Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Playing in the Creek

hgreer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 122 posts

Re: Playing in the Creek

#111

Post by profsummergig »

criddell wrote: post #87
Workaccount2 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost certainly going to be bad, and almost certainly going to be unavoidable. I can't spell for shit anymore. Ever since auto correct became omnipresent in pretty much all writing fields, my brain just kinda ditched remembering how to spell words. buuuttt Manual labor has been obsolete for at least 100 years now for certain classes of people, and fitness is still an enormous recreational activity people partak…

We aren't talking about something like spelling or digging a hole. We're talking about a fundamental cognitive skill: reading eight short paragraphs of text and extracting meaning from it.

> eight short paragraphs of text

Fair point. But they are heavily metaphor-laden paragraphs.

Textual interpretation is a highly subjective activity. Entire careers consist of interpreting, reinterpreting, and discussing texts that others have already interpreted. Film critics, book reviewers, political pundits, TV anchors, podcasters, etc.

'In 1972, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai was asked about the impact of the French Revolution. "Too early to say," he replied'

I had my own sense of what the "coquina" metaphor stood for. I wanted to see other peoples' interpretations. Turns out my interpretation was wrong.

Re: Playing in the Creek

#112

Post by lukeschlather »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #33

The author seems concerned about AI risk -- as in, "they're going to kill us all" -- and that's a common LW trope. Yet, as a regular user of SOTA AI models, it's far from clear to me that the risk exists on any foreseeable time horizon. Even today's best models are credulous and lack a certain insight and originality. As Dwarkesh once asked: > One question I had for you while we were talking about the intelligence st…

The thing about LLMs is that they're trained exclusively on text, and so they don't have much insight into these sorts of problems. But I don't know if anyone has tried making a multimodal LLM that is trained on x-ray tomography of parts under varying loads tagged with descriptions of what the parts are for - I suspect that such a multimodal model would be able to give you a good answer to that question.

Re: Playing in the Creek

#113

Post by groby_b »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #33

The author seems concerned about AI risk -- as in, "they're going to kill us all" -- and that's a common LW trope. Yet, as a regular user of SOTA AI models, it's far from clear to me that the risk exists on any foreseeable time horizon. Even today's best models are credulous and lack a certain insight and originality. As Dwarkesh once asked: > One question I had for you while we were talking about the intelligence st…

No, the LLMs aren't going to kill us all. Neither are they going to help a determined mass murderer to get us all.

They are, however, going to enable credulous idiots to drive humanity completely off a cliff. (And yes, we're seeing that in action right now). They don't need to be independent agents. They just need to seem smart.

Re: Playing in the Creek

#114

Post by ben_w »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #107
ben_w wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, but it is an AI risk. The analogy is with stock market flash-crashes, but those can be undone if everyone agrees "it was just a bug". Software operates faster than human reaction times, so there's always pressure to fully automate aspects of military equipment, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS Unfortunately, a flash- war from a bad algorithm, from a hallucination, from failing to specify that the m…

"AI Safety" in that particular context is easy: Keep humans in the loop and don't give AIs access to sensitive systems. With certain small antipersonnel drones excepted, this is already the policy of all serious militaries. Besides, that's simply not what the LW crowd is talking about. They're talking about, e.g., hypercompetent AIs developing novel undetectable biological weapons that kill all humans on purpose . (T…

> With certain small antipersonnel drones excepted

And mines, and the CIWS I linked to and several like it (I think SeaRAM is similar autonomy to engage), and the Samsung SGR-A1 whose autonomy led to people arguing that we really ought to keep humans in the loop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_autonomous_weapon

The problem is, the more your adversaries automate, the more you need to automate to keep up. Right now we can even have the argument about the SGR-A1 because it's likely to target humans who operate at human speeds and therefore a human in the loop isn't a major risk to operational success. Counter Rocket Artillery Mortar systems already need to be autonomous because human eyes can't realistically track a mortar in mid-flight.

There were a few times in the cold war where it was luck that the lack of technology that forced us to rely on humans in the loop, humans who said "no".

People are protesting against fully autonomous weapons because they're obviously useful enough to be militarily interesting, not just because they're obviously threatening.

> Besides, that's simply not what the LW crowd is talking about.

LW talks about every possible risk. I got the flash-war idea from them.

> Yet, as far as I'm aware, there's not a single important discovery or invention made by AI. No new drugs, no new solar panel materials, no new polymers, etc. And not for want of trying!

For about a decade after Word Lens showed the world that it was possible to run real time augmented reality translations on a smartphone, I've been surprising people — even fellow expat software developers — that this exists and is possible.

Today, I guess I have to surprise you with the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Given my experience with Word Lens, I fully expect to keep on surprising people with this for another decade.

