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Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

economist.com

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Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#271

Post by Sharlin »

wcfrobert wrote: post #257
tedd4u wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another "prophet," Carl Sagan in 1995 "I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have l…

This is so accurate wtf!? - "United States is a service and information economy": Finance, real estate, insurance, SaaS. - "Nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away": here's a video from Smarter everyday on how atrophied manufacturing has become in the US: [I Tried to Make Something in America]( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY ) - "Technological power in the hands of very few": AWS, Googl…

Because all this is mere extrapolation of trends seen in the 90s and before. Sagan was no psychic (or alone in predicting these things), he just knew where to look.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#272

Post by raverbashing »

alecco wrote: post #188

They think a next token predictor model is alive or can become AGI/ASI. Altman talked about making a religion. Amodei talks about "building a God" and meets with religious leaders (including the Vatican). I'm convinced these CEOs have "AI psychosis" [1]. LLMs are extremely powerful pseudo-AI and will bring a pseudo-singularity, but they are not true AI [2] and a human at the wheel is still needed for the foreseeable…

I think what we need is convince Amodei to ask the pope to train an LLM on all the secret archives of the Church

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#273

Post by stouset »

rf15 wrote: post #264
roenxi wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could an AGI/ASI exist that isn't a next token predictor? It has to be able to generate a next token in a string of text. Otherwise it can't communicate.

Don't worry, this is just humanity being too far up their own arse and conflating the map with the territory. Speech is a serialisation format, not the foundation of thought. Thus I think that any speech-first approach is inherently misguided. Speech must be a side effect.

There is a lot of research that suggests otherwise might be true for humans.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#274

Post by frozenseven »

solid_fuel wrote: post #204
Self-Perfection wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am getting tired of hearing "next token predictor" from carbon-based facial expression predictors. You are saying this like an argument which allows somehow estimate upper bound of possible influence of these entities. And I do not see how this help to make predictions. It sounds to me like saying "but air is just molecules bobbing around". OK, that's true, but does it help calculate wing aerodynamic profile? Yup,…

> I am getting tired of hearing "next token predictor" from carbon-based facial expression predictors. That's not even a clever swipe, and it's tiring seeing such a knee-jerk reaction to a completely accurate description. LLMs are next token predictors. People are not. Humans have an inner world and subjective experience. Humans learn through their experiences, not just backprop. Token predictors are lesser, they are…

>LLMs are next token predictors

The point is that this is no more relevant, informative, or even accurate than "carbon-based facial expression predictors". Any phenomenon in the Universe can be described by a simple and/or insulting short phrase. In other comments you've also shouted out "autocomplete!" and "Markov chain!", as if these phrases are a knock-down argument.

"Pachinko machine", "avalanche", and "game of mad libs" has also been used:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47916405

>Humans learn through their experiences, not just backprop.

Sure, sure. And humans move through the act of walking, not just terrestrial locomotion.

>Token predictors are lesser, they are not alive and will never be alive.

And on and on it goes...

Which means what the real world? What are we supposed to see now or in the near-future? I assume you've been saying all of this stuff since at least the launch of ChatGPT. Probably longer than that.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#275

Post by OrangeMusic »

somenameforme wrote: post #243
Self-Perfection wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am getting tired of hearing "next token predictor" from carbon-based facial expression predictors. You are saying this like an argument which allows somehow estimate upper bound of possible influence of these entities. And I do not see how this help to make predictions. It sounds to me like saying "but air is just molecules bobbing around". OK, that's true, but does it help calculate wing aerodynamic profile? Yup,…

It poses a simple problem. Take humanity back not that long ago into the past and language didn't even exist - our expressed token base was practically 0. We went from that discovering the secrets of the atom, putting a man on the Moon, and more. If you put an LLM in that starting point, they're going to do nothing but endlessly cycle over basically nothing. If you give them an infinite amount of time and processing,…

> If you give them an infinite amount of time and processing, that wouldn't change.

