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Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

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Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#311

Post by jjulius »

coldpie wrote: post #310
tmp10423288442 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woz should have a lot more money than that for being such a large early shareholder of Apple, so that actually speaks poorly to his reputation as a "successful entrepreneur/investor". Some of the reason why his net worth is below expectations is noble (giving $10m of shares to early employees), but most of it is not - 4 marriages as opposed to Steve Jobs' 1 marriage, an impractical attitude in general, and never havi…

No one should have more than $140MM. That is a ludicrous amount of money.

Additionally, it's kinda funny to see someone arguing that an individual who's famous for talking about how uncomfortable he is with massive wealth, including his own, should be more wealthy than he is.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#312

Post by itsalwaysgood »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #301
ToValueFunfetti wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Other countries" means China here, I think. China got a little on board with the global capitalism (and lifted 800 million people out of extreme poverty along the way, if we're looking for the point), but never really embraced Liberalism and so ideally isn't the one aligning superintelligence. It would be lousy if Russia or North Korea or Somalia was in that position and it would be fine if the UK or Denmark or Braz…

If this speculated intelligence is so "super" why would it matter what its host country's commitments are? I would hope it would at least be intelligent enough to sort things out there? How can something be so potentially threatening, so "super," but also be like a baby, where we need to worry how its raised? Its super intelligent about everything except ideology? That doesn't really sound like (super)intelligence to…

I think it's more of a prestige discussion. Who leads, who follows, between countries. Not whose super intelligence is better. Who got their first, and how are they using it?

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#313

Post by kakacik »

lokar wrote: post #303
alsetmusic wrote: post #90

The man is hailed as a brilliant nerd in our circles. I didn't realize he's a great public speaker. He really read the room. The "McKenzie"-style lady and Schmidt from Google (who really seemed to resent the pushback and chided graduates), can go to hell. I'm happy that someone is telling the young people who are likely to suffer because of this tech that they matter. I can't imagine how much angst much exist after t…

A bit off topic, but about commencement speeches... Marvin Minsky spoke at my graduation. It was around the time when it seemed like genetic therapies might solve all kinds of problems, and there was a big debate, moral objections, etc. Most of the talk was a rambling rant against religion holding us back from scientific improvements to life. It did not go over in the mostly christian crowd. I loved it.

Its not a rambling but sad fact of life, one of the failures of mankind so far.

And we don't need to talk about some backwater 3rd world country (actually we do) - US has big issues allowing basic science to be taught to kids, because of some set of stories and anecdotes from various people gathered over centuries together about some potential events around one mason who started yet another sect 2k years ago, and they guard it with fanatical zeal to the last word, regardless how misguided and contradictory some of it is.

When society fails to deliver even basic known and proven truths to its most vulnerable, then don't be surprised that same people are later trivially manipulated into believing into many simply untrue things and behave accordingly ie in voting, to their own direct detriment.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#314

Post by danaris »

card_zero wrote: post #130
whack wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They (we) have to believe human brains still have value and find a way out; for otherwise there'd be no point to try anymore. Our value isn't predicated on our utility. The simple fact that we are sentient beings, capable of joy and suffering, gives us value. This is why we continue to support and care for the elderly and the disabled - we value them regardless of any practical utility we may derive from them. If y…

I don't think that's quite right, unless you personally value joy for its own sake. I value knowledge, and joy is useful to creating knowledge, and suffering is harmful to it. But I don't want to have some futile joy, and I don't need to avoid some irrelevant suffering. Otherwise you get effects like; * Just take drugs, feel meaningless "joy" because that's what you value, * Don't do anything less "joyful" even thoug…

....I think it's a fairly widespread view to value joy for its own sake. In fact, I would say that's pretty much how normal people would say they view joy.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#315

Post by _factor »

mekoka wrote: post #295
abirch wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed." AI has made my life so much easier. If I need to change non-standard lightbulbs (e.g., G9, MR11, A19), I'm taking a picture and asking my AI what kind are they. If I need to create the first pass of test scripts, I ask my AI. It's reduced technical debt and let me focus on the things I care about.

I imagine how you intended your comment to come across and I get it to some level. But I can't help feeling that there's something a bit dystopian in a world where all friction is removed just to more quickly get to the juicy bits.

You’re still free to walk to your destination instead of driving, it would just be a lot of time friction.

