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Anthropic Economic Index report: economic primitives

anthropic.com

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Re: Anthropic Economic Index report: economic primitives

#31
post #4

This is very cool but it's not quite what I expected out of economic primitives. I expected to see measures of the economic productivity generated as a result of artificial intelligence use. Instead, what I'm seeing is measures of artificial intelligence use. I don't really see how this is measuring the most important economic primitives. Nothing related to productivity at all actually. Everything about how and where…

> I expected to see measures of the economic productivity generated as a result of artificial intelligence use.

>Instead, what I'm seeing is measures of artificial intelligence use.

Fun fact: this is also how most large companies are measuring their productivity increases from AI usage ;), alongside asking employees to tell them how much faster AI is making them while simultaneously telling them they're expected to go faster with AI.

Re: Anthropic Economic Index report: economic primitives

#32
post #6

> This also highlights the importance of model design and training. While Claude is able to respond in a highly sophisticated manner, it tends to do so only when users input sophisticated prompts. If the output of the model depends on the intelligence of the person picking outputs out of its training corpus, is the model intelligent? This is kind of what I don't quite understand when people talk about the models bein…

Humans also respond differently when prompted in different ways. For example, politeness often begets politeness. I would expect that to be reflected in training data.

I think that's what is happening. It's simulating a conversation, after all. A bit like code switching.

Re: Anthropic Economic Index report: economic primitives

#33
post #6

> This also highlights the importance of model design and training. While Claude is able to respond in a highly sophisticated manner, it tends to do so only when users input sophisticated prompts. If the output of the model depends on the intelligence of the person picking outputs out of its training corpus, is the model intelligent? This is kind of what I don't quite understand when people talk about the models bein…

i don't know, are we intelligent? you could argue that our input (senses) entirely define the output (thoughts, muscle movements, etc)

There's a bit of baked-in stuff as well. We are a full culture-mind-body[-spirit] system.

Re: Anthropic Economic Index report: economic primitives

#34

The title actually cringes me out a bit, it reads like early report titles in academia where young students (myself no doubt incl back when) try their hardest at making a title sound clever but in actuality only achieve obscuration of their own material.

Reminds me of psychohistory.

Re: Anthropic Economic Index report: economic primitives

#35
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans also respond differently when prompted in different ways. For example, politeness often begets politeness. I would expect that to be reflected in training data.

If I, a moron, hire a PhD to crack a tough problem for me, I don't need to go back and forth prompting him at a PhD level. I can set him loose on my problem and he'll come back to me with a solution.

Well if it ever gets to be a full replacement for phds, you’ll know cause it will have already replaced you.

Re: Anthropic Economic Index report: economic primitives

#36
post #27
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a chart that shows it. The education level of the input determines the education level of the output. These things are supposed to have intelligence on tap. I'll imagine this in a very simple way. Let's say "intellignce" is like a fluid. It's a finite thing. Intelligence is very valuable, it's the substrate for real-world problem solving that makes these things ostensibly worth trillions of dollars. Intelli…

ofc what I'm getting at is, you can't get something from nothing. There is no free lunch. You spend energy distilling the intelligence of the entire internet into a set of weights, but you still had to expend the energy to have humans create the internet first. And on top of this, in order to pick out what you want from the corpus, you have to put some energy in: first, the energy of inference, but second and far mor…

the same place an increase in power comes from when you use a lever.

Re: Anthropic Economic Index report: economic primitives

#37
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no payoff whatsoever? I just asked Claude to do a task that would have previously taken me four days. Then I got up and got lunch, and when I was back, it was done. I would never make the argument that there are no risks. But there's also no way you can make the argument there are no payoffs!

> I just asked Claude to do a task that would have previously taken me four days. I think this probably says more about you than the "AI"

That's not a very constructive thought given you don't know what the task is or why it could have taken them days. In a field as large and complex as software, there are myriad reasons why any single person could find substantial time-saving opportunities with LLMs, and it doesn't have to point to their own inadequacies.

Re: Anthropic Economic Index report: economic primitives

#38
post #6

> This also highlights the importance of model design and training. While Claude is able to respond in a highly sophisticated manner, it tends to do so only when users input sophisticated prompts. If the output of the model depends on the intelligence of the person picking outputs out of its training corpus, is the model intelligent? This is kind of what I don't quite understand when people talk about the models bein…

i don't know, are we intelligent? you could argue that our input (senses) entirely define the output (thoughts, muscle movements, etc)

[deleted]

Re: Anthropic Economic Index report: economic primitives

#39
post #6

> This also highlights the importance of model design and training. While Claude is able to respond in a highly sophisticated manner, it tends to do so only when users input sophisticated prompts. If the output of the model depends on the intelligence of the person picking outputs out of its training corpus, is the model intelligent? This is kind of what I don't quite understand when people talk about the models bein…

What is a "sophisticated prompt"? What if I just tack on "please think about this a lot and respond in a highly sophisticated manner" to my question/prompt? Anyone can do this once they're made aware of this potential issue. Sometimes the UX layer even adds this for you in the system prompt, you just have to tick the checkbox for "I want a long, highly sophisticated answer".

In general it will match the language style you use.

If you ask a sophisticated question (lots of clauses, college reading level or above) it will respond in kind.

You are basically moving where the generation happens in the latent space. By asking in a sophisticated way you are moving the latent space away from say children's books and towards say PhD dissertations.

Re: Anthropic Economic Index report: economic primitives

#40
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans also respond differently when prompted in different ways. For example, politeness often begets politeness. I would expect that to be reflected in training data.

If I, a moron, hire a PhD to crack a tough problem for me, I don't need to go back and forth prompting him at a PhD level. I can set him loose on my problem and he'll come back to me with a solution.

> hire a PhD to crack a tough problem for me, I don't need to go back and forth prompting him at a PhD level. I can set him loose on my problem and he'll come back to me with a solution.

In my experience with many PhDs they are just as prone to getting off track or using their pet techniques as LLMs! And many find it very hard to translate their work into everyday language too...

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