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Meta Superintelligence Labs' first paper is about RAG

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Re: Meta Superintelligence Labs' first paper is about RAG

#181

Post by RataNova »

godelski wrote: post #15

It's kinda funny, Meta has long had some of the best in the field, but left them untapped. I really think if they just took a step back and stop being so metric focused and let their people freely explore then they'd be winning the AI race. But with this new team, I feel like meta mostly hired the people who are really good at gaming the system. The people that care more about the money than the research. A bit of th…

The money chase is real. You can kind of tell who's in it for the comp package vs. who'd be doing the same work on a laptop in their garage if that's what it took

Re: Meta Superintelligence Labs' first paper is about RAG

#182

Post by RataNova »

hamasho wrote: post #62
godelski wrote: post #15

It's kinda funny, Meta has long had some of the best in the field, but left them untapped. I really think if they just took a step back and stop being so metric focused and let their people freely explore then they'd be winning the AI race. But with this new team, I feel like meta mostly hired the people who are really good at gaming the system. The people that care more about the money than the research. A bit of th…

My theory is that as more people compete, the top candidates become those who are best at gaming the system rather than actually being the best. Someone has probably studied this. My only evidence is job applications for GAFAM and Tinder tho.

Anytime a system gets hyper-competitive and the stakes are high, it starts selecting for people who are good at playing the system rather than just excelling at the underlying skill

Re: Meta Superintelligence Labs' first paper is about RAG

#183

Post by RataNova »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #80
hamasho wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My theory is that as more people compete, the top candidates become those who are best at gaming the system rather than actually being the best. Someone has probably studied this. My only evidence is job applications for GAFAM and Tinder tho.

I've spent most of my career working, chatting and hanging out with what might be best described as "passionate weirdos" in various quantitative areas of research. I say "weirdos" because they're people driven by an obsession with a topic, but don't always fit the mold by having the ideal combination of background, credentials and personality to land them on a big tech company research team. The other day I was spend…

The tragedy is exactly what you said: all that energy, creativity, and deep domain obsession locked out of impact because it’s not institutionally “strategic.”

Re: Meta Superintelligence Labs' first paper is about RAG

#184

Post by kakacik »

what-the-grump wrote: post #139
smokel wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I certainly didn't judge them because they are just playing the game. Please do judge them for being parasitical. They might seem successful by certain measures, like the amount of money they make, but I for one simply dislike it when people only think about themselves. As a society, we should be more cautious about narcissism and similar behaviors. Also, in the long run, this kind of behaviour makes them an annoyi…

But this is in itself selfish right? You dislike them because they don’t benefit you indirectly by benefiting society at large. The incentive structure is wrong, incentivizing things that benefit society would be the solution not judging those that exist in the current system by pretending altruism is somehow not part of the same game.

Selfish for the long term future and prosperity of mankind? Thats some good selfishness all right.

Re: Meta Superintelligence Labs' first paper is about RAG

#185

Post by naasking »

vasco wrote: post #85
naasking wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 30 fold improvement seems a tad more than incremental.

I can start brushing my teeth 30 times faster but it won't change my life. This is nice for RAG but it's a very localized improvement. And 30× sounds big but is just an order of magnitude improvement also.

Brushing your teeth is not central to your life, recalling facts correctly is, and a 30 fold improvement in the latter very well could change your life. I'll leave it to you to figure out which is a better analogy to RAG.

Re: Meta Superintelligence Labs' first paper is about RAG

#186

Post by exe34 »

vasco wrote: post #158
exe34 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

could you explain what you think the difference is? a metric is chosen, people start to game the system by doing things that make the metric improve but the original intent is lost. increasingly specific rules/laws have to be made up to make the metric appear to work, but it becomes a lost cause as more and more creative ways are found to work around the rules.

Exactly, that's the definition. It doesn't apply to timing a 100m race. There's many such situations that are simple enough and with perfect information available where this doesn’t break down and a metric is just a metric and it works great. Which is not to the detriment of the observation being true in other contexts, all I did was provide a counter example. But the example requires the metric AND the context.

it wasn't a very good counter example.

Re: Meta Superintelligence Labs' first paper is about RAG

#188

Post by vasco »

naasking wrote: post #185
vasco wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can start brushing my teeth 30 times faster but it won't change my life. This is nice for RAG but it's a very localized improvement. And 30× sounds big but is just an order of magnitude improvement also.

Brushing your teeth is not central to your life, recalling facts correctly is, and a 30 fold improvement in the latter very well could change your life. I'll leave it to you to figure out which is a better analogy to RAG.

Just remember that in this example you don't remember 30x more things, you just remember the same things 30x faster. That is a significant difference.

Re: Meta Superintelligence Labs' first paper is about RAG

#189

Post by bwfan123 »

hamasho wrote: post #62
godelski wrote: post #15

It's kinda funny, Meta has long had some of the best in the field, but left them untapped. I really think if they just took a step back and stop being so metric focused and let their people freely explore then they'd be winning the AI race. But with this new team, I feel like meta mostly hired the people who are really good at gaming the system. The people that care more about the money than the research. A bit of th…

My theory is that as more people compete, the top candidates become those who are best at gaming the system rather than actually being the best. Someone has probably studied this. My only evidence is job applications for GAFAM and Tinder tho.

I would categorize people into 2 broad extremes. 1) those that care two hoots about what others or the system expects of them and in that sense are authentic and 2) those that only care about what others or the system expects of them, and in that sense are not authentic. There is a spectrum in there.

Re: Meta Superintelligence Labs' first paper is about RAG

#190

Post by gopher_space »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #100
godelski wrote: post #15

It's kinda funny, Meta has long had some of the best in the field, but left them untapped. I really think if they just took a step back and stop being so metric focused and let their people freely explore then they'd be winning the AI race. But with this new team, I feel like meta mostly hired the people who are really good at gaming the system. The people that care more about the money than the research. A bit of th…

> Labs used to hire researchers and give them a lot of free reign. I can't think of it ever really paying off. Bell Labs is the best example. Amazing research that was unrelated to the core business off the parent company. Microsoft Research is another great one. Lots of interesting research that .. got MS some nerd points? But has materialized into very very few actual products and revenue streams. Moving AI researc…

The problem here is management expecting researchers to dump out actionable insights like a chicken laying eggs. Researchers exist so that you can rifle through their notes and steal ideas.
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