It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word • Hacker News Board

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#361

Post by bitshiftfaced » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 5:08 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #86

To recap OpenAI's decisions over the past year: * They burned up the hype for GPT-5 on 4o and o1, which are great step changes but nothing the competition can't quickly replicate. * They dissolved the safety team. * They switched to for profit and are poised to give Altman equity. * All while hyping AGI more than ever. All of this suggests to me that Altman is in short-term exit preparation mode, not planning for AGI…

> All while hyping AGI more than ever.

Maybe not, since Altman pretty much said they no longer want to think it terms of "how close to AGI?". Iirc, he said they're moving away from that and instead want to move towards describing the process as hitting new specific capabilities incrementally.

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#362

Post by SoftTalker » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 5:08 PM UTC

peteforde wrote: post #344

coffeefirst wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be willing to share how you're using it? I keep hearing from people who find these enormous benefits from LLMs. I've been liking them as a search engine (especially finding things buried in bad documentation), but can't seem to find the life-changing part.

I can't even summarize how much GPT4x has helped me teach myself engineering skills over the past two years. It can help me accomplish highly specific and nuanced things in CAD, plan interactions between component parts (which it helped me decide) on PCBs that it helps me to lay out, figure out how to optimize everything from switching regulators to preparing for EM certification. And I could say this about just abou…

> I honestly don't understand how the folks reading HN don't intuitively and passionately lean into that. It's a freaking superpower.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

Many of us here would see our jobs eliminated by a sufficiently powerful AI, perhaps some have already experienced it. You might as well. If you use AI so much, what value do you really provide and how much longer before the AI can surpass you at that?

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#363

Post by comfysocks » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 5:10 PM UTC

Zigurd wrote: post #127

butterfly42069 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that continuously promising something is X weeks/months/years away is seen as optimism and belief, not blatant disregard for facts. I'm sure the defence is always, "but if we just had a bit more money, we would've got it done"

Elizabeth Holmes would like a referral to lawyer who could make that case.

Holmes, Balwani and co lied about their current technology, which is a step beyond making overly optimistic future projections. They claimed to have their own technology when they were actually using their competitor’s machines with diluted blood samples.

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#364

Post by jt2190 » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 5:12 PM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #291

jt2190 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI needs unheard amounts of energy… … and it always will? It seems terribly limiting to stop exploring the potential of this technology because it’s not perfect right now . Energy consumption of AI models does not feel like an unsolvable problem, just a difficult one.

AI, i.e. deep learning, consumes huge amounts of energy because it has to train on gigantic amounts of data and the training algorithms are borderline efficient. So to stop using huge amounts of energy someone would have to come up with a way to get the same results without relying on deep learning. In other words all we need is a new technology revolution like the deep learning revolution, except one centered around…

This feels like a “fixed mindset” about energy, i.e. the way we generate and allocate energy today can not change. Of all the “wasteful” things we do with energy AI is not the top of my (very subjective) list of things to shut down.

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#365

Post by echoangle » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 5:13 PM UTC

esskay wrote: post #358

azinman2 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s say you got AGI, and it approximated a not so bright impulsive 12 year old boy. That would be an insane technological leap, but hardly one you’d want running the show. AGI doesn’t mean smarter than the best humans.

What stops it getting more intelegent? That's litterally its primary aim. Its only limit as to how quickly it does that is hardware capacity, and I'd be shocked if it didn't somehow theorise to itself that it can and should expand its knowledge in any way possible.

Why would the only limit be hardware capacity? Can’t there be an innate limit due to the model size/architecture? Maybe LLMs can’t be superintelligent because they are missing a critical ability which can’t be overcome with any amount of training? It’s not obvious to me that it’s going to get smarter infinitely.

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#366

Post by lotsofpulp » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 5:13 PM UTC

agentcoops wrote: post #281

lrg10aa wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does look like an exit. Employees were given the chance to cash in some of their shares at $86 billion valuation. Altman is getting shares. New "investors" are Microsoft and Nvidia. Nvidia will get the money back as revenue and fuel the hype for other customers. Microsoft will probably pay in Azure credits. If OpenAI does not make profit within two years, the "investment" will turn into a loan, which probably mean…

I think for anyone who has been intimately involved with this last generation of "unicorns", it really does not look like an "exit" if that means bankruptcy, end of the company, betrayal of goals, or what have you: for a high-growth startup of approximately ten years, finding liquidity for employees is perhaps counter-intuitively a sign of deep maturity and that the company is concerned for the long haul (and that in…

> In a world context where the largest companies are more likely to stay private than IPO

Which world is this?

