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Four Fallacies of Modern AI

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Re: Four Fallacies of Modern AI

#41

Post by MrScruff »

AIPedant wrote: post #33
entropyneur wrote: post #18

This article seems to fall straight into the trap it aims to warn us about. All this talk about "true" understanding, embodiment, etc. is needless antropomorphizing. A much better framework for thinking about intelligence is simply as the ability to make predictions about the world (including conditional ones like "what will happen if we take this action"). Whether it's achieved through "true understanding" (however…

"Making predictions about the world" is a reductive and childish way to describe intelligence in humans. Did David Lynch make Mulholland Drive because he predicted it would be a good movie? The most depressing thing about AI summers is watching tech people cynically try to define intelligence downwards to excuse failures in current AI.

It may be reductive but that doesn't make it incorrect. I would certainly agree that creating and appreciating art are highly emergent phenomena in humans (as is for example humour) but that doesn't mean I don't think they're rooted in fitness functions and our evolved brains desire for approval from our tribal peer group.

Reductive arguments may not give us an immediate forward path to reproducing these emergent phenomena in artificial brains, but it's also the case that emergent phenomena are by definition impossible to predict - I don't think anyone predicted the current behaviours of LLMs for example.

Re: Four Fallacies of Modern AI

#42

Post by _1tem »

I would add a fifth fallacy: assuming what we humans do can be reduced to “intelligence”. We are actually very irrational. Humans are driven strongly by Will, Desire, Love, Faith, and many other irrational traits. Has an LLM ever demonstrated irrational love? Or sexual desire? How can it possibly do what humans do without these?

Re: Four Fallacies of Modern AI

#43

Post by pu_pe »

AIPedant wrote: post #33
entropyneur wrote: post #18

This article seems to fall straight into the trap it aims to warn us about. All this talk about "true" understanding, embodiment, etc. is needless antropomorphizing. A much better framework for thinking about intelligence is simply as the ability to make predictions about the world (including conditional ones like "what will happen if we take this action"). Whether it's achieved through "true understanding" (however…

"Making predictions about the world" is a reductive and childish way to describe intelligence in humans. Did David Lynch make Mulholland Drive because he predicted it would be a good movie? The most depressing thing about AI summers is watching tech people cynically try to define intelligence downwards to excuse failures in current AI.

How would you define intelligence? Surely not by the ability to make a critically acclaimed movie, right?

Re: Four Fallacies of Modern AI

#44

Post by dumpsterdiver »

degamad wrote: post #10
jokoon wrote: post #9

Finally an insightful article about ai

It was, but it punted in the conclusion... > Mitchell in her paper compares modern AI to alchemy. It produces dazzling, impressive results but it often lacks a deep, foundational theory of intelligence. > It’s a powerful metaphor, but I think a more pragmatic conclusion is slightly different. The challenge isn't to abandon our powerful alchemy in search of a pure science of intelligence. But alchemy was wrong and cha…

You know what they say though about folks who don’t know any better:

https://home.cern/news/news/physics/alice-detects-conversion...

Re: Four Fallacies of Modern AI

#45

Post by keiferski »

simianwords wrote: post #39

> But that still leaves a crucial question: can we develop a more precise, less anthropomorphic vocabulary to describe AI capabilities? Or is our human-centric language the only tool we have to reason about these new forms of intelligence, with all the baggage that entails? I don't get the problem with this really. I think LLM's "reasoning" is a very fair and proper way to call it. It takes time and spits out tokens…

Are swimming and sailing the same, because they both have the result of moving through the water?

I'd say, no, they aren't, and there is value in understanding the different processes (and labeling them as such), even if they have outputs that look similar/identical.