Hrm I doubt it actually. Llms are capable of discovery, as recent math news showed. This means a "society" of Llms could likely have progress.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#276

Post by inglor_cz »

kergonath wrote: post #177
inglor_cz wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily , but it surely reeks of corruption and requires extra scrutiny. Most professions can be abused to harm people and require some level of trust. Imagine that a developer's medailon cost 300 k.

I think FAANG developers would be better equipped than taxi driver to manage this. And besides, I don't think I am really against some kind of professional certification like actual engineers do. Right now SWE do not manage any of the downsides of what they inflict upon the world, and it's a damn shame. That said, having a limited number like taxi medallions in some cities would be stupid, even though I can see how i…

"I also think that it is not out of line to have mechanisms to ensure whoever is in a situation to kill, mug, kidnap or ransom you has no interest in doing so."

The problem in practice seems that those mechanisms get hijacked by the very people whom they should prevent from being in that service.

IDK about NYC, but here in Central Europe, taxi services regulated by municipal governments were consistently treating their customers worse than Uber/Bolt. Outright murders were rare, but sexual harassment, fraud, verbal abuse, even "minor" things like the cars smelling of tobacco smoke were worse. Occassionally, there were cars set on fire or brandishing of weapons when those drivers got into conflicts. That's not ancient history and people still remember.

That happens when guys with deep pockets capture the regulatory services and make them into their own cash cow, using force of law to prevent any competition from emerging.

If you had a ballot about canceling Uber and going back to the old model here, that would lose by something like 15:85. The improvement in service and safety is just staggering.

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#277

Post by lelanthran »

SilverElfin wrote: post #103

Yes that’s because the pope is pushing actual messianism. Are people forgetting what he stands for and which organization he represents? It’s silly that people are suddenly putting him on a pedestal. The Catholic Church is an evil force that has destroyed many other countries’ cultures and religions, not to mention enabled the mass systematic abuse of children. The pope is against tech companies getting power but is…

> No thanks. Tech companies are far less evil than Catholicism.

I'm atheist, been in tech for almost 30 years now, and even I don't think that is true.

What religion and/or belief system do you follow?

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#278

Post by ipdashc »

crooked-v wrote: post #241
kelnos wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A novel math proof does not make something AI.

Or it makes it AI in the broad sense, but not AGI. Maybe it's time to borrow "Virtual Intelligence" terminology from Mass Effect - something that's 'smart' but that doesn't have its own true volition or ability to materially self-improve.

Funny enough, it's already taken: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_intelligence

But it kind of fits?

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#279

Post by rf15 »

stouset wrote: post #273
rf15 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry, this is just humanity being too far up their own arse and conflating the map with the territory. Speech is a serialisation format, not the foundation of thought. Thus I think that any speech-first approach is inherently misguided. Speech must be a side effect.

There is a lot of research that suggests otherwise might be true for humans.

I think that can only happen to empire cultures: they only learn one language, and suddenly people think that's all there is. I speak five languages, my wife seven. Language synthesis is a feature, not the entire product, in my experience. Btw, this is only the third best language I can speak/write in. I didn't use AI, autocomplete, spell check, or a dictionary to construct any of my posts. All typos and imperfect grammar are perfectly organicly sourced.

edit: I just remembered, don't we have tons of research suggesting that at least birds, whales and apes/monkeys use words and simple syntax? didn't we teach a few gorillas sign language/symbols?

Re: Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

#280

Post by pona-a »

OrangeMusic wrote: post #275
somenameforme wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It poses a simple problem. Take humanity back not that long ago into the past and language didn't even exist - our expressed token base was practically 0. We went from that discovering the secrets of the atom, putting a man on the Moon, and more. If you put an LLM in that starting point, they're going to do nothing but endlessly cycle over basically nothing. If you give them an infinite amount of time and processing,…

> If you give them an infinite amount of time and processing, that wouldn't change. Hrm I doubt it actually. Llms are capable of discovery, as recent math news showed. This means a "society" of Llms could likely have progress.

Only by having the LLM random walk the hypothesis space with a validator rejecting invalid ones.

The reason why LLM hypotheses are any good is because it already consumed a civilization worth of knowledge. You couldn't have bootstrapped such system with nothing but a few priors/axioms and let it discover the universe.

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