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AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

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Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#51

Post by mindcrime »

chpatrick wrote: post #19
el_nahual wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a name: Large Language Models, or "Generative" AI. It doesn't think, it doesn't reason, and it doesn't listen to instructions, but it does generate pretty good text!

[citation needed] People constantly assert that LLMs don't think in some magic way that humans do think, when we don't even have any idea how that works.

> People constantly assert that LLMs don't think in some magic way that humans do think,

It doesn't matter anyway. The marquee sign reads "Artificial Intelligence" not "Artificial Human Being". As long as AI displays intelligent behavior, it's "intelligent" in the relevant context. There's no basis for demanding that the mechanism be the same as what humans do.

And of course it should go without saying that Artificial Intelligence exists on a continuum (just like human intelligence as far as that goes) and that we're not "there yet" as far as reaching the extreme high end of the continuum.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#52

Post by vhcr »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #8

AI is technology that does not exist yet that can be speculated about. When AI materializes into existence it becomes normal technology. Let's not forget there has been times when if-else statements were considered AI. NLP used to be AI too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#53

Post by barnacs »

chpatrick wrote: post #31
d3ckard wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What can be asserted without proof, can be dismissed without proof. The proof burden is on AI proponents.

It's more that "thinking" is a vague term that we don't even understand in humans, so for me it's pretty meaningless to claim LLMs think or don't think. There's this very cliched comment to any AI HN headline which is this: "LLM's don't REALLY have . I know this for sure because I know both how humans work and how gigabytes of LLM weights work." or its cousin: "LLMs CAN'T possibly do BECAUSE they generate text one ch…

To me, it's about motivation.

Intelligent living beings have natural, evolutionary inputs as motivation underlying every rational thought. A biological reward system in the brain, a desire to avoid pain, hunger, boredom and sadness, seek to satisfy physiological needs, socialize, self-actualize, etc. These are the fundamental forces that drive us, even if the rational processes are capable of suppressing or delaying them to some degree.

In contrast, machine learning models have a loss function or reward system purely constructed by humans to achieve a specific goal. They have no intrinsic motivations, feelings or goals. They are statistical models that approximate some mathematical function provided by humans.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#54

Post by jbritton »

chpatrick wrote: post #19
el_nahual wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a name: Large Language Models, or "Generative" AI. It doesn't think, it doesn't reason, and it doesn't listen to instructions, but it does generate pretty good text!

[citation needed] People constantly assert that LLMs don't think in some magic way that humans do think, when we don't even have any idea how that works.

I recently saw an article about LLMs and Towers of Hanoi. An LLM can write code to solve it. It can also output steps to solve it when the disk count is low like 3. It can’t give the steps when the disk count is higher. This indicates LLMs inability to reason and understand. Also see Gotham Chess and the Chatbot Championship. The Chatbots start off making good moves, but then quickly transition to making illegal moves and generally playing unbelievably poorly. They don’t understand the rules or strategy or anything.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#55

Post by OkayPhysicist »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #47
ACCount37 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"AI" is a wide fucking field. And it occasionally includes systems built entirely on if-else statements.

There is no difference between AI and non-AI save for the model the observer is using to view a particular bit of computation.

Eh, I'd be fairly comfortable delineating between AI and other CS subfields based on the idea of higher-order algorithms. For most things, you have a problem with fixed set of fixed parameters, and you need a solution in the form of fixed solution. (e.g., 1+1=2) In software, we mostly deal with one step up from that: we solve general case problems, for a fixed set of variable parameters, and we produce algorithms that take the parameters as input and produce the desired solution (e.g., f(x,y) = x + y). The field of AI largely concerns itself with algorithms that produce models to solve entire classes of problem, that take the specific problem description itself as input (e.g., SAT solvers, artificial neural networks, etc where g("x+y") => f(x,y) = x + y ). This isn't a perfect definition of the field (it ends up catching some things like parser generators and compilers that aren't typically considered "AI"), but it does pretty fairly, IMO, represent a distinct field in CS.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#56

Post by aeternum »

akomtu wrote: post #46

Normal? AI is an alien technology to us, and we are being "normalized" to become compatible with it.

AI actually seems far less alien than steam engines, trains, submarines, flight, and space travel.

People weren't sure if human bodies could handle moving at >50mph.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#58

Post by leptons »

chpatrick wrote: post #19
el_nahual wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a name: Large Language Models, or "Generative" AI. It doesn't think, it doesn't reason, and it doesn't listen to instructions, but it does generate pretty good text!

[citation needed] People constantly assert that LLMs don't think in some magic way that humans do think, when we don't even have any idea how that works.

When I write a sentence, I do it with intent, with specific purpose in mind. When an "AI" does it, it's predicting the next word that might satisfy the input requirement. It doesn't care if the sentence it writes makes any sense, is factual, etc, so long as it is human readable and follows gramatic rules. It does not do this with any specific intent, which is why you get slop and just plain wrong output a fair amount of time. Just because it produces something that sounds correct sometimes does not mean it's doing any thinking at all. Yes, humans do actually think before they speak, LLMs do not, cannot, and will not because that is not what they are designed to do.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#59

Post by leptons »

jbritton wrote: post #54
chpatrick wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[citation needed] People constantly assert that LLMs don't think in some magic way that humans do think, when we don't even have any idea how that works.

I recently saw an article about LLMs and Towers of Hanoi. An LLM can write code to solve it. It can also output steps to solve it when the disk count is low like 3. It can’t give the steps when the disk count is higher. This indicates LLMs inability to reason and understand. Also see Gotham Chess and the Chatbot Championship. The Chatbots start off making good moves, but then quickly transition to making illegal move…

Could the LLM "write code to solve it" if no human ever wrote code to solve it? Could it output "steps to solve it" if no human ever wrote about it before to have in its training data? The answer is no.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#60

Post by Tarsul »

thepryz wrote: post #36
Kapura wrote: post #30

Digital spreadsheets (excel, etc) have done much more to change the world than so-called "artificial intelligence," and on the current trajectory it's difficult to see that changing.

I don’t know if I would agree. Spreadsheets don’t really have the ability to promote propaganda and manipulate people the way LLM-powered bots already have. Generative AI is also starting to change the way people think, or perhaps not think, as people begin to offload critical thinking and writing tasks to agentic ai.

social media ruined our brains long before LLMs. Not sure if the LLM-upgrade is is all that newsworthy... Well, for AI fake videos maybe - but it could also be that soon no one believes any video they see online which would have the adverse effect and could arguably even be considered good in our current times (difficult question!).
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