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Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

reuters.com

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Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#171

Post by rdedev »

chaxor wrote: post #156
rdedev wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair LLMs are predicting the next token. It's just that to get better and better predictions it needs to understand some level of reasoning and math. However it feels to me that a lot of this reasoning is brute forced from the training data. Like chatgpt gets some things wrong when adding two very large numbers. If it really knew the algorithm for adding two numbers it shouldn't be making them in the first plac…

Of course it predict the next token. Every single person on earth knows that so it's not worth repeating at all. As for the fact that it gets things wrong sometimes - sure, this doesn't say it actually learned every algorithm (in whichever model you may be thinking about). But the nice thing is that we now have this proof via category theory, and it allows us to both frame and understand what has occurred, and to con…

The fact that it sometimes fails simple algorithms for large numbers but shows good performance in other complex algorithms with simple inputs seems to me that something on a fundamental level is still insufficient

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#172

Post by fnordpiglet »

I don’t understand the need to control AI tech, no matter how advanced, in any way what-so-ever.

It is a tool. If I use a tool for illegal purposes I have broken the law. I can be held accountable for having broken the law. If the laws are deficient, make the laws stronger and punish people for wrong deed, regardless of the tool at hand.

This is a naked attempt to build a regulatory moat while capitalizing on fear of the unknown and ignorance. It’s attempting to regulate research into something that has no external ability to cause harm without the use of a principal directing it.

I can see a day (perhaps) when AIs have some form of independent autonomy, or even display agency and sentience, when we can revisit. Other issues come into play as well, such as the morality of owning a sentience and what that entails. But that is way down the road. And even further if Microsoft’s proxy closes the doors on anyone but Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Facebook.

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#173

Post by adamsmith143 »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #152
ramraj07 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine being supposedly at the forefront of AI or engineering and being the last people (if ever) to concede simple concepts could materialize complex intelligence. Even the publicly released version of this thing is doing insane tasks, passes any meaningful version of a Turing test, reasons it's way into nearly every professional certification exam out there, and you're still insisting its not smart or worrying bec…

your comment reads to me as totally disconnected to the OP, whose concern relates to using the appearance of intelligence as a scare tactic to build a regulatory moat.

Actually OP is clearly, ironically, parroting the stochastic parrot idea that LLMs are incapable of anything other than basic token prediction and dismissing any of their other emergent abilities.

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#175

Post by dmix »

pjc50 wrote: post #155
throwaway71271 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Quite. Meanwhile on the rest of the internet people are gleefully promoting AI as a means of firing every single person who writes words for a living. Or draws art.

GPT is so far from threatening “every single person who writes words for a living” anyway. Unless you’re writing generic SEO filler content. Not sure who is claiming that but they don’t understand how it works if they do exist at scale.

Writing has always been a low paid shrinking job well before AI. Besides a tiny group of writers at the big firms. I took a journalism course for fun at UofT in my spare time and the professors had nothing but horror stories for trying to make a job out of writing (ie getting a NYT bestseller and getting $1 cheques in the mail). They basically told the students to only do it as a hobby unless you have some engaged niche audience. Which is more about the writer being interesting rather than the generic writing process.

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#176

Post by alpaca128 »

lm28469 wrote: post #86
logicallee wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Imagine thinking that regression based function approximators are capable of anything other than fitting the data you give it. Are you aware that you are an 80 billion neuron biological neural network?

And this is why I always hate how computer parts are named with biological terms.... a neural network's neuron doesn't share much with a human brain's neuron Just like a CPU isn't "like your brain" and HDD "like your memories" Absolutely nothing says our current approach is the right one to mimic a human brain

> a neural network's neuron doesn't share much with a human brain's neuron

True, it's just binary logic gates, but it's a lot of them and if they can simulate pretty much anything why should intelligence be magically exempt?

> Absolutely nothing says our current approach is the right one to mimic a human brain

Just like nothing says it's the wrong one. I don't think those regulation suggestions are a good idea at all (and say a lot about a company called OpenAI), but that doesn't mean we should treat it like the NFT hype.

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#177

Post by samsolomon »

lettergram wrote: post #153
elil17 wrote: post #129

This is the message I shared with my senator (edited to remove information which could identify me). I hope others will send similar messages. Dear Senator [X], I am an engineer working for [major employer in the state]. I am extremely concerned about the message that Sam Altman is sharing with the Judiciary committee today. Altman wants to create regulatory roadblocks to developing AI. My company produces AI-enabled…

I made something just for writing your congress person / senator, using generative AI ironically: https://vocalvoters.com/

Cool product! Your pay button appears to be disabled though.

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#178

Post by wkat4242 »

kypro wrote: post #42
srslack wrote: post #9

Imagine thinking that regression based function approximators are capable of anything other than fitting the data you give it. Then imagine willfully hyping up and scaring people who don't understand, and because it can predict words you take advantage of the human tendency to anthropomorphize, so it follows that it is something capable of generalized and adaptable intelligence. Shame on all of the people involved in…

Even if you're correct about the capabilities of LLMs (I don't think you are), there are still obvious dangers here. I wrote a comment recently trying to explain how even if you believe all LLMs can (and will ever) do is regurgitate their training data that you should still be concerned. For example, imagine in 5 years we have GPT-7, and you ask GPT-7 to solve humanity's great problems. From its training data GPT-7 m…

> This causes the lab to unknowingly produce a highly contagious bioweapon which causes infertility.

I don't think this would be a bad thing :) Some people will always be immune, humanity wouldn't die out. And it would be a humane way for gradual population reduction. It would create some temporary problems with elderly care (like what China is facing now) but will make long term human prosperity much more likely. We just can't keep growing against limited resources.

The Dan Brown book Inferno had a similar premise and I was disappointed they changed the ending in the movie so that it didn't happen.

Re: Sam Altman goes before US Congress to propose licenses for building AI

#179

Post by glitcher »

chaxor wrote: post #156
rdedev wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair LLMs are predicting the next token. It's just that to get better and better predictions it needs to understand some level of reasoning and math. However it feels to me that a lot of this reasoning is brute forced from the training data. Like chatgpt gets some things wrong when adding two very large numbers. If it really knew the algorithm for adding two numbers it shouldn't be making them in the first plac…

Of course it predict the next token. Every single person on earth knows that so it's not worth repeating at all. As for the fact that it gets things wrong sometimes - sure, this doesn't say it actually learned every algorithm (in whichever model you may be thinking about). But the nice thing is that we now have this proof via category theory, and it allows us to both frame and understand what has occurred, and to con…

> Of course it predict the next token. Every single person on earth knows that so it's not worth repeating at all

What's a token?

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