The number of people I've heard calling AI a "stochastic parrot" is concerning. You don't understand what is or isn't stochastic and you're parroting this phrase. You yourself are a stochastic parrot.
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My Mental Model of AI Broke on September 8
51–60 of 70 posts
Re: My Mental Model of AI Broke on September 8
#52This, despite the ongoing social litigation of if this is even real? I believe AI is quite capable in the right circumstances, but I'm not convinced "this" is the watershed moment.
I think the watershed moment was when it was proven that it can solve highschoolers maths olympiad problems at competitive level. These problems require complexity of thinking that is beyond what most humans have to deal with in their entire lifetime. When AI took that in stride it was obvious that sky is the limit and entirety of current human achivement is a milestone but in a sense of the one that the car passes w…
>entirety of current human achivement..
The right way to look at it is that LLMs help us to maximize the utility of the entirety of current human achievement/knowledge by discovering obscure connections in it.
Re: My Mental Model of AI Broke on September 8
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
They still are parrots. Just properly trained with a lot of data. Doesn’t make them not useful. But that’s what they are though.
I interpret the word 'parrot' to mean incapable of creative or original thought. Solving a major maths problem that has resisted the best mathematicians for so long seems to prove otherwise (even if it were just a matter of remixing old ideas, which is not the case here). What do they need to do for you to consider them non parrots, and do you consider a lot of humans as parrots?
>creative or original thought.
If this can only answer questions, then it fails this test. Because at least the question has to come from somewhere...
Re: My Mental Model of AI Broke on September 8
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which he only became aware of after the paper...
In this 1905 special relativity paper he mentions "the Lorentzian electrodynamics and optics of moving bodies" https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/specrel.pdf
And did you read the footnote on the first page?
"The preceding memoir by Lorentz was not at this time known to the author."
Re: My Mental Model of AI Broke on September 8
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
The law (which is supposed to codify the common sense and shared values underpinning a society—note "supposed to") disagrees with you: if I use a bulldozer to damage your property, you can sue me, not the bulldozer or its maker.
Sure, legally. But practically speaking, who did the heavy lifting? The operator or the machine?
Everyone who's ideas made bulldozer possible, I would say..
Re: My Mental Model of AI Broke on September 8
#56I think the author is not aware of how much the Millennium Prize proof was actually driven by a human working for years towards that problem. The AI did not solve this on its own. A world class mathematician prompted it towards the proof. In my view, this is still a human achievement, not an AI achievement. If I design a bulldozer to push a five ton rock, did I push the rock or the bulldozer? If the AI really did get…
You could say that about every scientific/mathematical breakthrough. Einstein's Special relativity depended heavily on Lorentz's work, the Michelson-Morley experiments, Maxwell's equations. Grigori Perelman, the only person to have solved a Millenium Prize problem, noted how his work was only possible due to Richard S. Hamilton's work on Ricci flow. Most scientific breakthroughs are just the completing the last 5% of…
> That an AI was able to synthesize all the work and bring it forward
But that's not what it did. A mathematician literally prompted it towards that, helping it every step of the way for years.
And only the mathematician was able to make the AI do that. Anybody else with the same AI could not do the same thing.
If you think it was the AI that solved a Millennium Prize, then why don't you try using ChatGPT to get a Millennium Prize?
Re: My Mental Model of AI Broke on September 8
#57I think the author is not aware of how much the Millennium Prize proof was actually driven by a human working for years towards that problem. The AI did not solve this on its own. A world class mathematician prompted it towards the proof. In my view, this is still a human achievement, not an AI achievement. If I design a bulldozer to push a five ton rock, did I push the rock or the bulldozer? If the AI really did get…
This is copium. Humans worked on it, but they didn't come close to actually solving it. Even if you do the whole "the AI looked at material in its training data" thing, modern AI can make their own math data to train on with RLVF. This new model is legitimately on a different plane of existence from modern mathematicians.
My point is, the AI could not have done what it did without the skilled mathemetician prompting it. It was just a tool in the hands of the human that did it. And that was a very skilled human. Unless you're a professional mathematician, you cannot get the same result even if you use the same AI model. That's the proof that it's the human's work, not the AI.
Why don't you try getting a Millennium Prize then? If you think it was the AI that did it, you have access to the exact same ChatGPT.
Re: My Mental Model of AI Broke on September 8
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Einstein literally stated he was not influenced by the Michelson-Morley experiments, but it's a common myth that he was. "When Ι asked him how he had learned of the Michelson Morley experiment, he told me that he had become aware of it through writings of Η. Α. Lοrentz, but only after 1905 had it come to his attention! "Otherwise" he said, "I would have mentioned it in my paper!" indeed, Einstein's 1905 paper contain…
It may also have been a social test — ie the polite thing to do in that circumstance is to say “oh wow, I thought I knew that one, weird. I’ll have to look that up again thank you” even if you know 100% that you’re correct. Weird social expectation thing.
It was the 1980s and that very well may have been what was going on, but if that's the game they're going to play then I have better places to play games. Ironically, I got several apologies from other MIT professors a few years later who ended up working with me on various things.
Re: My Mental Model of AI Broke on September 8
#59The cognitive bias in humans to believe higher intelligence is unique to humans and even supernatural is very, very strong.
Do you have like concrete proof this is not the case? We do not. We haven’t yet met higher intelligences. You have no basis to call it a bias.
Re: My Mental Model of AI Broke on September 8
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the watershed moment was when it was proven that it can solve highschoolers maths olympiad problems at competitive level. These problems require complexity of thinking that is beyond what most humans have to deal with in their entire lifetime. When AI took that in stride it was obvious that sky is the limit and entirety of current human achivement is a milestone but in a sense of the one that the car passes w…
>entirety of current human achivement.. The right way to look at it is that LLMs help us to maximize the utility of the entirety of current human achievement/knowledge by discovering obscure connections in it.
So pretty much the same thing that humans do. New things come out of those connections.