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Intelligence Is Not the Main Bottleneck

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101–110 of 124 posts

Re: Intelligence Is Not the Main Bottleneck

#101

> right about everything else I suggest people greatly underestimate how localized expertise is. How very rapidly someone's expertise deteriorates as you move away from some focus, from the usually-very-narrow region where that expertise is externally nurtured. A snark characterization of that region being, the issues where someone badly fears getting something wrong , and by that being embarrassed in front of the pe…

>I suggest groupthink is a critically important aspect of most human behavior. And yet somehow, we rarely manage to discuss this, and are repeatedly surprised by it. I'm unclear on why.

Isn't that just a manifestation of the 'Blind spot' from Johari Window?

In general it is really hard to think about the things you already internalized.

Re: Intelligence Is Not the Main Bottleneck

#102

"He looked at me incredulously. Surely, a smart person like me should know that AI, or better said, AGI will be hyperpersuasive soon – already on a bunch of benchmarks it exceeds professional debaters at persuasion." I'm always tickled by this tic of this kind of person, that human traits are something that we can maximize to infinity. That if we trained a robot to tell jokes, it would eventually tell jokes so funny…

> You can't convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced. I think this is true. But it doesn’t get rid of the possibility of hyperpersuasive bots, just, points to a reason they might not be as consequential as expected. I think bots that are very good at writing rhetoric might happen (why not? They are already good at math and chess), and they would be devastating to the spaces where people go online and argue w…

yes of course LLMs are already wreaking havoc by scaling up the bot farms of yore but that's not really how I interpreted hyperpersuasion, I interpreted it as a specifically targeted one-on-one conversation with belief in a specific notion as the desired outcome. I believe that LLMs can logos and pathos-max but (depending on the interlocutor) they cannot overcome by sheer force of logorrhea their lack of reputation, credibility, presence, etc.

Re: Intelligence Is Not the Main Bottleneck

#103

Climate change is another big problem that frontier AI labs have handwaved away as being "solvable" by AGI. The premise that a pure superintelligence could hand us a plan to beat climate change that's so good and airtight that A) it would definitely work and B) people would execute it. But there have been entire books written about the fact that right now we have the technology to drastically curtail climate change a…

> AI labs have handwaved away as being "solvable" by AGI

Mind sharing who at AI labs saying this?

Re: Intelligence Is Not the Main Bottleneck

#104
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It‘s actually stunning how inhumane this suggestion is. Especially, in the way it‘s made in the purely functional sense of human value as means of productivity and efficiency. Maybe I‘m missing the joke though.

What say you of warehouse workers? Of restaurant staff? These exist today and are dehumanized in much the same way, but perhaps with lesser effect. Don’t mistake my ill portent for enthusiasm. I merely foretell.

> Don’t mistake my ill portent for enthusiasm. I merely foretell.

Your choice of the word "solution" was the upsetting part. It implies a problem, and given your solution is "robot bosses tell human servants what to do using headsets," the implied problem is "how can we create a system where robot bosses can direct human servants?"

Re: Intelligence Is Not the Main Bottleneck

#106
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A human with experience can do without AI the job a lot faster than someone without can do it with. The expert HVAC tech can get the wrench of the fitting and have the job done faster than the novice. The novice will take longer to follow directions to get the right wrench; then they have to figure out how to get it on - something the expert does automatically isn't easy; then turn it the right direction... The exper…

In my city I call a handyman to fix my dryer and guess what? He uses chatGPT to help him through the issue. $350 Beyond a basic amount of manual dexterity and familiarity with mechanical things, AI can absolutely help guide an untrained person through the job. How about medical research? Endless hours of pipetting. Does it really take a phd? It takes someone with conscientiousness and care. Both things an AI overlord…

> In my city I call a handyman to fix my dryer and guess what? He uses chatGPT to help him through the issue. $350

Well it sounds like you made a mistake calling for help when it's apparently that easy.

Re: Intelligence Is Not the Main Bottleneck

#107
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been a core belief of the EA/LessWrong/Rationalist people for many years - that above a certain level of intelligence you effectively get hypnotic powers, and people will obey AIs no matter what. So they said you can't keep a superpowered AI airgapped as merely offering a chat interface will immediately take control of the next person to interact with it and they will deliberately compromise the airgapping.

A complete mischaracterization, as usual for HN lately when discussing AI or LessWrong. Obviously, even average levels of persuasion are enough to convince some people. And nobody is air-gapping AI.

I thought the lesswrong folk's belief in mind control was an established fact:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/AI-box_experiment

https://www.yudkowsky.net/singularity/aibox

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Bnik7YrySRPoCTLFb

It's far from the craziest belief that's come out of that group.

Re: Intelligence Is Not the Main Bottleneck

#108
post #54

Indeed. Humans and not other apes reached the moon by our great proclivity to long distance running, through our exceptional sweat glands... ah, wait. How is it possible to live in the world around us and not see, apparent and transparent, that intelligence is the lever on which everything rests? Humans are surprisingly weird animals, but it's not our hairlessness or our fairly average propensity to violence that did…

As far as I know humans with the same sort of brains as your brain and my brain have existed for 100,000's of years, perhaps as long as 2 million years.

They did not go to the moon. They did not make mechanisms, they did not make pottery, they did not smelt iron, they did not press shapes onto clay and leave it in houses that burned down, they did not have houses.

All of that has come in the last 12,000 years. I think that there are people in the Amazon today who could not write or read a word, could not drive a car or solve an equation or argue a case or compose an algorithm who are as intelligent as me, or you, or more. I think that people like that have existed for more than a million years.

So if they were so smart, why didn't they go to the moon?

Re: Intelligence Is Not the Main Bottleneck

#109
post #99
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much more intelligence will it take to get people to be ok with data center construction? How much more intelligence will be needed to reduce overuse of antibiotics? How much more intelligence is necessary to enable free trade with Canada?

...only very marginally more? What property, if not intelligence, do you think makes people capable of rallying political support? Of working quickly though permit processes? Of providing accurate drug dosing guidance? Of presenting as a trustworthy personal healthcare guide? Of negotiating political deals? Of making effective public communications? Of juggling independent parties' interests? Of coming out ahead in c…

I hope you're joking about...

I think we both know the answer, but the answer very definitely isn't intelligence.

Re: Intelligence Is Not the Main Bottleneck

#110
post #108
post #54

Indeed. Humans and not other apes reached the moon by our great proclivity to long distance running, through our exceptional sweat glands... ah, wait. How is it possible to live in the world around us and not see, apparent and transparent, that intelligence is the lever on which everything rests? Humans are surprisingly weird animals, but it's not our hairlessness or our fairly average propensity to violence that did…

As far as I know humans with the same sort of brains as your brain and my brain have existed for 100,000's of years, perhaps as long as 2 million years. They did not go to the moon. They did not make mechanisms, they did not make pottery, they did not smelt iron, they did not press shapes onto clay and leave it in houses that burned down, they did not have houses. All of that has come in the last 12,000 years. I thin…

>So if they were so smart, why didn't they go to the moon?

Because the requisite amount of iterations for their/our level of intelligence had not yet occurred. After a 100 billion lifetimes or so we got there.

Presumably entities with greater intelligence would require fewer iterations.

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