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OpenAI researchers warned board of AI breakthrough ahead of CEO ouster

reuters.com

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Re: OpenAI researchers warned board of AI breakthrough ahead of CEO ouster

#61

Post by tyingq »

xanderlewis wrote: post #37
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is enough there to make me believe it's real. After all, a big objection to LLMs is they are just "fancy autocomplete" or "stochastic parrots". I don't agree, but LLMs famously are "bad at math", that is you can't really train them to do math unless they've seen previous calculations with similar numbers in their training sets. Training an AI system to truly do arbitrary mathematical logic (think "compl…

Mathematical logic doesn’t refer to ‘complex word problems with big numbers’. The reason that LLMs struggle (well, are hopeless currently) with mathematics problems is not because it involves arithmetic (although this is already enough of a struggle) but because it requires a conceptual understanding of the ideas rather than just being about manipulating language — a lot of the goings-on are hidden in the semantic wo…

I've seen it gets tripped up if you mix something common with something uncommon. ChatGPT chokes on, for example:

"Two trains on separate tracks, 30 miles from each other are approaching each other, each at a speed of 10 mph. How long before they crash into each other?"

Re: OpenAI researchers warned board of AI breakthrough ahead of CEO ouster

#62

Post by TillE »

tsunamifury wrote: post #47
dougmwne wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes some sense to me. My experience with GPT is that it is capable of straightforward logical inference, but not more inspired thinking. It lacks the ability for a “eureka moment”. All complex inference it appears to have is a result of its training set. It is incapable of solving certain kinds of logic problems that a child would be able to solve. As an example, take the wolf, goat, and cabbage problem, but c…

GPT4 solves this problem In any combination easily. What do so many posters seem to claim to have stumped it?

GPT-4 is not solving logic problems, it's doing an extremely good job of generating text based on recognizing familiar patterns.

If you give it something weird and unfamiliar, it will absolutely fail.

Re: OpenAI researchers warned board of AI breakthrough ahead of CEO ouster

#63

Post by JumpCrisscross »

worik wrote: post #20

This sort is why limits to private wealth and power are, IMO, a good idea We have already seen petroleum companies burn the world for profit Tech is doing its best to eliminate privacy for profit What would Sam do or not do, for profit?

> What would Sam do or not do, for profit?

Sam is smart and commands genuine loyalty and respect. If it’s troublesome for Sam to do it, then we can fix that with laws. We are good at that!

The problem with OpenAI wasn’t/isn’t any one person. The problem is the structure. Fix that, stop pretending you’re an altruistic outfit and then we can sensibly talk about regulation.

Re: OpenAI researchers warned board of AI breakthrough ahead of CEO ouster

#64

Post by qgin »

There will come a day when 50% of jobs are being done by AI, major decisions are being made by AI, we're all riding around in cars driven by AI, people are having romantic relationships with AI... and we'll STILL be debating whether what has been created is really AGI.

AGI will forever be the next threshold, then the next, then the next until one day we'll realize that we passed the line years before.

Re: OpenAI researchers warned board of AI breakthrough ahead of CEO ouster

#65

Post by XorNot »

V__ wrote: post #3

> warning of a powerful artificial intelligence discovery that they said could threaten humanity, > Given vast computing resources, the new model was able to solve certain mathematical problems, [..] Though only performing math on the level of grade-school students, acing such tests made researchers very optimistic about Q*’s future success, the source said. I somehow expected a bit more.

It's the exponent problem though: if it can actually engage in abstract mathematical reasoning, then it's a machine which doesn't need to sleep able to come up with new independent ideas potentially.

It's the rudiments of being able to develop and reason about computation, which means it's the rudiments of self-modification and improvement. Which is basically the holy grail of AI: a program which can iteratively improve itself to create better AIs and suddenly we're off to the races.

This is before getting into other interesting parameters, like how the scale and components of computer technology have a physical reality, and we've had experiences in the lab of genetic algorithms developing novel "cheat" strategies which exploit the physical characteristics of their hardware.

Re: OpenAI researchers warned board of AI breakthrough ahead of CEO ouster

#67

Post by kelseyfrog »

ilaksh wrote: post #12

Could it be named in reference to something like the A* search algorithm? What if Q stands for Query in transformer attention? How would that type of search translate to transformers? They said that it's able to solve simple math problems. If it's related to A* then maybe it's trying to find a path to something. The answer to a word problem?

*(spelled STAR) can also refer to Semantic-parsing Transformer and ASP Reasoner, which while a bit of a stretch, is a concept that shows up in literature.

Re: OpenAI researchers warned board of AI breakthrough ahead of CEO ouster

#70

Post by righthand »

htk wrote: post #6

Just when I thought the ride was over. The belief in what's in the letter could explain some things like how the board couldn't trust Sam to keep this "discovery" at bay, and how it could be better to implode the company than let it explore said technology.

The implosion happened to be the result of ousting a liar but not the intention.
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