Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately • Hacker News Board

Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately

#111

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 5:25 PM UTC

richk449 wrote: post #109

matusp wrote: post #8

Observe what the AI companies are doing, not what they are saying. If they would expect to achieve AGI soon, their behaviour would be completely different. Why bother developing chatbots or doing sales, when you will be operating AGI in a few short years? Surely, all resources should go towards that goal, as it is supposed to usher the humanity into a new prosperous age (somehow).

> If they would expect to achieve AGI soon, their behaviour would be completely different. Why bother developing chatbots or doing sales, when you will be operating AGI in a few short years? What if chatbots and user interactions ARE the path to AGI? Two reasons they could be: (1) Reinforcement learning in AI has proven to be very powerful. Humans get to GI through learning too - they aren’t born with much intelligen…

[deleted]

Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately

#112

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 5:27 PM UTC

richk449 wrote: post #110

imiric wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related to your point: if these tools are close to having super-human intelligence, and they make humans so much more productive, why aren't we seeing improvements at a much faster rate than we are now? Why aren't inherent problems like hallucination already solved, or at least less of an issue? Surely the smartest researchers and engineers money can buy would be dogfooding, no? This is the main point that proves to…

> if these tools are close to having super-human intelligence, and they make humans so much more productive, why aren't we seeing improvements at a much faster rate than we are now? Why aren't inherent problems like hallucination already solved, or at least less of an issue? Surely the smartest researchers and engineers money can buy would be dogfooding, no? Hallucination does seem to be much less of an issue now. I…

[deleted]

Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately

#113

Post by xoralkindi » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 5:30 PM UTC

imiric wrote: post #75

matusp wrote: post #8

Observe what the AI companies are doing, not what they are saying. If they would expect to achieve AGI soon, their behaviour would be completely different. Why bother developing chatbots or doing sales, when you will be operating AGI in a few short years? Surely, all resources should go towards that goal, as it is supposed to usher the humanity into a new prosperous age (somehow).

Related to your point: if these tools are close to having super-human intelligence, and they make humans so much more productive, why aren't we seeing improvements at a much faster rate than we are now? Why aren't inherent problems like hallucination already solved, or at least less of an issue? Surely the smartest researchers and engineers money can buy would be dogfooding, no? This is the main point that proves to…

> It can generate data that mimics anything humans have produced...

No, it can generate data that mimics anything humans have put on the WWW

Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately

#114

Post by omnicognate » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 5:44 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #69

bsenftner wrote: post #7

Also, AGI is not just around the corner. We need artificial comprehension for that, and we don't even have a theory how comprehension works. Comprehension is the fusing of separate elements into new functional wholes, dynamically abstracting observations, evaluating them for plausibility, and reconstituting the whole - and all instantaneously, for security purposes, of every sense constantly. We have no technology th…

We only have two computational tools to work with - deterministic and random behavior. So whatever comprehension/understanding/original thought/consciousness is, it's some algorithmic combination of deterministic and random inputs/outputs. I know that sounds broad or obvious, but people seem to easily and unknowingly wander into "Human intelligence is magically transcendent".

What you state is called the Physical Church-Turing Thesis, and it's neither obvious nor necessarily true.

I don't know if you're making it, but the simplest mistake would be to think that you can prove that a computer can evaluate any mathematical function. If that were the case then "it's got to be doable with algorithms" would have a fairly strong basis. Anything the mind does that an algorithm can't would have to be so "magically transcendent" that it's beyond the scope of the mathematical concept of "function". However, this isn't the case. There are many mathematical functions that are proven to be impossible for any algorithm to implement. Look up uncomputable functions you're unfamiliar with this.

The second mistake would be to think that we have some proof that all physically realisable functions are computable by an algorithm. That's the Physical Church-Turing Thesis mentioned above, and as the name indicates it's a thesis, not a theorem. It is a statement about physical reality, so it could only ever be empirically supported, not some absolute mathematical truth.

It's a fascinating rabbit hole if you're interested - what we actually do and do not know for sure about the generality of algorithms.

Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately

#115

Post by tuatoru » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 5:49 PM UTC

rvz wrote: post #13

matusp wrote: post #8

Observe what the AI companies are doing, not what they are saying. If they would expect to achieve AGI soon, their behaviour would be completely different. Why bother developing chatbots or doing sales, when you will be operating AGI in a few short years? Surely, all resources should go towards that goal, as it is supposed to usher the humanity into a new prosperous age (somehow).

Exactly. For example, Microsoft was building data centers all over the world since "AGI" was "around the corner" according to them. Now they are cancelling those plans. For them "AGI" was cancelled. OpenAI claims to be closer and closer to "AGI" as more top scientists left or are getting poached by other labs that are behind. So why would you leave if the promise of achieving "AGI" was going to produce "$100B dollars…

> Their actions tell more than any of their statements or claims.

At Microsoft, "AI" is spelled "H1-B".

Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately

#116

Post by andrei_says_ » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 5:49 PM UTC

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #94

RugnirViking wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very very good at sounding like it understands stuff. Almost as good as actually understanding stuff in some fields, sure. But it's definitely not the same. It will confidently analyze and describe a chess position using advanced sounding book techniques, but its all fundamentally flawed, often missing things that are extremely obvious (like, an undefended queen free to take) while trying to sound like its a sea…

A sufficiently good simulation of understanding is functionally equivalent to understanding. At that point, the question of whether the model really does understand is pointless. We might as well argue about whether humans understand.

In the Catch me if you Can movie, Leo diCaprio’s character wears a surgeon’s gown and confidently says “I concur”.

What I’m hearing here is that you are willing to get your surgery done by him and not by one of the real doctors - if he is capable of pronouncing enough doctor-sounding phrases.

Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately

#117

Post by leptons » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 5:51 PM UTC

richk449 wrote: post #110

imiric wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related to your point: if these tools are close to having super-human intelligence, and they make humans so much more productive, why aren't we seeing improvements at a much faster rate than we are now? Why aren't inherent problems like hallucination already solved, or at least less of an issue? Surely the smartest researchers and engineers money can buy would be dogfooding, no? This is the main point that proves to…

> if these tools are close to having super-human intelligence, and they make humans so much more productive, why aren't we seeing improvements at a much faster rate than we are now? Why aren't inherent problems like hallucination already solved, or at least less of an issue? Surely the smartest researchers and engineers money can buy would be dogfooding, no? Hallucination does seem to be much less of an issue now. I…

Are you hallucinating?? "AI" is still constantly hallucinating. It still writes pointless code that does nothing towards anything I need it to do, a lot more often than is acceptable.

Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately

#118

Post by andrew_lettuce » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 5:51 PM UTC

leoc wrote: post #46

Game_Ender wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the implicit take is that if your company hits AGI your equity package will do something like 10x-100x even if the company is already big. The only other way to do that is join a startup early enough to ride its growth wave. Another way to say it is that people think it’s much more likely for each decent LLM startup grow really strongly first several years then plateau vs. then for their current established p…

A catch here is that individual workers may have priorities which are altered due to the strong natural preference for assuring financial independence. Even if you were a hot AI researcher who felt (and this is just a hypothetical) that your company was the clear industry leader and had, say, a 75% chance of soon achieving something AGI-adjacent and enabling massive productivity gains, you might still (and quite reas…

You're right, but the narrative out of these companies directly refutes this position. They're explicitly saying that 1. AGI changes everything, 2. It's just around the corner, 3. They're completely dedicated to achieving it; nothing is more important.

Then they leave for more money.

Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately

#119

Post by imiric » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 5:54 PM UTC

richk449 wrote: post #110

imiric wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related to your point: if these tools are close to having super-human intelligence, and they make humans so much more productive, why aren't we seeing improvements at a much faster rate than we are now? Why aren't inherent problems like hallucination already solved, or at least less of an issue? Surely the smartest researchers and engineers money can buy would be dogfooding, no? This is the main point that proves to…

> if these tools are close to having super-human intelligence, and they make humans so much more productive, why aren't we seeing improvements at a much faster rate than we are now? Why aren't inherent problems like hallucination already solved, or at least less of an issue? Surely the smartest researchers and engineers money can buy would be dogfooding, no? Hallucination does seem to be much less of an issue now. I…

Not at all. The reason it's not talked about as much these days is because the prevailing way to work around it is by using "agents". I.e. by continuously prompting the LLM in a loop until it happens to generate the correct response. This brute force approach is hardly a solution, especially in fields that don't have a quick way of verifying the output. In programming, trying to compile the code can catch many (but definitely not all) issues. In other science and humanities fields this is just not possible, and verifying the output is much more labor intensive.

The other reason is because the primary focus of the last 3 years has been scaling the data and hardware up, with a bunch of (much needed) engineering around it. This has produced better results, but it can't sustain the AGI promises for much longer. The industry can only survive on shiny value added services and smoke and mirrors for so long.

Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately

#120

Post by RaftPeople » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 5:56 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #69

bsenftner wrote: post #7

Also, AGI is not just around the corner. We need artificial comprehension for that, and we don't even have a theory how comprehension works. Comprehension is the fusing of separate elements into new functional wholes, dynamically abstracting observations, evaluating them for plausibility, and reconstituting the whole - and all instantaneously, for security purposes, of every sense constantly. We have no technology th…

We only have two computational tools to work with - deterministic and random behavior. So whatever comprehension/understanding/original thought/consciousness is, it's some algorithmic combination of deterministic and random inputs/outputs. I know that sounds broad or obvious, but people seem to easily and unknowingly wander into "Human intelligence is magically transcendent".

> but people seem to easily and unknowingly wander into "Human intelligence is magically transcendent".

But the poster you responded to didn't say it's magically transcendent, they just pointed out that there are many significantly hard problems that we don't solutions for yet.