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You are the scariest monster in the woods

jamie.ideasasylum.com

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Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#101

Post by lambaro »

jncfhnb wrote: post #40
myrmidon wrote: post #13

I struggle to understand how people can just dismiss the possibility of artificial intelligence. Human cognition was basically bruteforced by evolution-- why would it be impossible to achieve the exact same result in silicon, especially after we already demonstrated some parts of those results (e.g. use of language) that critically set us apart from other animals? I'm not buying the whole "AI has no agency" line eith…

I think you could make AGI right now tbh. It’s not a function of intelligence. It’s just a function of stateful system mechanics. LLMs are just a big matrix. But what about a four line of code loop that looks like: ```while true: update_sensory_inputs() narrate_response() update_emotional_state() ``` LLMs don’t experience continuous time and they don’t have an explicit decision making framework for having any agency…

"STEP 2: Draw the rest of the owl."

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#102

Post by wat10000 »

sickofparadox wrote: post #20
kkukshtel wrote: post #4

(DISCO ELYSIUM SPOILERS BELOW) One of the most poignant moments in Disco Elysium is near the very end when you encounter a very elusive crypid/mythic beast. The moment is treated with a lot of care and consideration, and the conversation itself is, I think, transcendent and some of the best writing in games (or any media) ever. The line that sticks with me most is when the cryptid says: "The moral of our encounter is…

>It's easy to see this reflected in nature in the real world. All animals and life seem to be aware and accommodating of each other, but humans are cut out from that communication. This just seems like noble savaging birds and rabbits and deer. None of these creatures have any communication with each other, and while they may be more aware of each other's presence than a 'go hiking every once in a while' person, some…

I think people forget how big people are. We're well above average size in the typical natural environment, and especially in the typical sorta-natural-but-sorta-urban environment most of us are in most of the time.

The local rabbits and squirrels tolerate each other but are pretty scared of me. Of course they are, I'm two hundred times bigger than they are, and much more dangerous. The local foxes are the closest thing we have to an apex predator around here, and they're rightfully terrified of this massive creature that outweighs their entire family combined.

Imagine wandering through the woods, enjoying the birds tweeting and generally being at one with nature, and then you come across a 20-ton 35ft-tall monster. You'd run away screaming.

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#103

Post by ACCount37 »

deadbabe wrote: post #36
myrmidon wrote: post #13

I struggle to understand how people can just dismiss the possibility of artificial intelligence. Human cognition was basically bruteforced by evolution-- why would it be impossible to achieve the exact same result in silicon, especially after we already demonstrated some parts of those results (e.g. use of language) that critically set us apart from other animals? I'm not buying the whole "AI has no agency" line eith…

Language is only an end product. It is derived from intelligence. The intelligence is everything that created the language and the training corpus in the first place. When AI is able to create entire thoughts and ideas without any concept of language, then we will truly be closer to artificial intelligence. When we get to this point, we then use language as a way to let the AI communicate its thoughts naturally. Such…

Clearly, language reflects enough of "intelligence" for an LLM to be able to learn a lot of what "intelligence" does just by staring at a lot of language data really really hard.

Language doesn't capture all of human intelligence - and some of the notable deficiencies of LLMs originate from that. But to say that LLMs are entirely language-bound is shortsighted at best.

Most modern high end LLMs are hybrids that operate on non-language modalities, and there's plenty of R&D on using LLMs to consume, produce and operate on non-language data - i.e. Gemini Robotics.

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#105

Post by nonethewiser »

jncfhnb wrote: post #40
myrmidon wrote: post #13

I struggle to understand how people can just dismiss the possibility of artificial intelligence. Human cognition was basically bruteforced by evolution-- why would it be impossible to achieve the exact same result in silicon, especially after we already demonstrated some parts of those results (e.g. use of language) that critically set us apart from other animals? I'm not buying the whole "AI has no agency" line eith…

I think you could make AGI right now tbh. It’s not a function of intelligence. It’s just a function of stateful system mechanics. LLMs are just a big matrix. But what about a four line of code loop that looks like: ```while true: update_sensory_inputs() narrate_response() update_emotional_state() ``` LLMs don’t experience continuous time and they don’t have an explicit decision making framework for having any agency…

Where is the "what the thing cares about" part?