Funny how reducing the friction with technology eventually increased the friction of the older transportation methods.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#316

Post by ahartmetz »

sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #155
ahartmetz wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have spatial / quantitative and social / emotional aspects in our intelligence that are not at all like next token prediction. If LLMs had shame, they'd surely not repeat mistakes (in the same context window) as much as they do.

Having shame would require the LLMs to actually be able to recognize mistakes they make. People love to put a lot of meaning on what an LLM responds with when asked why it made a mistake, but it's critical to remember that the answer to that prompt is just another series of probabilistic tokens, and has no actual relation to how the error happened.

They "recognize" mistakes just fine because you explicitly tell them. They recognize them well enough to correct (...sometimes). The way in which mistakes don't register is "Oh shit, that bad result was a result of my inappropriate actions. I must pay attention to not doing that again or the user will think I'm an idiot. I should even think about it some more to avoid the whole class of mistakes". Think of emotions as an attention mechanism that LLMs lack.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#317

Post by kakacik »

abirch wrote: post #231
romaniv wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Would you prefer the harsh unpopular truth of Erich Schmidt, or a sweet lie of Wozniak? What Erich Schmidt is doing is not about describing hard reality. He is trying to make a particular version of the future come true by painting it as inevitable. It's literally a propaganda technique.

"The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed." AI has made my life so much easier. If I need to change non-standard lightbulbs (e.g., G9, MR11, A19), I'm taking a picture and asking my AI what kind are they. If I need to create the first pass of test scripts, I ask my AI. It's reduced technical debt and let me focus on the things I care about.

There are some of us who still prefer actually learning stuff, even about light bulbs.

AI is mental comfort zone so deep it will be extremely hard to ever get out of it, basically back to beginning of rat race. Maybe not applicable to you in your blissful ignorance, but sure as hell I won't put literally all my eggs into one tiny foreign-owned basket.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#318

Post by itsalwaysgood »

ryandrake wrote: post #297
itsalwaysgood wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think AI will go away and suddenly businesses will start hiring people back? Or that a competitive startup won't lean on AI to get ahead? Doesn't matter how much stock prices move up and down...AI is here to stay and no amount of booing changes our desires to compete. The world doesn't hold hands with anyone, there is no global consensus, no policy. I recall all the bemoaning when IT jobs started going oversea…

It's a massive long shot pipe dream, but we might somehow end up with legislators who have backbones and actually represent the people, and they'll enact regulation to reign in the applications of AI, provide a safety net for the millions who will be affected by it, and/or at least find a way to spread the prosperity that comes from AI across the population rather than into the hands of the few. I'm not betting on it…

I doubt it. There is so little care for monopoly or copyright because AI is a race, as much as it is a tool. And nobody wants to restrict the race. Policy may pass that limits the use of AI for the general public, but the 'whatever it takes' race to 'superintelligence' goes on.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#319

Post by BearOso »

jmathai wrote: post #175
joe_mamba wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* * *

Truth is the wrong word for a future outcome. But… Weren’t Schmidt’s comments on AI the harsh “truth” from the perspective of someone who directly benefits from the wealth extraction capabilities of AI? It’s not the only possible truth. And definitely not the one I’m rooting for personally. That’s what you are hearing from the audience of graduates who are probably quite fearful of their future and also prefer anothe…

> Weren’t Schmidt’s comments on AI the harsh “truth” from the perspective of someone who directly benefits from the wealth extraction capabilities of AI?

There are no wealth extraction capabilities yet. It's a money pit. They're certainly hoping it'll surpass some breakpoint and become profitable by brute-forcing compute power, but that's very optimistic. The propaganda Schmidt is pushing envisions that future in hopes of raising current stock prices so they can afford the brute-forcing that's very unlikely to succeed.

My prediction is that we'll keep the tools we've acquired, probably refined a bit, but the LLM path is eventually a dead-end. After this, if they still try to monetize, remote models will be extremely expensive.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#320

Post by ElevenLathe »

adjejmxbdjdn wrote: post #152
ElevenLathe wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's language. Language itself is the thing that makes us smart in the unique way that we are among the other animals, and it weirdly turns out to be transferable to machines to at least some degree.

I think you’re right but I wanted to note that we are discovering that other animals also have language.

Yes, this to me is also a good sign for the "it's language that's smart, not us" argument. It's an emergent trait that has evolved several times, like flight or carcinization. There's something about language that attracts evolution toward it. One would expect such a trait to have a big survival value (disclaimer: IANA biologist, philosopher, theologian, mathematician, or linguist).
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