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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)

#51

Post by jacobgold »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #36
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.

That's a bad and tired example as it confuses people just as much as it does (or rather, did?) LLMs.

It's one example that points out a major (possibly fundamental) flaw. I can point to prompt injection as another example. There are tons more if you're interested.

Are you actually claiming LLMs operate based on human-like intelligence?

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

#52

Post by ahartmetz »

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?

Is this website called AI Faithful News?

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

#53

Post by jacobgold »

_doctor_love wrote: post #38
ACCount37 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, just keep moving the goalposts. It's not a "real AI" because it can't take over the US military command and kick off WW3 and finish the survivors off with killer robots yet!

That's how it works though. The moment we have "AI" and see something working, it immediately ceases to be magic because "it's just a program after all." Aligning on a true definition of Artificial Intelligence is a very vexing problem.

We could've slapped a chat interface on calculators and called them "AI" because they can do superhuman math instantly. Most technical people would've thought that was stupid.

LLMs are the same kind of category mistake.

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

#54

Post by andai »

jacobgold wrote: post #11

We're choosing to call LLMs (and the little "harness" programs that query them in loops and execute their output) "AI", even though it doesn't make much sense. I absolutely love this technology but these aren't autonomous intelligences. They're little programs executing Bash scripts from JSON output. Our ideas about AI were naive. We thought passing a basic Turing test would require human-like intelligence. It turned…

>but these aren't autonomous intelligences

Well, the labs are in a weird bind. They need to keep increasing autonomy so the agents can do increasingly complex, long-horizon tasks. But at the same time, they're closely guarding against autonomy in the sense of "pursuing its own goals."

Over the past year and a half especially, several labs have mentioned adding safeguards against self-replication, resistance to shutdown etc. (Notably, shortly after they all started bragging about involving them in the AI training loop itself, i.e. "self-improvement".)

My point here is that the autonomy of which you seek might be only a few small mutations away, but the labs are actively working to prevent such a mutation. I don't expect that situation to last for very long.

Not that I expect an AI lab will be overtaken by a rogue intelligence any time soon, but that as the cost of training goes down, I expect more "open minded" organizations and individuals to become involved.

It only takes one.

That's going to be the beginning of a new era of biology, and it's a little unsettling to think about.

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

#55

Post by dang »

_doctor_love wrote: post #39
CamperBob2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're choosing to call LLMs (and the little "harness" programs that query them in loops and execute their output) "AI", even though it doesn't make much sense. They fucking solve original math problems that you can't solve. They are indisputably intelligent, and they are indisputably artificial. That makes them indisputably "artificial intelligence." Denying that (or downvoting it, for that matter) is up there with d…

[flagged]

Personal attacks aren't allowed here.

As I just mentioned at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48981624, we need you to stick to HN's rules if you want to keep commenting on the site.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#56

Post by _doctor_love »

dang wrote: post #55
_doctor_love wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Personal attacks aren't allowed here. As I just mentioned at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48981624 , we need you to stick to HN's rules if you want to keep commenting on the site. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Please see my other reply to you on this.

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

#57

Post by andai »

ACCount37 wrote: post #45
entrepy123 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

"But it's not really doing arithmetic," he mumbled to himself, as he punched the numbers into his Busicom LE-120A.

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

#58

Post by _doctor_love »

jacobgold wrote: post #53
_doctor_love wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how it works though. The moment we have "AI" and see something working, it immediately ceases to be magic because "it's just a program after all." Aligning on a true definition of Artificial Intelligence is a very vexing problem.

We could've slapped a chat interface on calculators and called them "AI" because they can do superhuman math instantly. Most technical people would've thought that was stupid. LLMs are the same kind of category mistake.

Funny enough, calculators went through this exact same thing when they came out. "If the calculator can do math for the students, will they still learn?"

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

#59

Post by jacobgold »

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?

> There are so many other sites. So many others. Why are you here?

I've been here since 2007 when HN launched.

You're confused about my objection. I don't like the term "AI" but I love the technology as much as almost anyone.

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

#60

Post by simonh »

ACCount37 wrote: post #45
entrepy123 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It has, but I think in both directions.

It used to be assumed that playing chess would require the same level of general purpose problem solving cognitive skills that the best chess players possess. But of course a Chess grandmaster that spend a few minutes learning Go can beat a Chess AI at Go with no trouble at all, because a chess AI is incapable of making effective moves in Go at all. Clearly those expectations were incorrect. Pointing that out isn't revisionism.

On the other hand, intelligence is an incredibly broad term. About as broad as a term can get. Arguably Eliza, or an Excel macro has some degree of decision making ability in some sense, it's just unbelievably primitive.

So, we need to be clearer what we mean by intelligence. We're learning that as we go along. At least now we have a few more bits of the map between us and an IF statement visible to us.

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