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AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

tomwphillips.co.uk

681–683 of 683 posts

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#681
post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you have left your written record of (1) persistently confusing atoms with neurons, (2) an inability to explain where your confusion comes from outside of just repeating it, along side (3) snide responses to someone who in good faith took the time to explain the difference to you. One more time: Not understanding something is not the same as needing high compute. And the amount of compute we have today is coloss…

I don’t see where I reference neurons, care to quote me rather than adding misleading citation looking (1) strings to your text? Indeed, looking towards full compute simulation of a physical system, I reference one of its smallest physical components - atoms - and draw an analogy to the transistor in compute. You make no argument for why an atom needn’t be simulated in a system but nonetheless hand wave it away, lift…

> I don’t see where I reference neurons, care to quote me rather than adding misleading citation looking (1) strings to your text?

A brain operates at the level of neurons, not individual atoms.

The vast majority of atoms in the brain are there to do non-cognitive things.

The tiny fraction actually doing neural things are insanely redundant.

You can simulate a 1 kg ball dropping from 100 meters, to time its collision with the Earth, by simulating all its atoms. But the net mass of the ball is what matters. Not the individual atom masses and movements.

Likewise, you can simulate a brain by simulating all its atoms. But the net movements of transmitters are what matter, not all those individual atomic movements.

Neurons and transistors both operate on net signals precisely so they can be insensitive to individual atomic behaviors. If they were sensitive to individual atoms, they would be noise generators instead of reliable information processors.

And because they are designed to be insensitive to individual atomic behaviors, we don't have to model them at the atomic level.

(Which is impossible anyway. The quantum field equations for even two interacting atoms are complex. There is no visible future in which the atoms of a single neuron could all be simulated accurately, much less a brain. Even then, because of quantum noise, the atomic model wouldn't be any more accurate.)

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My apologies on being so blunt at the beginning of this conversation. That was unnecessary.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't ignore those arguments but most of the time, they're so poorly formed (eg. using data without logic), they aren't really worth listening to. If you believe AI provides no value, then any environmental cost is too high for you but you can't convey that by trying to dramatize how high it is. That's dishonest and I think people rightly turn off it.

Right now Open"AI", Oracle and everyone else are burning billions of dollars to buy and run these llms, they raise the price of energy around them, they provide negative economic benefit. It's dishonest of you to pretend that isn't the case.

I didn't know AI provides negative economic benefit overall. Is that what you're saying or just the it's negative for the local economies because it drives up power prices? That's an obviously small-scale, short-term and solvable problem.
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