Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#301

Post by clmul » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 5:51 PM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #278

pron wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, I was talking the language, not the work. It makes sense to study AI as it does many other subjects, but we don't know that it will "have consequences that dwarf everything else" because we don't know what it will be able to do and when (we think that it could but so could, say, a supervirus, or climate change, or the return of fascism). People hang all sort of dreams on AI precisely because of that. Th…

We don't know whether AGI is possible or even exactly what it is. However, if a form of intelligence where adding more hardware adds more capabilities in the fashion of present computing but where the capacities are robust and general purpose like humans rather than fragile and specialized like current software, then we'd have of amazing power - brilliant people can amazing things. A device that's akin to an army of…

> However, if a form of intelligence where adding more hardware adds more capabilities in the fashion of present computing but where the capacities are robust and general purpose like humans rather than fragile and specialized like current software, then we'd have of amazing power - brilliant people can amazing things.

That's a very big if... Also, I'd argue that most progress happens not because of some brilliant people, but because of many people working together... Then if your AGI only reaches the level of intelligence of humans and maybe a bit more (what does more even mean in terms of human intelligence? more emphatic? faster calculation ability? more memory? what would the use of this be? all things we can't really oversee), it raises the question whether this would ever be possible in a cost-efficient way (human intelligence seems like it is, in a certain way, "cheap").

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#302

Post by stinkbug9o » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #84

marketdroid933 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t describe the terms of the deal. Is it $1 billion in cash/stock? Or $1 billion in Azure credits and engineering hours?

From some other comment, it says its a cash deal.

$1 billion - costs of operating exclusively on Azure.

Not that it’s a raw deal, but it smells a bit disingenuous to peddle it like this. MS gets a big chunk back thanks to that exclusive arrangement.

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#303

Post by gonehome » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

StreamBright wrote: post #297

gonehome wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really - we're not sure if warp drive is possible given the physical constraints of the universe. AGI is possible because intelligence is possible (and common on earth) in nature.

Following your reasoning, flying with the speed of light is possible because photons travel with the speed of light. We are not photons though. Is it possible or not to travel with the speed of light with a spaceship?

Warp drives travel faster than the speed of light? That's what I meant by not possible.

Ignoring that if we saw miniature warp drives everywhere around us in nature then yes I would be more confident they were possible.

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#304

Post by kyruzic » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

leesec wrote: post #87

kyruzic wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you claiming that people claimed AI was impossible and openAi (or any other "AI") has proven those people wrong. If so please provide some evidence of this happening.

I believe they are claiming that things are "AI" or "Impossible for AI" until AI actually does them, in which case, the goalposts get moved. See: DeepBlue, AlphaGo, GPT-2.

No one shifted the goal post whatsoever in those cases. We've had computers that could beat humans in video games, and board games for decades. Improving those so they could beat better players was not thought to be impossible.

The same goes for writing text articles. Go on any /r/politics thread you'll surely see bots writing text that does a good job of convincing people that it was human written. So slightly, or even significantly, improving those is not something that people doubted would be possible.

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#305

Post by breck » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

tedivm wrote: post #285

breck wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Humans don't seem to need anywhere near the same level of data or training that our current models need. I find this to be a common misunderstanding. If I show you one Stirch Wrench, and you've never seen one before, you learn instantly and perhaps for the rest of your life you'll know what a Strich Wrench is. The problem is I didn't show you 1 example. You saw perhaps millions of examples (your conscious process f…

I think what you're terming a misunderstanding is actually fairly well known, but doesn't account for the magnitude of the sitution. Here's a great article about a paper showing that humans prior knowledge does help with learning new tasks- https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610434/why-humans-learn-f... However, that doesn't account for how quickly toddlers learn a variety of things with a small amount of information…

I don’t believe incrementalism will get us their either. We need many more 10x+ advances. But I think it’s relatively clear where those advances need to be. I think simply by making 10x advances in maybe 100 or 1k domains we’ll get there. Neuralink for example, just announced many 10x+ advances, such as the number of electrodes you can put in the brain. Our lab is working on a number of things that will be also 10x advances in various sub domains.

Lots of advances in many fields will lead to something greater than the sum of their parts.

Edit: p.s. I like your comment about toddlers. As a first time father of a 6 month old, its been very intellectually interesting watching her learn, in addition to just being the greatest bundle of joy ever :)

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#306

Post by gonehome » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

sverige wrote: post #298

mikorym wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would AGI dwarf anything? There are at least 7 billion beings on the planet with AGI already. I think a bigger problem is the general well being of the aforementioned 7 billion entities.

AGI would dwarf those 7 billion people because it would concentrate tremendous power into the hands of a very few. It's the dream of being one of the few who gets to control and direct that concentrated power that fuels these dreams, which is why it's imperative that they dress it up in the language of benefiting society. The essence of the ethical problem with AI is that there is no person or small group of people w…

I think this is a pretty big misunderstanding of the AGI issue.