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#367

Post by ben_w » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 5:15 PM UTC

aithrowawaycomm wrote: post #322

ben_w wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I broadly agree that AI metrics have a "lies, damn lies, and statistics" problem that makes it hard to even agree how competent they are, if someone says "robotaxi" then I have no reason to expect they mean anything more nor less than "a taxi with no human driver". I would be shocked if we're really 50 years away from that level of AI. 50 years is a long time in computing — late 70s computers were still using p…

> , if someone says "robotaxi" then I have no reason to expect they mean anything more nor less than "a taxi with no human driver". You have three reasons: 1) reading the comment in good faith 2) understanding 'robotaxi' is not a precise technical term 3) safely assuming that most commenters here know about Waymo There is no reason to choose the most pedantic and smarmily bad-faith reading of the comment. As for "50…

> You have three reasons:

> 1) reading the comment in good faith

> 2) understanding 'robotaxi' is not a precise technical term

> 3) safely assuming that most commenters here know about Waymo

#1 is the main reason why I wouldn't read "robotaxi" as anything other than "taxi robot", closely followed by #2.

> As for "50 years" - I don't care about electrical engineering, I am talking about intelligence.

Neither was I, and you should take #1 as advice for yourself.

> In the 1970s we had neural networks as smart as nematodes. Today they are as smart as spiders. Maybe in 50 years they will be as smart as bees. I doubt any of our children will live to see a computer as smart as a rat.

You're either overestimating the ones in the 70s or underestimating the ones today. By parameter count, GPT-3 is already about as complex as a medium sized rodent. If today's models aren't that smart (definitions of "intelligence" are surprisingly fluid from one person to the next), then you can't reasonably call the ones in the 70s as smart as a nematode either.

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#368

Post by talldayo » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 5:16 PM UTC

wildermuthn wrote: post #356

lolinder wrote: post #86

To recap OpenAI's decisions over the past year: * They burned up the hype for GPT-5 on 4o and o1, which are great step changes but nothing the competition can't quickly replicate. * They dissolved the safety team. * They switched to for profit and are poised to give Altman equity. * All while hyping AGI more than ever. All of this suggests to me that Altman is in short-term exit preparation mode, not planning for AGI…

The only reason Sam would leave OpenAI is if he thought AGI could only be achieved elsewhere, or that AGI was impossible without some other breakthrough in another industry (energy, hardware, etc). High-intelligence AGI is the last human invention — the holy grail of technology. Nothing could be more ambitious, and if we know anything about Altman, it is that his ambition has no ceiling. Having said all of that, Open…

> High-intelligence AGI is the last human invention

Citation?

...or are you just assuming that AGI will be able to solve all of our problems, appropos of nothing but Sam Altman's word? I haven't seen a single credible study suggest that AGI is anything more than a marketing term for vaporware.

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#369

Post by bitcharmer » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 5:17 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #86

To recap OpenAI's decisions over the past year: * They burned up the hype for GPT-5 on 4o and o1, which are great step changes but nothing the competition can't quickly replicate. * They dissolved the safety team. * They switched to for profit and are poised to give Altman equity. * All while hyping AGI more than ever. All of this suggests to me that Altman is in short-term exit preparation mode, not planning for AGI…

It's funny and somehow disappointing how a year ago HN jerked off to Altman and down-voted any critical opinions of him. Just shows no social platform is free of strong group-think and mass hysteria.

Re: It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word

#370

Post by woodruffw » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 5:18 PM UTC

wildermuthn wrote: post #356

lolinder wrote: post #86

To recap OpenAI's decisions over the past year: * They burned up the hype for GPT-5 on 4o and o1, which are great step changes but nothing the competition can't quickly replicate. * They dissolved the safety team. * They switched to for profit and are poised to give Altman equity. * All while hyping AGI more than ever. All of this suggests to me that Altman is in short-term exit preparation mode, not planning for AGI…

The only reason Sam would leave OpenAI is if he thought AGI could only be achieved elsewhere, or that AGI was impossible without some other breakthrough in another industry (energy, hardware, etc). High-intelligence AGI is the last human invention — the holy grail of technology. Nothing could be more ambitious, and if we know anything about Altman, it is that his ambition has no ceiling. Having said all of that, Open…

> Sure, we don’t understand qualia. We might never understand. But that doesn’t mean we can’t replicate.

I’m pretty sure it means exactly that. Without actually understanding subjective experience, there’s a fundamental doubt akin to the Chinese room. Sweeping that under the carpet and declaring victory doesn’t in fact victory make.