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AI is different

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Re: AI is different

#671

Post by jdoliner »

gdubs wrote: post #622

AI has been improving at a very rapid pace, which means that a lot of people have really outdated priors. I see this all the time online where people are dismissive about AI in a way that suggests it's been a while since they last checked-in on the capabilities of models. They wrote off the coding ability of ChatGPT on version 3.5, for instance, and have missed all the advancements that have happened since. Or they t…

I feel like I see these two opposite behaviors. People who formed an opinion about AI from an older model and haven't updated it. And people who have an opinion about what AI will be able to do in the future and refuse to acknowledge that it doesn't do that in the present.

And often when the two are arguing it's tricky to tell which is which, because whether or not it does something isn't totally black and white, there's some things it can sometimes do, which you can argue either way about that being in its capabilities or not.

Re: AI is different

#672

Post by NitpickLawyer »

c0balt wrote: post #611
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not really, there are plenty of things that LLMs cannot do that a professor could make his students do. Could you offer some examples? I'm having a hard time thinking of what could be at the intersection of "hard enough for SotA LLMs" yet "easy enough for students (who are still learning, not experts in their fields, etc)".

Present the results of your exercises (in person) in front of someone. Or really anything in person. A big downer on the online/remote Initiatives for learning but actually an advantage for older Unis that already have existing physical facilities for students. This does however also have some problems similar to code interviews .

Sure but that's a solution to prevent students from using LLMs, not an example of something a professor can ask students that "LLMs can't do"...

Re: AI is different

#673

Post by kortilla »

azemetre wrote: post #626
m4nu3l wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In economics, you aren't necessarily creating wealth just because your final output has value. The value of the final good or service has to be higher than the inputs for you to be creating wealth. I could take a functioning boat and scrap it, sell the scrap metal that has value. However, I destroyed wealth because the boat was worth more. Even if you are creating wealth, but the inputs have better uses and can creat…

This isn't related to what I was commenting on where the other poster came across as not seeing government by the governed as having economic worth.

No, I said it was a requisite to generate wealth, but it does not generate it directly.

Re: AI is different

#674

Post by iphone_elegance »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #80

This is an accurate assessment. I do feel that there is a routine bias on HN to underplay AI. I think it's people not wanting to lose control or relative status in the world. AI is an existential threat to the unique utility of humans, which has been the last line of defense against absolute despotism (i.e. a tyrannical government will not kill all its citizens because it still needs them to perform jobs. If humans a…

lmao, "underplay ai" that's all this site has been about for the last few years

Re: AI is different

#675

Post by kortilla »

azemetre wrote: post #618
kortilla wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments are not the source of wealth. They are just a requisite component to allow people to create it and maintain it.

This doesn't pass the sniff test, governments generate wealth all the time. Public education, public healthcare, public research, public housing. These are all programs that generate an enormous amount of wealth and allow citizens to flourish.

Those programs consume a bunch of money and they don’t generate wealth directly. They are critical to let people flourish and go out to generate wealth.

A bunch of well educated citizens living on government housing who don’t go out and become productive members of society will quickly lead to collapse.

Re: AI is different

#676

Post by azemetre »

m4nu3l wrote: post #641
azemetre wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would this be worse than the current situation of private actors accountable to no one controlling this technology? It's not like I can convince Zuckerberg to change his ways. At least with a democratic government I have means to try and build a coalition then enact change. The alternative requires having money and that seems like an inherently undemocratic system. Why can't AIs be controlled with democratic inst…

>Why would this be worse than the current situation of private actors accountable to no one controlling this technology? It's not like I can convince Zuckerberg to change his ways. As long as Zuckerberg has no army forcing me, I'm fine with that. The issue would be whether he could breach contracts or get away with fraud. But if AI is sufficiently distributed, this is less likely to happen. >At least with a democrati…

What is your alternative to democracy then?

I also don't buy that groups don't make better decisions than individuals. We know that diversity of thought and opinion is one way to make better decisions in groups compared to individuals; why would there be harm in believing that consensus building, debates, adversarial processes, due process, and systems of appeal lead to worse outcomes in decision making?

I'm not buying the argument. Reading your comment it feels like there's an argument to be made that there aren't enough democratic systems for the people to engage with. That I definitely agree with.

Re: AI is different

#677

Post by rootusrootus »

c0balt wrote: post #611
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not really, there are plenty of things that LLMs cannot do that a professor could make his students do. Could you offer some examples? I'm having a hard time thinking of what could be at the intersection of "hard enough for SotA LLMs" yet "easy enough for students (who are still learning, not experts in their fields, etc)".

Present the results of your exercises (in person) in front of someone. Or really anything in person. A big downer on the online/remote Initiatives for learning but actually an advantage for older Unis that already have existing physical facilities for students. This does however also have some problems similar to code interviews .

> Present the results of your exercises (in person) in front of someone

I would not be surprised if we start to see a shift towards this. Interviews instead of written exams. It does not take long to figure out whether someone knows the material or not.

Personally, I do not understand how students expect to succeed without learning the material these days. If anything, the prevalence of AI today only makes cheating easier in the very short term -- over the next couple years I think cheating will be harder than it ever was. I tried to leverage AI to push myself through a fairly straightforward Udacity course (in generative AI, no less), and all it did was make me feel incredibly stupid. I had to stop using it and redo the parts where I had gotten some help, so that my brain would actually learn something.

But I'm Gen X, so maybe I'm too committed to old-school learning and younger people will somehow get super good at this stuff while also not having to do the hard parts.

Re: AI is different

#678

Post by nicce »

mgradowski wrote: post #459

I wouldn't trust a taxi driver's predictions about the future of economics and society, why would I trust some database developer's? Actually, I take that back. I might trust the taxi driver.

You shouldn't care about the "who" at all. You should see their arguments. If taxi driver doesn't know anything real, it should be plain obvious and you can state it easily with arguments rather than attacking the background of the person. Actually, your comment is one of the most common logical flaws (Ad Hominem), combining even multiple at the same time.

Re: AI is different

#679

Post by azemetre »

kortilla wrote: post #673
azemetre wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't related to what I was commenting on where the other poster came across as not seeing government by the governed as having economic worth.

No, I said it was a requisite to generate wealth, but it does not generate it directly.

Gotcha. Definitely felt like I made that comment a little too rush, especially in the context of all the others as well.

Re: AI is different

#680

Post by dmead »

gdubs wrote: post #622

AI has been improving at a very rapid pace, which means that a lot of people have really outdated priors. I see this all the time online where people are dismissive about AI in a way that suggests it's been a while since they last checked-in on the capabilities of models. They wrote off the coding ability of ChatGPT on version 3.5, for instance, and have missed all the advancements that have happened since. Or they t…

Is there anything you can tell me that will help me drop the nagging feeling that gradient descent trained models will just never be good?

I understand all of what you said, but I can't get over that fact that the term AI is being used for these architectures. It seems like the industry is just trying to do a cool parlor trick in convincing the masses this is somehow AI from science fiction.

Maybe I'm being overly cynical, but a lot of this stinks.

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