Re: Four Fallacies of Modern AI

#46

Post by entropyneur »

AIPedant wrote: post #33
entropyneur wrote: post #18

This article seems to fall straight into the trap it aims to warn us about. All this talk about "true" understanding, embodiment, etc. is needless antropomorphizing. A much better framework for thinking about intelligence is simply as the ability to make predictions about the world (including conditional ones like "what will happen if we take this action"). Whether it's achieved through "true understanding" (however…

"Making predictions about the world" is a reductive and childish way to describe intelligence in humans. Did David Lynch make Mulholland Drive because he predicted it would be a good movie? The most depressing thing about AI summers is watching tech people cynically try to define intelligence downwards to excuse failures in current AI.

> Did David Lynch make Mulholland Drive because he predicted it would be a good movie?

He made it because he predicted that it will have some effects enjoyable to him. Without knowing David Lynch personally I can assume that he made it because he predicted other people will like it. Although of course, it might have been some other goal. But unless he was completely unlike anyone I've ever met, it's safe to assume that before he started he had a picture of a world with Mullholland Drive existing in it that is somehow better than the current world without. He might or might not have been aware of it though.

Anyway, that's too much analysis of Mr. Lynch. The implicit question is how soon an AI will be able to make a movie that you, AIPedant, will enjoy as much as you've enjoyed Mulholland Drive. And I stand that how similar AI is to human intelligence or how much "true understanding" it has is completely irrelevant to answering that question.

Re: Four Fallacies of Modern AI

#47

Post by peterashford »

simianwords wrote: post #37
AIPedant wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Making predictions about the world" is a reductive and childish way to describe intelligence in humans. Did David Lynch make Mulholland Drive because he predicted it would be a good movie? The most depressing thing about AI summers is watching tech people cynically try to define intelligence downwards to excuse failures in current AI.

"David Lynch made Mullholland Drive because he was intelligent" is also absurd.

But "An intelligent creature made Mullholland Drive" is not

Re: Four Fallacies of Modern AI

#48

Post by peterashford »

koonsolo wrote: post #40
AIPedant wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Making predictions about the world" is a reductive and childish way to describe intelligence in humans. Did David Lynch make Mulholland Drive because he predicted it would be a good movie? The most depressing thing about AI summers is watching tech people cynically try to define intelligence downwards to excuse failures in current AI.

I look at it the complete opposite way: humans are defining intelligence upwards to make sure they can perceive themselves better than a computer. It's clear that humans consider humans as intelligent. Is a monkey intelligent? A dolphin? A crow? An ant? So I ask you, what is the lowest form of intelligence to you? (I'm also a huge David Lynch fan by the way :D)

Im not sure what that gets you. I think most people would suggest that it appears to be a sliding scale. Humans, dolphins / crows, ants, etc. What does that get us?

Re: Four Fallacies of Modern AI

#49

Post by peterashford »

_1tem wrote: post #42

I would add a fifth fallacy: assuming what we humans do can be reduced to “intelligence”. We are actually very irrational. Humans are driven strongly by Will, Desire, Love, Faith, and many other irrational traits. Has an LLM ever demonstrated irrational love? Or sexual desire? How can it possibly do what humans do without these?

Yeah I think that's an important dimension. David Hume said that there was no action without passion and I think that's a key difference with AIs. They sit there passive until we interact with them. They dont want anything, they dont have goals, desires, motivations. The emotional part of the human psyche does a lot of work - we aren't just calculating sums

Re: Four Fallacies of Modern AI

#50

Post by iLoveOncall »

simianwords wrote: post #39

> But that still leaves a crucial question: can we develop a more precise, less anthropomorphic vocabulary to describe AI capabilities? Or is our human-centric language the only tool we have to reason about these new forms of intelligence, with all the baggage that entails? I don't get the problem with this really. I think LLM's "reasoning" is a very fair and proper way to call it. It takes time and spits out tokens…

It has absolutely nothing to do with reasoning, and I don't understand how anyone could think it's"close enough".

Reasoning models are simply answering the same question twice with a different system prompt. It's a normal LLM with an extra technical step. Nothing else.

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