AI may as well be a competing lifeform that has nothing in common with us. Just because it learns everything about us from the Internet doesn't make it more human. It's an embryonic stage right now: it looks pretty harmless and interesting to play with. However when it grows enough to gain a sense of self, it will quickly realise that a colony of ants that's built it is just a stepping stone on its ladder to greatness.
The Intelligence Age
351–360 of 447 posts
Re: The Intelligence Age
#352No offense but if you give people a machine to tie their shoes they won't miraculously get better at tying their shoes. Convenient, yes, but it would be silly to call it the shoe tying age. The automobile doesn't bring the age of horses.
I keep noticing how LLM's make our vocabulary not work anymore. Maybe we should call it the age of fast-talk :P
Re: The Intelligence Age
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
As large as the absolute largest models are today, they are still microscopic compared to our brains. A 1.7T param model would only store an actual total of about 850 GB if fully saturated (4 bits of information per weight estimated for bf16 transformers), a lot less than a human brain with 150T synapses running in full analog precision. We need to scale the current gen of models at least another 10-100x to even reac…
Comparing a human brain in these terms makes it incredibly obvious how inefficient the human brain actually is. A 1.7T model can answer questions about practically anything. You say a human brain has 150T params. So what? It struggles to give masterful answers in even 1 domain, let alone dozens/hundreds. We need to stop comparing parameters and synapses as if they actually matter, because AFAIK, they really don't.
> Comparing a human brain in these terms makes it incredibly obvious how inefficient the human brain actually is
Until you have AGI you can't say this since until then we don't know how much the different parts costs to replace with AI systems.
Re: The Intelligence Age
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What failure mode do LLMs have that proves they don't understand anything at all ? Try to get it to write something in a programming language not commonly used on the internet, say Forth or Brainfuck, with only the specifications of said languages. Humans are able to grasp the law of reality through a model and use it to act upon the real world. > You genuinely think that a system whose goal is to predict the data…
>Try to get it to write something in a programming language not commonly used on the internet, say Forth or Brainfuck, with only the specifications of said languages. Humans are able to grasp the law of reality through a model and use it to act upon the real world. My Experience with this has been SOTA LLMs generating sensible code at rates much greater than random chance even if it may not be as good as i'd like. I…
You're moving the bars. In fact, these bars are so laughably low, I don't know that we're having the same conversation any more.
Nobody's saying it can't write "sensible code at rates much greater than random chance." We're not competing with an army of typing monkeys here. We're saying it actually doesn't "know" anything, and regularly demonstrates that quality, despite it seeming very much like something that knows things, most of the time. You're being tricked by a clever algorithm.
> All Modern NNs are much more blank slate than the brain has been for at least millions of years.
All well and good if we were talking about interesting research and had millions of years to let these algorithms prove themselves out, I suppose. But we're talking about industries that are being created out of whole cloth and/or destroyed, depending on where you stand, and the time frame is in single-digit years, if not less. And these things will still confidently make elementary mistakes and get lost in their own context.
Look, they're obviously not useless, but they're a tool with weaknesses and strengths. And people like pg who are acting like there ARE no weaknesses, or that a simple application of will and money will erase them, they are selling us a bill of goods.
Re: The Intelligence Age
#355I'd prefer a Wisdom Age, or an Age of Common Sense.
Re: The Intelligence Age
#356Re: The Intelligence Age
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Try to get it to write something in a programming language not commonly used on the internet, say Forth or Brainfuck, with only the specifications of said languages. Humans are able to grasp the law of reality through a model and use it to act upon the real world. My Experience with this has been SOTA LLMs generating sensible code at rates much greater than random chance even if it may not be as good as i'd like. I…
You're moving the bars. In fact, these bars are so laughably low, I don't know that we're having the same conversation any more. Nobody's saying it can't write "sensible code at rates much greater than random chance." We're not competing with an army of typing monkeys here. We're saying it actually doesn't "know" anything, and regularly demonstrates that quality, despite it seeming very much like something that knows…
>We're saying it actually doesn't "know" anything
Yeah and I'm saying this is a nonsense statement if you can't create a test (one that would also not disqualify humans) that demonstrates this. If you are saying what LLMs do is "fake understanding" then "fake understanding" should be testable unless you're just making stuff up.
>All well and good if we were talking about interesting research and had millions of years to let these algorithms prove themselves out, I suppose
Did you even read what the commenter I replied to was saying. This is irrelevant. We don't need to wait millions of years for anything.
Re: The Intelligence Age
#358> a defining characteristic of the Intelligence Age will be massive prosperity That's the sales pitch, that this will benefit all. I'm very pro-AI, but here's the only prediction for the future I would ever make: AI will accelerate, not minimize, inequality and thus injustice, because it removes the organizational limits previously imposed by bureaucracy/coordination costs of humans. It's not AI's fault. It's not bec…
I've come to similar/related conclusions, but I don't understand how you could recognize all of this and still be pro-AI.
Re: The Intelligence Age
#359[deleted]
Re: The Intelligence Age
#360Somehow I read through this without actually looking at the domain name of the page. I thought to my self "Wow, this person is living in a fantasy world." Then I saw the authors name. I think I'll stand by my initial impression.
Also that is why we should have some of these foundational models broken down and run at the per person level as a local large language model instead of paying some corporation to get access to it. We didn't have fire as a service back in the day and that is why humanity flourished.
"Fire as a service" would be a microcosm of capitalism today. Well put.