonableklout wrote: post #72
artyom wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving AI completely aside, it still amazes me that people finds "novel" the idea of removing highly-paid white collar intellectual workers (software developers or otherwise) completely out of the loop. No-code platforms date back to the 80's. Getting rid of engineers in general is even older [*]. Even relational databases and SQL were initially promoted as "ways to get rid of those expensive programmers to access y…

It's novel because previous rounds of automation were about automating specific tasks or well-scoped functions. There was always an implicit understanding that the white-collar worker would be freed to spend their time on more valuable, higher-level problems. But this time is different because of the generality of the technology. Agents promise to automate the process of thinking itself. And in many domains they can…

>There was always an implicit understanding that the white-collar worker would be freed to spend their time on more valuable, higher-level problems

"Oh yeah, we're gonna bring in some entry-level graduates, farm some work out to Singapore, that's the usual deal"

Office Space 1999

It was so pervasive that it was satirized by someone that had worked in engineering in the 80s

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