Nobody is going to control the hyper-intelligent AGI if its goals are not aligned with human goals more generally. That's the nature of something being a lot smarter than you with its own goals.

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#307

Post by clmul » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #295

pron wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, I was talking the language, not the work. It makes sense to study AI as it does many other subjects, but we don't know that it will "have consequences that dwarf everything else" because we don't know what it will be able to do and when (we think that it could but so could, say, a supervirus, or climate change, or the return of fascism). People hang all sort of dreams on AI precisely because of that. Th…

I can understand your point about the language, but I guess I think it's reasonable to set the goal for what you actually want and work towards it. It may turn out to be unattainable, but I think generally you need to at least set it as the goal. It also seems less clear to me that they are close or far from it (I don't think it's on the same level as warp drive). I don't know about the god thing you mention and the…

> Therefore we should try and figure out a way to make it safe before AGI exists.

Makes no sense to me, how would you ever be able to figure out a way to make something safe before it even exists?

Someone who has never built a nuclear reactor most likely could not think of a way to prevent the Chernobyl disaster.

(OK, maybe this is a wrong example as someone who did couldn't do this either, but the point should be clear)

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#308

Post by jorjordandan » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

bogidon wrote: post #257

pron wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It comes down to whether you believe AGI is achievable. No, it does not. I very much believe AI (or AGI, as you call it) is achievable, but may I remind you that some years after the invention of neural networks, Norbert Wiener, one of the greatest minds of his generations, said that the secret of intelligence would be unlocked within five years, and Alan Turing -- a component of your very own post-pre-AGI era's AG…

Pron, I fully support your take here. Most AGI campaigners here clearly think that we must have already figured out a lot about how consciousness works. But is there any evidence to back that up? No, because we _haven't_ created consciousness. The most we've done is manipulate _existing_ consciousness. Sure, we can point to similarities between deep learning and the brain, and these avenues are interesting and, I thi…

Consciousness may not have anything to do with AGI. Besides, we haven't as a species defined consciousness in a consistent and coherent way. It may be an illusion or a word game. AGI may end up being more like evolution, a non-conscious self optimizing process. Everyone is talking about AGI but we can't even define what we mean by any of these terms, so to put limits on how near or far away major discoveries might be is pointless.

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#309

Post by stcredzero » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

pron wrote: post #80

gdb wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I work at OpenAI.) It comes down to whether you believe AGI is achievable. We've talked about why we think it might be: https://medium.com/syncedreview/openai-founder-short-term-ag... , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHCSNsLKHfM And we certainly have more of a plan for building it than warp drives :). EDIT: I personally think the case for near-term AGI is strong enough that it'd be hard for me work on any other pro…

> It comes down to whether you believe AGI is achievable. No, it does not. I very much believe AI (or AGI, as you call it) is achievable, but may I remind you that some years after the invention of neural networks, Norbert Wiener, one of the greatest minds of his generations, said that the secret of intelligence would be unlocked within five years, and Alan Turing -- a component of your very own post-pre-AGI era's AG…

That was seven decades ago, and we are not even close to achieving insect-level intelligence.

[citation needed]

I guess this depends on what "close" is. For something as blue sky as AGI, let me propose the following definition of "close:" X is "close" if there's over a 50% chance of it being achievable in the next 10 years if someone gave $10 billion 2019 US dollars to do it.

I think this is a fair metric for "close" for a blue-sky goal which has the potential to completely change human history and society. It's comparable to landing someone on the moon, for instance. Now, let's pick the insect with the simplest behavior. Fleas and ticks are pretty stupid, as far as insects go. I think we're "close" to simulating that level of behavior. Of course, that's straw-manning, not steel-manning. If we pick the smartest insects, like jumping spiders and Tarantula Hawks, we're arguably not "close" by the above metric. Simulating a more capable insect brain of a million neurons is not an insignificant cost, and training one through simulation would multiply the computing requirements many times that. However, there are evidently systems which are capable of simulating 100 times that number of neurons:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-supercomput...

So I would say, we're arguably not "close." However, we're not that far off from "close."

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#310

Post by clmul » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #283

apta wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If AGI is achievable (seems likely given brains are all over the place in nature) I don't see how that conclusion follows the antecedent.

Brains aren't magical, if the laws of nature allow for them to exist in nature and we see generalized intelligence develop and get selected for repeatedly then that suggests it can be done - it's just a matter of knowing how.

It might also be a possibility that this isn't possible to be replicated in an artificial way (that is, human beings maybe aren't smart enough to ever understand their own intelligence, even using all tools to their disposition)

In a certain way, brains are so complicated that (at least for the moment) they seem quite magical to us