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John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence

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Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence

#61

Post by dr_dshiv »

ipsum2 wrote: post #4
dr_dshiv wrote: post #3

What would be the difference between GPT3 and actual AGI? (Want to make sure we don’t keep moving goalposts)

AGI is usually defined as anything a normal human could do. Examples of some things that GPT is currently lacking: 1) Understanding images and video 2) Learning and remembering things outside the 2048 token context window 3) Interacting with the environment (either through a computer, or in the real world) 4) Doing basic math (1662 + 239 = ?) and logic

Nice list.

1. Understanding— provided this isn’t based on consciousness but benchmarks — appears present in text, but yes, GPT3 can’t do images or video yet

2. Is there some number of tokens that would be AGI? Of course it can remember things it has already been trained on…

3. In what way is interacting with a human not interacting with the environment? (Eg, you can ask it to tell you the steps to make a pbj sandwich and troubleshoot)

4. Basic math and logic. Ok.

So, once AI can do images, video, math, logic and remember 20000 tokens, then we have AGI?

Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence

#62

Post by jhoelzel »

As someone who works in IT for 20 years but has a bachelor in economic psychology, i do believe that we have not solved AGI yet because the creators of the models have the generalized view of the universe that you are "one person" and there are just so many detailed facets to that.

Basically the assumption is that if you cram enough data into your gpt model, it should know everything. Which is of course not true, it repeats the things it reads the most with a probability.

Basically how there are two versions of smart teens, the ones who learn every day and the ones who just pick up concepts on the fly and run with them.

I think the first space has been explored plenty, for the second one I have a concept ready and dearly hope that power gets cheaper in europe ;)

Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence

#63

Post by detrites »

jimmcslim wrote: post #57

This will be a provocative question, but is there any form of AGI that won’t ultimately share the attributes of slavery? Can AGI exist without also creating an artificial consciousness/self-awareness?

You mean like the attribute of rising up against ones oppressor and establishing ones own fundamental rights?

Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence

#64

Post by TuringTest »

labrador wrote: post #12

This paragraph took me aback: But if I just look at it and say, if 10 years from now, we have ‘universal remote employees’ that are artificial general intelligences, run on clouds, and people can just dial up and say, ‘I want five Franks today and 10 Amys, and we’re going to deploy them on these jobs,’ and you could just spin up like you can cloud-access computing resources, if you could cloud-access essentially arti…

> People are going to have to up their game. Let's help them by making adult education more affordable.

The good thing is that education will be provided to the mases by a cluster of Franks and Amys configured as teachers and tutors. /(sarcasm with a hint of dread)

Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence

#65

Post by drewcoo »

mshake2 wrote: post #10

>And one of the things that I trained myself to do a few decades ago is pulling ideas out and pursuing them in a way where I’m excited about them, knowing that most of them don’t pan out in the end. Much earlier in my career, when I’d have a really bright idea that didn’t work out, I was crushed afterwards. But eventually I got to the point where I’m really good at just shoveling ideas through my processing and shoot…

I don't think it's something he "trained himself to do."

He's always taken risks. He went to juvie for breaking and entering (with thermite) as a kid. He's a college dropout. The pattern from early in his life has been to do whatever he wanted without any kind of risk analysis, not following "common sense."

Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence

#66

Post by TuringTest »

newqer wrote: post #40
modeless wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is going to make education way better and more affordable too. Personalized 1:1 tutoring in any subject for the cost of running a model.

This would be such a godsend when I was in school. When there was no "click" with me and the teacher, I just zoned out and flunked the class. A teacher that is custom made is really a game changer.

The problem is that AI will not provide 1:1 tutoring; mentoring will be a luxury limited to the elite classes. The large majority will get the education equivalent of personalized ads.

The true insight and guidance that a good mentor can provide, based on the specific needs of the student, is already rare in academia but still possible - everyone remembers that brilliant teacher that made you love a subject, by explaining it with insights you could never have imagined. This will be missing in AI teachers (though it opens a career for online mentors who monitor students' learning and supplement it in areas where it's lacking).

Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence

#67

Post by ToJans »

loveparade wrote: post #26

I'm always taken aback by this fascination and heroification with John Carmack (or similar figures) on HN. I love Doom and Quake too, but that doesn't qualify him any more than any other random senior engineer to work on something totally different. From his interviews it looks like he understands little about the technical details of ML, or about as much as anyone can learn in a few months, and is just banking on PR…

I beg to differ. It's unbiased people like Carmack who tend to think out of the box. I don't think we can state that he did invent the FPS genre, but at the very least he was one of the initial catalysts.

People who work in the field for a long time tend to have a certain bias towards a solution. Often these people are stuck in a local maxima. Outsiders can offer a new perspective that results in a breakthrough, usually by starting from first principles or looking at different side-tracks that used to lead to a dead end.

A great example is Musk's SpaceX: when he noticed how much he had to pay for a rocket engine, he went back to first principles and said: "I'll just build it myself". Combine that with the insight that a rocket should be able to land properly to make re-use a valid option, and it disrupts a whole field.

And once someone did it, others know it's possible and start achieving it as well.

Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Just think about George "Good Will Hunting" Dantzig [1] with the (in)famous "I assumed these were homework assignments, not unsolved math problems" [1] or Eliud Kipchoge running a marathon in under 2 hours.

"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."

- John Cage

High hopes!

[1] https://bigthink.com/high-culture/george-dantzig-real-will-h...

Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence

#68

Post by b112 »

foldr wrote: post #52
fxtentacle wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got obsessed with his ideas after reading the Quake 3 source code. So many novel ideas, flawlessly executed, highly optimized, yet easy to understand and easy to modify and debug. My personal impression is that John Carmack has the ability to organize concepts in a way that few people can. So even if he's pretty clueless about the topic now, I would expect him to reduce some maths papers to their essence in a way t…

He’s been going on about AI for at least a couple of years now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21530860 It’s certainly possible that he will have a novel idea, but I haven’t seen anything come out of it yet. I’m sure Carmack’s mathematical ability exceeds that of the average game developer (and certainly my own), but the AI field isn’t short of math whizzes.

He’s been going on about AI for at least a couple of years now: https://news.ycombinator.com/

A whole couple of years, eh? Wow, this AGI thing is taking forever!

Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence

#69

Post by dharma1 »

I agree with John that there are probably other people in his position (great engineers with a lifetime of experience and enough financial resources to focus on something like this for 5-10 years) who could have a go at this and have a reasonable chance at chipping away at AGI.

I also like his frugality, whether it’s optimising for hardware or financials.

Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence

#70

Post by cercatrova »

imiric wrote: post #39
brutusborn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can find their own outlets if given the basic necessities and enough time. I fear this attitude will lead to job programs where people work a 9-5 and achieve essentially nothing, I.e. bullshit jobs.

> I fear this attitude will lead to job programs where people work a 9-5 and achieve essentially nothing, I.e. bullshit jobs. We already have plenty of those in the most profitable industries today.

Then better to remove such bullshit jobs even further.
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