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Rich Sutton on AI creativity and discovery

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Re: Rich Sutton on AI creativity and discovery

#61

Post by orbital-decay »

Shitty-kitty wrote: post #30

One has to be very specific when throwing around words like "creative" when talking about A.I Can A.I create art. Well it can create something that's pleasing to our senses but art is ultimately about conveying human feelings and emotions. Even as humans, understanding art is not universal. "feelings and emotions" and therefore art, can be deeply tied to a particular groups shared beliefs and experiences. Can it be c…

His definition of creativity is closed-loop, i.e. the produced concept has to be novel for the system itself, not for the side observer.

Re: Rich Sutton on AI creativity and discovery

#62

Post by piker »

flir wrote: post #59
musebox35 wrote: post #52

The most successful applications like coding are not the result of pure LLM/generative modeling. They come from closing the loop with an agentic harness. The generate-test-selectively refine loop is the core modality of scientific work. An LLM + RL with Verifiable Rewards + feedback from compiler/terminal runs mimics this process to a great extend. This is Fisher/Box feedback loop ( https://www-sop.inria.fr/members/I…

Completely agree on the importance of the harness. The problem I see is the same problem Evolutionary Algorithms had: you can generate potential solutions until you run out of cash, but you still need to evalulate those solutions. You need a fitness function, and that means you need to at least know the general shape of the solution. If anyone knows of any work towards more open-ended fitness functions, I'd love to r…

Seems to a layperson like myself that in Math they're using Lean and in programming contexts they're using compilers, such that the models themselves tend towards embedding that determinism "intuitively".

Re: Rich Sutton on AI creativity and discovery

#64

Post by brador »

Shitty-kitty wrote: post #30

One has to be very specific when throwing around words like "creative" when talking about A.I Can A.I create art. Well it can create something that's pleasing to our senses but art is ultimately about conveying human feelings and emotions. Even as humans, understanding art is not universal. "feelings and emotions" and therefore art, can be deeply tied to a particular groups shared beliefs and experiences. Can it be c…

Contemporary humans downvote art because it makes them uncomfortable.

They just want dopamine. No thinking because that hurts.

Re: Rich Sutton on AI creativity and discovery

#65

Post by arowthway »

simianwords wrote: post #36
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He actually says the areas in which AI has had the novel successes are those which can be evaluated (like coding or Go). Not that it can’t happen at all.

That’s my point, he says ai does well where evaluation is neurosymbolically closed. But so do humans? How do humans make discoveries without having formal ways to evaluate? In my pharma drug example, humans could evaluate only because they had access to the physical realm. I can’t think of an example of humans evaluating a discovery in a way that LLMs can’t. can you?

I don't think there is any "humans are metaphysically superior to LLMs" subtext to this talk, it's just a technical/educational observation.

Access to some forms of evaluation and selective retention is inherent to humans and it's not inherent to LLMS. But it can be somehow bolted on and that's when they work best. It makes sense that more focus on those principles can yield better AI. I think the retention part is the real limitation of LLMs, because it's limited to stuffing things in context window.

Re: Rich Sutton on AI creativity and discovery

#66

Post by code_biologist »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #29
kibibu wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The transcript does seem to overlook post-training steps like Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) (but I'll certainly won't claim that Rich Sutton is unaware of such things; RLVR has a very narrow set of evaluation approaches). I wonder if this is a precursor to Keen Tech leaning into David Silver's Ineffable Intelligence approach.

This was exactly what I was thinking of. RLVR is the secret sauce behind o3 and its many successors. Its the secret sauce behind why the current models are so great at coding and soon to be unbeatable at math. LLMs can pose many questions and if they are easily verifiable, fine tune very heavily. A lot of the world models discussion will inevitable lean into simulations as verification.

I'll admit that I miss having access to the ChatGPT 4.5 "absolutely gigantic model" with enough tuning to make it sane and useful. The RLVR models are superb for actual tasks in those RLVR domains, but that fine tuned view of the world as a verifiable problem to solve makes them feel worse for touchy feely stuff. Even for medical consultation and diagnosis, RLVR model's urge to reach a conclusion often is a liability.