When I look at that loop my thought is, "OK, the sensory inputs have updated. There are changes. Which ones matter?" The most naive response I could imagine would be like a git diff of sensory inputs. "item 13 in vector A changed from 0.2 to 0.211" etc. Otherwise you have to give it something to care about, or some sophisticated system to develop things to care about.

Even the naive diff is making massive assumptions. Why should it care if some sensor changes? Maybe its more interesting if it stays the same.

Im not arguing artificial intelligence is impossible. I just dont see how that loop gets us anywhere close.

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#106

Post by throw7 »

boole1854 wrote: post #22
myrmidon wrote: post #13

I struggle to understand how people can just dismiss the possibility of artificial intelligence. Human cognition was basically bruteforced by evolution-- why would it be impossible to achieve the exact same result in silicon, especially after we already demonstrated some parts of those results (e.g. use of language) that critically set us apart from other animals? I'm not buying the whole "AI has no agency" line eith…

If anyone knows of a steelman version of the "AGI is not possible" argument, I would be curious to read it. I also have trouble understanding what goes into that point of view.

The steelman would be that knowledge is possible outside the domain of Science. So the opposing argument to evolution as the mechanism for us (the "general intelligence" of AGI) would be that the pathway from conception to you is not strictly material/natural.

Of course, that's not going to be accepted as "Science", but I hope you can at least see that point of view.

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#107

Post by jncfhnb »

ActivePattern wrote: post #89
jncfhnb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you could make AGI right now tbh. It’s not a function of intelligence. It’s just a function of stateful system mechanics. LLMs are just a big matrix. But what about a four line of code loop that looks like: ```while true: update_sensory_inputs() narrate_response() update_emotional_state() ``` LLMs don’t experience continuous time and they don’t have an explicit decision making framework for having any agency…

Hah, why don't you try implementing your 3 little functions and see how smart your "AGI" turns out. > not a particularly capable AGI Maybe the word AGI doesn't mean what you think it means...

There is not strong consensus on the meaning of the term. Some may say “human level performance” but that’s meaningless both in the sense that it’s basically impossible to define and not a useful benchmark for anything in particular.

The path to whatever goalpost you want to set is not going to be more and more intelligence. It’s going to be system frameworks for stateful agents to freely operate in environments in continuous time rather than discrete invocations of a matrix with a big ass context window.

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#108

Post by Eisenstein »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #93
ACCount37 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get how you can see one of those CLI coding tools in action and still parrot the "no agency" line. The goal-oriented behavior is rather obvious. Sure, they aren't very good at agentic behavior yet, and the time horizon is pretty low. But that keeps improving with each frontier release.

> The goal-oriented behavior is rather obvious. Obvious? Is an illusion obviously the real thing? There is nothing substantially different in LLMs from any other run of the mill algorithm or software.

Can you give an example of something that would be substantially different under your definition?

Re: You are the scariest monster in the woods

#109

Post by teucris »

squidbeak wrote: post #72
woeirua wrote: post #44

There's this weird disconnect in tech circles, where everyone is deathly afraid of AGI, but totally asleep on the very real possibility of thermonuclear war breaking out in Europe or Asia over the next 10 years. There's already credible evidence that we came perilously close to the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine which likely would've spiraled out of control. AGI might happen, but the threat of nuclear war…

Other doomsday risks aren't any reason to turn our heads away from this one. AI's much more likely to end up taking an apocalyptic form if we sleep on it.

But this isn’t a suggestion to turn away from AI threats - it’s a matter of prioritization. There are more imminent threats that we know can turn apocalyptic that swaths of people in power are completely ignoring and instead fretting over AI.
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