Drugs/biosci:

• DSP-1181: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51315462

• Halicin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halicin

• Abaucin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abaucin

• The aforementioned 2024 Nobel Prize for AlphaFold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Che...

PV:

• Materials: https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/ai-aids-discovery-of-sol...

• Other stuff: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/08/how-ai-can-help-revo...

Polymers:

• https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.06470

• https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.03690

• https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.15354

> They know what humans know. They're no more competent than any human; they're as competent as low-level expert humans, just with superhuman speed and memory. It's not clear that they'll ever be able to move beyond what humans know and develop hypercompetence.

One of the things humans know is "how to use lab equipment to get science done": https://www.nature.com/articles/s44286-023-00002-4

"Just with superhuman speed and memory" is a lot, even if they were somehow otherwise limited to a human equivalent of IQ 90.

Re: Playing in the Creek

#115

Post by ben_w »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #68
FollowingTheDao wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It went sour for the same reason that you were "satisfied that I had done enough to secure a home, tools for my hobbies, and had raised three girls — paid for their college"; Money and selfishness. You were looking out for you and your little group. You got yours. Now what?

If you're trying to convince me that I was somehow part of the problem, it's not reaching me. I was as low(ly) as you can get in the "tech industry stack". While I still had some measure of agency as an engineer I added a crayon color picker to MacOS, added most of the PDF features people like in MacOS Preview. That was as much "driving the ship" as I was allowed — until I wasn't even allowed that. I could have skipp…

> While I still had some measure of agency as an engineer I added a crayon color picker to MacOS

Oh, that was you? One of the few bits of skeuomorphism I can still find in the OS. I wish we still had more of that.

Re: Playing in the Creek

#116

Post by ben_w »

UncleMeat wrote: post #69
tvc015 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren’t semiautonomous drones already killing soldiers in Ukraine? Can you not imagine a future with more conflict and automated killing? Maybe that’s not seen as AI risk per se?

The LessWrong-style AI risk is "AI becomes so superhuman that it is indistinguishable from God and decides to destroy all humans and we are completely powerless against its quasi-divine capabilities."

With the side-note that, historically, humans have found themselves unable to distinguish a lot of things from God, e.g. thunderclouds — and, more recently, toast.

Re: Playing in the Creek

#117

Post by pseudalopex »

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #82
sepositus wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think this style of argumentation is constructive and beneficial for the broader good of society? I can't think of a single person I've met who would respond positively to being labeled a (partial) sociopath after being able to only express a couple of paragraphs of thought.

Yes, I do, because I’m never going to change his mind, maybe I will, but probably not, but other people reading this can take sides and think about it in a non-direct way. Jesus turned over tables when they were trying to profit inside the church. His movement seemed to turn out pretty good.

> other people reading this can take sides

Fewer people can read dead comments. And what others said.

Re: Playing in the Creek

#118

Post by FollowingTheDao »

dvaun wrote: post #92
FollowingTheDao wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I do, because I’m never going to change his mind, maybe I will, but probably not, but other people reading this can take sides and think about it in a non-direct way. Jesus turned over tables when they were trying to profit inside the church. His movement seemed to turn out pretty good.

Have you considered socratic questioning and other forms of conversation, in order to affect more change? See https://www.streetepistemology.com/ for content about this. It is possible to guide discussions in a healthy manner and with positive goals in mind.

I am not trying to affect change. I am expressing myself.

Re: Playing in the Creek

#119

Post by FollowingTheDao »

babelfish wrote: post #106
FollowingTheDao wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I do, because I’m never going to change his mind, maybe I will, but probably not, but other people reading this can take sides and think about it in a non-direct way. Jesus turned over tables when they were trying to profit inside the church. His movement seemed to turn out pretty good.

Have you tried following the dao, instead?

If you encounter a mother bear with her cubs in the woods she will attack you. Her natural response has no morality. I am the same, that is how you follow the Dao.

It is funny that people thing Daoists do not get angry and yet all of you suppress anger in some unnatural way to "get along" or to make sure you are not dwnvoted.

Re: Playing in the Creek

#120

Post by Thorrez »

ryandrake wrote: post #95
Thorrez wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He ignores his wife's suggestion because, among other things, he wants to see some great looking babes. Maybe this isn't a guy whose philosophy I want to follow.

Looks like you're completely missing the point of the quote and instead rat-holing on one word that you don't like. HN in a nutshell.

I understand the point of the quote. My point was that if someone advocates for something I consider immoral, I prefer to disregard the overall philosophy that lead the person to advocate for that.

If the quote threw in some casual racism, or advocated for stealing the envelope instead of paying for it, I would similarly disregard the overall philosophy.

Post reply on HN