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Why AI is still dumb and not scary at all (pt. 1)

tejo.substack.com

71–80 of 86 posts

Re: Why AI is still dumb and not scary at all (pt. 1)

#71
>AI does not really think, it just seems like it does.

Neither does humans.

Sorry to disappoint the super-AGI hopeful: we're already past that point, because the average human is only a 3B parameter LLM there's nothing magic that comes with an AGI.

The first time GPT2 autocompleted a sentence involving admitting a previous fault of output we were in the post-human era.

Everything we've seen since then have been us living through the legendary post-AGI AI bootstraps launch, but living the future isn't exactly living up to the hype huh?

That GTP-4.5 model that had the Samaltmanists wriggle on the floor in rapturous ecstatic orgasms just last year? Today it's an embarrassment, like the seed-stained lesswrong posters of yore.

The singularity was a star trek plot device.

What we see today is the real deal and I re-iterate my 2015 predictions: by the time an actually scary god like AI is created(say in 2050). We'll have so many thousands or millions of demi-god AI around that the god itself will have to have the good graces to shut up, get a queue ticket in the bare-metal immigration zone with the rest of the rabble. The prospect of true AI divinity will be a (hype-burned) washed out gray with a trace sprinkle of glitter on the already existing background of demi-divine AI.

Re: Why AI is still dumb and not scary at all (pt. 1)

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you could trust a $3 drug-store checkout isle slim wallet calculator (with solar panels for recharging) to perform those calculations and you'd get more nines of reliability from that calculator than the LLM. And it didn't cost hundreds of billions of dollars to develop the calculator, so you won't end up paying thousands of dollars for it. That LLMs cannot beat a $3 calculator is because they're not fit for purp…

If you think an LLM is unfit for purpose, try getting a calculator to write poetry.

Nobody is trying to get 7 TRILIONS of dollars investment on calculators being capable of doing any task, but OpenAI swears to god that any day soon their language model will became a general intelligence capable of doing all things, including math.

Re: Why AI is still dumb and not scary at all (pt. 1)

#73
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Can we characterize the difference in thinking between a chimp and a human? In my opinion the genetic and biological differences are trivial. But evidently humans did evolve some secret sauce—language. Language bootstrapped human consciouness to what we now call self-consciousness; to a higher level than in any other vertebrate over a period of a few million years and without the benefit of teams of world…

> Can we characterize the difference in thinking between a chimp and a human? We can, but the difference is not in whether we think or not, but in _how_ we think. We both experience the world through our senses and have conceptual representations of it in our minds. While other primates haven't invented complex written language (yet), they do have the ability to communicate ideas vocally and using symbols. Machines d…

We define basic words differently. Yes, some chimps do have theory of mind. But to be equally aggressive in questioning you: how do you not see qualitative difference between us and chimpanzees?

And how do you not see the amazing progress in LLM output? And how do you not see how close LLMs with “chain-of-thought” has gotten to the “appearance” of thinking. And how is it that I not clear enough for you in my first post in highlighting explicitly that LLMs are not yet thinking?

Do not use me as your straw chimp unthinking human.

Re: Why AI is still dumb and not scary at all (pt. 1)

#74
post #30

Crap article with zero insight that wasn't worth my time. There are better ways to argue the same position but it's probably indefensible. Neural networks are fundamentally approximators, both when they are approximating long-range relations between concepts (like LLMs do) or when they denoise some noise for images. They approximate thought and intelligence, because we have coded it in our writings. Our writings are…

> Our writings are a complete fingerprint of the thought process, because we are able to pick up any thought process from a book, without ever seeing or otherwise having contact with the author

That doesn't follow, even a simple encryption program can make that possible without an intermediate actor being able to crack that.

Humans all run very similar software/hardware so we can read what each others write, but so far the computer isn't close to the same behind the scenes thoughts. Meaning all the things we humans leave out when we write are actually important, so the text isn't everything.

Re: Why AI is still dumb and not scary at all (pt. 1)

#76
>There is no real thinking involved. It’s just math

>Implying

I'll never understand this "They're just learning from past experience and making predictions!" argument, as if that doesn't constitute thinking in some meaningful, if minimal sense. What I'm more annoyed about is that for laypeople AI is synonymous with transformers. The fields of AI and machine learning are much vaster, with a rich intellectual history spanning many decades. Blanket statements don't apply.

Re: Why AI is still dumb and not scary at all (pt. 1)

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's going to stop them?

Lawyers

The current admin is unlikely to get the DOJ to do anything, so that leaves you trying to sue them yourselves, and they can afford more expensive lawyers and to gum up the proceedings until you go bankrupt or give up.

If you haven't already signed away your right to sue with an arbitration clause.

Re: Why AI is still dumb and not scary at all (pt. 1)

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawyers

The current admin is unlikely to get the DOJ to do anything, so that leaves you trying to sue them yourselves, and they can afford more expensive lawyers and to gum up the proceedings until you go bankrupt or give up. If you haven't already signed away your right to sue with an arbitration clause.

class action. Someone sues on behalf of all customers of the insurance company saying the insurance policy is fraudulent. The company is executing policies based on ai or rolling the dice. The insurance company owes all customers balance paid on policy and all costs associated with attempting to use fraudulent policy.

Re: Why AI is still dumb and not scary at all (pt. 1)

#80

>AI does not really think, it just seems like it does. Neither does humans. Sorry to disappoint the super-AGI hopeful: we're already past that point, because the average human is only a 3B parameter LLM there's nothing magic that comes with an AGI. The first time GPT2 autocompleted a sentence involving admitting a previous fault of output we were in the post-human era. Everything we've seen since then have been us li…

What do you think will happen with humans when there are a trillion agents with "god like AI" out there?
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