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Andrej Karpathy – It will take a decade to work through the issues with agents

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Re: Andrej Karpathy – It will take a decade to work through the issues with agents

#181

Post by exe34 »

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #134
Imnimo wrote: post #68

>What takes the long amount of time and the way to think about it is that it’s a march of nines. Every single nine is a constant amount of work. Every single nine is the same amount of work. When you get a demo and something works 90% of the time, that’s just the first nine. Then you need the second nine, a third nine, a fourth nine, a fifth nine. While I was at Tesla for five years or so, we went through maybe three…

The interview which I've watched recently with Rich Sutton left me with the impression that AGI is not just a matter of adding more 9s. The interviewer had an idea that he took for granted: that to understand language you have to have a model of the world. LLMs seem to udnerstand language therefore they've trained a model of the world. Sutton rejected the premise immediately. He might be right in being skeptical here…

To me, it's a matter of a very big checklist - you can keep adding tasks to the list, but if it keeps marching onwards checking things off your list, some day you will get there. whether it's a linear or asymptotic march, only time will tell.

Re: Andrej Karpathy – It will take a decade to work through the issues with agents

#182

Post by Yoric »

omidsa1 wrote: post #146
Imnimo wrote: post #68

>What takes the long amount of time and the way to think about it is that it’s a march of nines. Every single nine is a constant amount of work. Every single nine is the same amount of work. When you get a demo and something works 90% of the time, that’s just the first nine. Then you need the second nine, a third nine, a fourth nine, a fifth nine. While I was at Tesla for five years or so, we went through maybe three…

I also quite like the way he puts it. However, from a certain point onward, the AI itself will contribute to the development—adding nines—and that’s the key difference between this analogy of nines in other systems (including earlier domain‑specific ML ones) and the path to AGI. That's why we can expect fast acceleration to take off within two years.

It's a possibility, but far from certainty.

If you look at it differently, assembly language may have been one nine, compilers may have been the next nine, successive generations of language until ${your favorite language} one more nine, and yet, they didn't get us noticeably closer to AGI.

Re: Andrej Karpathy – It will take a decade to work through the issues with agents

#184

Post by [deleted] »

flyinglizard wrote: post #94
6d6b73 wrote: post #65

Even without AGI, current LLMs will change society in ways we can't yet imagine. And this is both good and bad. Current LLMs are just a different type of automation, not mechanical like control systems and robots, but intellectual. They don't have to be able to think independently, but as long as they automate some white-collar tasks, they will change how the rest of society works. The simple transistor is just a sma…

The same thing you described that makes LLM great also make them entirely non-deterministic and unreliable for serious automated applications.

[deleted]

Re: Andrej Karpathy – It will take a decade to work through the issues with agents

#185

Post by godelski »

Imnimo wrote: post #68

>What takes the long amount of time and the way to think about it is that it’s a march of nines. Every single nine is a constant amount of work. Every single nine is the same amount of work. When you get a demo and something works 90% of the time, that’s just the first nine. Then you need the second nine, a third nine, a fourth nine, a fifth nine. While I was at Tesla for five years or so, we went through maybe three…

It's a good way to think about lots of things. It's Pareto efficiency. The 80/20 rule

20% of your effort gets you 80% of the way. But most of your time is spent getting that last 20%. People often don't realize that this is fractal like in nature, as it draws from the power distribution. So of that 20% you still have left, the same holds true. 20% of your time (20% * 80% = 16% -> 36%) to get 80% (80% * 20% => 96%) again and again. The 80/20 numbers aren't actually realistic (or constant) but it's a decent guide.

It's also something tech has been struggling with lately. Move fast and break things is a great way to get most of the way there. But you also left a wake of destruction and tabled a million little things along the way. Someone needs to go back and clean things up. Someone needs to revisit those tabled things. While each thing might be little, we solve big problems by breaking them down into little ones. So each big problem is a sum of many little ones, meaning they shouldn't be quickly dismissed. And like the 9's analogy, 99.9% of the time is still 9hrs of downtime a year. It is still 1e6 cases out of 1e9. A million cases is not a small problem. Scale is great and has made our field amazing, but it is a double edged sword.

I think it's also something people struggle with. It's very easy to become above average, or even well above average at something. Just trying will often get you above average. It can make you feel like you know way more but the trap is that while in some domains above average is not far from mastery in other domains above average is closer to no skill than it is to mastery. Like how having $100m puts your wealth closer to a homeless person than a billionaire. At $100m you feel way closer to the billionaire because you're much further up than the person with nothing but the curve is exponential.

Re: Andrej Karpathy – It will take a decade to work through the issues with agents

#187

Post by Yoric »

jakeydus wrote: post #179
Imnimo wrote: post #68

>What takes the long amount of time and the way to think about it is that it’s a march of nines. Every single nine is a constant amount of work. Every single nine is the same amount of work. When you get a demo and something works 90% of the time, that’s just the first nine. Then you need the second nine, a third nine, a fourth nine, a fifth nine. While I was at Tesla for five years or so, we went through maybe three…

You know what they say, a Silicon Valley 9 is a 10 anywhere else. Or something like that.

I assume you're describing the fact that Silicon Valley culture keeps pushing out products before they're fully baked?

Re: Andrej Karpathy – It will take a decade to work through the issues with agents

#188

Post by Yoric »

goalieca wrote: post #79

I remember attending a lecture from a famous quantum computing researcher in 2003. He said that quantum computing is 15-20 years away and then he followed up by saying that if he told anyone it was further away then he wouldn't get funding!

And now (useful) quantum computing is 5 years away! Has been for a few years, too.

Re: Andrej Karpathy – It will take a decade to work through the issues with agents

#189

Post by an0malous »

ionwake wrote: post #57
andy_ppp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it’s because of money and the hype cycle.

I mean you say this, but I havent touched a line of code as a programmer in months, having been totally replaced by AI. I mean sure I now "control" the AI, but I still think these no AGI for 2 decades claims are a bit rough.

Let’s see the code
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