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Mythologizing AI makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well (2023)

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Re: Mythologizing AI makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well (2023)

#41

Post by gausswho »

Towards the end, he approaches the subject of digital provenance, and muses why it's not a part of our expectations. I find the argument compelling:

> If a chatbot appears to be manipulative, mean, weird, or deceptive, what kind of answer do we want when we ask why? Revealing the indispensable antecedent examples from which the bot learned its behavior would provide an explanation: we’d learn that it drew on a particular work of fan fiction, say, or a soap opera. We could react to that output differently, and adjust the inputs of the model to improve it. Why shouldn’t that type of explanation always be available? There may be cases in which provenance shouldn’t be revealed, so as to give priority to privacy—but provenance will usually be more beneficial to individuals and society than an exclusive commitment to privacy would be.

Remember 'View Source'? And how bundling engines eventually made it irrelevant? What if every piece of content had a genuinely accurate and useful View Source?

Re: Mythologizing AI makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well (2023)

#42

Post by bryzaguy »

> The closest we have come to a definition of privacy is probably “the right to be left alone,” but that seems quaint in an age when we are constantly dependent on digital services. In the context of A.I., “the right to not be manipulated by computation” seems almost correct

Maybe someone can enlighten me but I really don't understand how either of these description make any sense at all. How is it not better described as "the right to decide what data can be extracted"?

Re: Mythologizing AI makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well (2023)

#43

Post by ilaksh »

bilekas wrote: post #37
ilaksh wrote: post #35

AI that we have now is not a digital animal in capability or kind, and is not currently anywhere close to taking over. But it's still in its present form very intelligent in meaningful and useful ways. And it is not too soon to talk about concerns of a potential existential threat in the future. Because it could sooner than we might realize, threaten our existence. Because of the potential, we should have a culture o…

It will only become an existential threat (in my humble opinion) when they can run influenced inference locally offline almost instantaneously. Then we need to be concerned about not being able to switch it off.

What do you mean "influenced inference" almost instantaneously? My laptop from 6 years ago can run an agent in a very fast loop in a web browser. It's not going to take over anything though since it's Gemma 4 E2B with only 2 billion parameters.

Re: Mythologizing AI makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well (2023)

#44

Post by Procrastes »

"A.I."[1] like "technology"[2] is a term colloquially reserved for things that don't work yet. Once something works, we have to call it something else.

1. "Every time we figure out a piece of it, it stops being called AI; it becomes just computation." - Ray Kurzweil

2. "Technology n. - Something that doesn't work yet." - Douglas Adams

Re: Mythologizing AI makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well (2023)

#45

Post by ACCount37 »

entrepy123 wrote: post #31
ACCount37 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've chosen to call Deep Blue and Half-Life 1 NPCs "AI" too. It boggles my mind that this "b-b-but it's not actual real AI" whine is even a thing. Were people saying this living in the cave for the past 5 decades of AI research?

> It boggles my mind that this "b-b-but it's not actual real AI" whine is even a thing. As I understand it, a major reason it's a consistent chorus is because people don't want the "AI is here" talk to drown out (and thus slow the arrival or distribution of) speech/text/popular-understanding about actual strong AGI. To make an analogy, it could be like this: Some people were expecting 100 tulips (because they were to…

In my eyes that "chorus" is just insecurity talking.

If it's not "actual real AI", we can keep pretending that human intelligence is something distinct and special - and that what our computers are doing now is some sort of other, obviously fake and vastly inferior thing.

When Deep Blue won at chess, people didn't revise their estimates of AI capabilities upwards. They revised their estimates of how much intelligence is required to play chess at world level downwards, by a lot. Surely playing chess must have never required any intelligence in the first place!

Now, the list of things that "must have never required any intelligence in the first place" includes gems like "reading comprehension at high school level", "copywriting", "frontend work", "CTF tasks", "theory of mind", "arguing with people online" and more.

If the goalposts were moved far enough that the claim to "actual intelligence" is denied to a double digit percentage of human population, hasn't something gone wrong somewhere?

Re: Mythologizing AI makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well (2023)

#46

Post by andai »

>Everybody’s already using the term, and it might seem a little late in the day to be arguing about it. But we’re at the beginning of a new technological era—and the easiest way to mismanage a technology is to misunderstand it.

I've had a recurring theme where I would name a project incorrectly, and then waste weeks or months on what turned out to be an unsolvable problem. When I figured out the actual correct name for a project, the whole thing would be solved within a few days.

Naming things correctly is hard, and the consequences of failing to do that can be pretty severe. To name something correctly, you have to understand what it is.

Re: Mythologizing AI makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well (2023)

#47

Post by [deleted] »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #40
jacobgold wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can call your little doggy "AI" if it makes you happy. But when you call something "AI" and it tells you to walk instead of drive to the car wash, you're not talking about the "AI" science fiction authors were dreaming of.

But when you call something "AI" and it tells you to walk instead of drive to the car wash There are so many other sites. So many others. Why are you here?

[deleted]

Re: Mythologizing AI makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well (2023)

#48

Post by HeatrayEnjoyer »

dominotw wrote: post #29
radial_symmetry wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly would a 'non-stupid' person do to catch the latest models on a Turing Test? Aside from being aware of AI 'tells' like em-dashes.

If this was true. I would repalce myself with ai that pretends to be me on slack. my coworkers would know almost immediately if i did that.

> my coworkers would know almost immediately if i did that.

The same would happen if you were replaced by any random human.

Re: Mythologizing AI makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well (2023)

#49

Post by jacobgold »

davidpapermill wrote: post #23
jacobgold wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe just a very rigorous version of the Turing test? Modern LLMs can superficially simulate conversation but it's trivial to force them into revealing their non-human like intelligence. They've been "patched" since but all models fail basic tests like "Should I walk or drive to the car wash which is 100 feet away" by recommending you walk. So you'd just ask questions that require theory of mind, abstract and common…

Can you give me one example that works on Claude right now? I'm never sure whether this indicates "no reasoning present" or you've just hit an odd behaviour in the AI such that its reasoning fails. For example, you present a problem in a way that's dissimilar to the way problems are presented in its training set. That doesn't mean it's not reasoning, just it can only reason correctly in some circumstances.

The models are continually patched with training and post-training. All you have to do is find an area they haven't patched yet, and they'll be just as stupid. I run into deep technical examples every day where they fail in the most basic ways no human ever would.

I'm pretty sure most people building these models would admit they don't operate as human-like intelligences? It's baffling that anyone thinks they are.

Re: Mythologizing AI makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well (2023)

#50

Post by orangecat »

jacobgold wrote: post #18
ACCount37 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've chosen to call Deep Blue and Half-Life 1 NPCs "AI" too. It boggles my mind that this "b-b-but it's not actual real AI" whine is even a thing. Were people saying this living in the cave for the past 5 decades of AI research?

You can call your little doggy "AI" if it makes you happy. But when you call something "AI" and it tells you to walk instead of drive to the car wash, you're not talking about the "AI" science fiction authors were dreaming of.

You can call your little doggy "AI" if it makes you happy.

Or you can keep calling them stochastic parrots as they solve decades-old open problems. The real question is how useful they are, and the answer "not at all" increasingly requires flat-earth levels of denial.

it tells you to walk instead of drive to the car wash, you're not talking about the "AI" science fiction authors were dreaming of

They sort of are. Think of Data from Star Trek TNG failing to understand figures of speech. Not that it's terribly relevant; humans regularly fall for tricks like "Paris in the the spring" or "where do you bury the survivors".

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