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OpenAI researchers warned board of AI breakthrough ahead of CEO ouster

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

#691
post #491

I feel very comfortable saying, as a mathematician, that the ability to solve grade school maths problems would not be at all a predictor of ability to solve real mathematical problems at a research level. The reason LLMs fail at solving mathematical problems is because: 1) they are terrible at arithmetic, 2) they are terrible at algebra, but most importantly, 3) they are terrible at complex reasoning (more specifica…

> The reason LLMs fail at solving mathematical problems is because

...because they are too small and have too little weights. Cats cannot solve mathematical problems too, but unlike cats, neural network evolve.

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

#692

> There has long been discussion among computer scientists about the danger posed by highly intelligent machines, for instance if they might decide that the destruction of humanity was in their interest. This AI doomer stuff is such nonsense and I can't believe anybody takes it seriously. As if it's OpenAI's responsibility to save humanity from the pitfalls of AI. Imagine if we decided to improve our education system…

What is exactly the non sense part? Can you elaborate on the education analogy and how it relates to AI doomer stuff?

Well the quote I referenced from the article of the machines deciding to destroy humanity is utter scifi nonsense.

There are obviously legitimate risks to AI and safety is important, but this is the same for any new technology, and it's governments' responsibilities to ensure that people are safe. AI companies mindlessly slowing down and keeping their tech to themselves does no service to humanity, and if anything is a net-negative due to how tremendously useful this stuff is.

Education is analogous to AI because AI is an enormous education and productivity boost to humanity - sort of like everyone having a personal assistant, programmer, and tutor at their fingertips. This could be used for good and it could be used for bad, but the technology itself is neutral.

Again I want to emphasize that obviously there are downsides that could result from evil people using AI for bad purposes, but that does not justify slowing down AI progress - just like I don't see "people using information for bad purposes" as a legitimate reason for stifling advancement in education or something like Google search.

I have yet to see any convincing argument otherwise. Feel free to provide your counter-perspective.

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

#693

Put this on my tombstone after the robots kill me or whatever, but I think all “AI safety” concerns are a wild overreaction totally out of proportion to the actual capabilities of these models. I just haven’t seen anything in the past year which makes me remotely fearful about the future of humanity, including both our continued existence and our continued employment.

I will bet ANY amount of money that 30% of current jobs will be displaced with AI advances in the next twenty years.

Put your money here https://longbets.org/>.

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

#694
post #491

I feel very comfortable saying, as a mathematician, that the ability to solve grade school maths problems would not be at all a predictor of ability to solve real mathematical problems at a research level. The reason LLMs fail at solving mathematical problems is because: 1) they are terrible at arithmetic, 2) they are terrible at algebra, but most importantly, 3) they are terrible at complex reasoning (more specifica…

[deleted]

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

#695
post #64

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.

> day when 50% of jobs are being done by AI

By OpenAI definition 50% is not enough to qualify for AGI, it has to be "nearly any economically valuable work"

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

#696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh. We have a working example of a physical system that implements intelligence (the brain) in contrast to no evidence of all-powerful dude in the sky. Why these analogies keep popping up? How can you know that AGI is not around the corner? Compute available to the corporations is already in a ballpark of some estimates of the brain's computational capacity. What's left is unknown unknows. And the researches working…

Judging from the quality of GPT4 output that I get, AGI is not around the corner for a long time. This whole thing seems like extreme overhype squared carried out in a very unfortunate public soap opera setting.

there years ago, LLM wouldn't be able to generate more than a coherent paragraph

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

#697
post #316

I was talking to my (12 year old) son about parts of math he finds boring. He said that he thinks absolute value is absurdly easy and extremely boring. I asked him if there was anything that might make it more interesting, he said "maybe complex numbers". So I asked him "what would the absolute value of i+1 be?" he thinks for a little bit and says "square root of 2" and I ask him "what about the absolute value of 2i…

Sorry, can you explain this? To me, it makes sense to define abs(x) = sqrt(x^2) i.e. ignoring the negative solution enforces the positive result. Using that definition, abs(i+1) = sqrt((i+1)^2) = sqrt(i^2 + 2i + 1) = sqrt(-1 + 2i + 1) = sqrt(2i) != sqrt(2). The second example seems off in the same way (i.e. the answer should be sqrt(8i) instead of sqrt(8)). Am I missing something? Also, abs(i+2) = sqrt((i+2)^2) = sqrt(i^2 + 4i + 4) = sqrt(-1 + 4i + 4) = sqrt(4i + 3) which doesnt seem to follow the pattern your son described.

Also, just to point out that my understanding of absolute value is different than your sons. Thats not to say one is right and another is wrong, but there are often different ways of seeing the same thing. I would imagine that LLMs would similarly see it a different way. Another example of this is people defining PI by its relation to the circumference of a circle. Theres nothing wrong with such a definition, but its certainly not the only possible definition.

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

#698
post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know for Q* of course, but all the tests I made with GPT4, and all what I've read and seen about it, show that it is unable to reason. It was trained with an unfathomable amount of data, so it can simulate reasoning very well, but it is unable to reason

What is the difference between simulating reasoning very well and "actual" reasoning?

Actual reasoning is made up of various biological feedback loops that happen in the body and brain, essentially your physical senses give you the ability to reason in the first place, without the eyes, ears etc there is no ability to learn basic reasoning, which is why kids who are blind or mute from birth have huge issues learning about object permanence, spatial awaraness etc. You cant expect human reasoning without human perception.

My question is how does the AI perceive. Basically how good is the simulation for its perception. If we know that, then we can probably assess its ability to reason because we can compare it to the closest benchmark we have (your average human being). How do AI's see, how did they learn concepts in strings of words and pixels? How does the concept it learnt in text carry through to images of colors, of shapes? Does it show a transfer of conceptual understanding across both two and three dimentional shapes?

I know these are more questions than answers, but its just things that I've been wondering about.

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

#699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging from the quality of GPT4 output that I get, AGI is not around the corner for a long time. This whole thing seems like extreme overhype squared carried out in a very unfortunate public soap opera setting.

there years ago, LLM wouldn't be able to generate more than a coherent paragraph

The point being?

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

#700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will bet ANY amount of money that 30% of current jobs will be displaced with AI advances in the next twenty years.

Darn well I really was hoping my children and grandchildren could continue my wonderful data entry career but OCR ruined that, and now they can’t even do such meaningful jobs like read emails and schedule appointments, or do taxes like an accountant. What meaning will they have in life with all those ever so profound careers ruined!! /s

I know of at least one person making nearly 6 figures doing data entry.

It turns out some websites work hard enough to prevent scraping that it is more cost effective to just pay a contractor to go look at a page and type numbers in rather than hire a developer to constantly work around anti-scraping techniques (and risk getting banned).

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