Re: Rich Sutton on AI creativity and discovery

#67

Post by artistonn »

Shitty-kitty wrote: post #30

One has to be very specific when throwing around words like "creative" when talking about A.I Can A.I create art. Well it can create something that's pleasing to our senses but art is ultimately about conveying human feelings and emotions. Even as humans, understanding art is not universal. "feelings and emotions" and therefore art, can be deeply tied to a particular groups shared beliefs and experiences. Can it be c…

> art is ultimately about conveying human feelings and emotions

you made a small error, art is mostly about generating an emotion in the viewer/listener/.... not about transmitting an emotion of the creator

the Wikipedia page on art starts with:

> Art is a diverse range of cultural activity centered around works utilizing creative or imaginative talents, which are expected to evoke a worthwhile experience

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

so AIs can do art, because they are only required to generate an emotional response in the receiver

Re: Rich Sutton on AI creativity and discovery

#68

Post by scotty79 »

rembicilious wrote: post #14

"So that is my call to arms. If we want the full power of AI scientists, then we should share the goals with them so they can create, evaluate, discover, and in these ways fully participate in achieving the goals. Let’s be bold! Let’s fully automate Creativity and Discovery!" Should we automate exercise and play as well? How about learning? The machine didn't have a soul, so we donated ours. Eureka! My AI found it!

> Should we automate exercise and play as well? How about learning?

Obviously. Exercise, play and learning is in large part what makes us smart. If we want AI to be smart we should definitely automate those.

But that's not what you had in mind. To address that I can only say that you are allowed to still do the automated things manually.

Re: Rich Sutton on AI creativity and discovery

#69

Post by ACCount37 »

code_biologist wrote: post #66
LarsDu88 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was exactly what I was thinking of. RLVR is the secret sauce behind o3 and its many successors. Its the secret sauce behind why the current models are so great at coding and soon to be unbeatable at math. LLMs can pose many questions and if they are easily verifiable, fine tune very heavily. A lot of the world models discussion will inevitable lean into simulations as verification.

I'll admit that I miss having access to the ChatGPT 4.5 "absolutely gigantic model" with enough tuning to make it sane and useful. The RLVR models are superb for actual tasks in those RLVR domains, but that fine tuned view of the world as a verifiable problem to solve makes them feel worse for touchy feely stuff. Even for medical consultation and diagnosis, RLVR model's urge to reach a conclusion often is a liability…

Fable 5/Mythos 5 is the next "big chungus LLM".

It's RLVR tuned, but not to the ChatGPT level of brain damage, and it's still backed by a fuck off huge pool of model weights - which matters for what you call "touchy feely stuff".

Re: Rich Sutton on AI creativity and discovery

#70

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

Shitty-kitty wrote: post #30

One has to be very specific when throwing around words like "creative" when talking about A.I Can A.I create art. Well it can create something that's pleasing to our senses but art is ultimately about conveying human feelings and emotions. Even as humans, understanding art is not universal. "feelings and emotions" and therefore art, can be deeply tied to a particular groups shared beliefs and experiences. Can it be c…

Current models are trained on image pastiche and style remixing. But there's no reason you couldn't add an Artistic Director layer which has been trained on emotional and cultural signifiers and to direct the pastiche and remixing.

The practical problem is that models have very limited prompt adherence. The level of detail you can specify in scene design is very crude. So you can get the slop effect where there's a lot of in-fill pastiche detail, but you could never create something like this, where all of the incidental objects are specifically included to enforce the message.

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

It's basically the professional version of the "Draw me a pelican on a bicycle" problem.

There are situations where you want that level of creative control, and current image generators don't get close to it.

And without it you can't get to the meta-creativity level where you're creating a new aesthetic that's a cultural landmark - which is what the famous artists did, and still do.

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