Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately • Hacker News Board

Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately

#91

Post by filleduchaos » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 4:03 PM UTC

RugnirViking wrote: post #51

tenthirtyam wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd need to define "comprehension" - it's a bit like the Chinese room / Turing test. If an AI or AGI can look at a picture and see an apple, or (say) with an artificial nose smell an apple, or likewise feel or taste or hear* an apple, and at the same identify that it is an apple and maybe even suggest baking an apple pie, then what else is there to be comprehended? Maybe humans are just the same - far far ahead of…

It's very very good at sounding like it understands stuff. Almost as good as actually understanding stuff in some fields, sure. But it's definitely not the same. It will confidently analyze and describe a chess position using advanced sounding book techniques, but its all fundamentally flawed, often missing things that are extremely obvious (like, an undefended queen free to take) while trying to sound like its a sea…

If anyone wants to see the chess comprehension breakdown in action, the YouTuber GothamChess occasionally puts out videos where he plays against a new or recently-updated LLM.

Hanging a queen is not evidence of a lack of intelligence - even the very best human grandmasters will occasionally do that. But in pretty much every single video, the LLM loses the plot entirely after barely a couple dozen moves and starts to resurrect already-captured pieces, move pieces to squares they can't get to, etc - all while keeping the same confident "expert" tone.

Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately

#92

Post by callc » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 4:16 PM UTC

danielbln wrote: post #49

krapp wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AGI would mean fully sentient, sapient and human or greater equivalent intelligence in software. The business case, such that it exists (and setting aside Roko's Basilisk and other such fears) is slavery, plain and simple. You can just fire all of your employees and have the machines do all the work, faster, better, cheaper, without regards to pesky labor and human rights laws and human physical limitations. This is…

AGI is AGI, not ASI though. General intelligence doesn't mean sapience, sentience or consciousness, it just means general capabilities across the board at the level of or surpassing human ability. ASI is a whole different beast.

This sounds very close to the “It’s ok to abuse and kill animals (for meat), they’re not sentient”

Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately

#93

Post by amanaplanacanal » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 4:17 PM UTC

Findecanor wrote: post #40

AGI might be a technological breakthrough, but what would be the business case for it? Is there one? So far I have only seen it been thrown around to create hype.

The women of the world are creating millions of new intelligence beings every day. I'm really not sure what having one made of metal is going to get us.

Right now the AGI tech bros seem to me to be subscribed to some new weird religion. They take it on faith that some super intelligence is going to solve the world problems. We already have some really high IQ people today, and I don't see them doing much better than anybody else at solving the world's problems.

Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately

#94

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 4:19 PM UTC

RugnirViking wrote: post #51

tenthirtyam wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd need to define "comprehension" - it's a bit like the Chinese room / Turing test. If an AI or AGI can look at a picture and see an apple, or (say) with an artificial nose smell an apple, or likewise feel or taste or hear* an apple, and at the same identify that it is an apple and maybe even suggest baking an apple pie, then what else is there to be comprehended? Maybe humans are just the same - far far ahead of…

It's very very good at sounding like it understands stuff. Almost as good as actually understanding stuff in some fields, sure. But it's definitely not the same. It will confidently analyze and describe a chess position using advanced sounding book techniques, but its all fundamentally flawed, often missing things that are extremely obvious (like, an undefended queen free to take) while trying to sound like its a sea…

A sufficiently good simulation of understanding is functionally equivalent to understanding.

At that point, the question of whether the model really does understand is pointless. We might as well argue about whether humans understand.

Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately

#95

Post by danielbln » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 4:20 PM UTC

callc wrote: post #92

danielbln wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AGI is AGI, not ASI though. General intelligence doesn't mean sapience, sentience or consciousness, it just means general capabilities across the board at the level of or surpassing human ability. ASI is a whole different beast.

This sounds very close to the “It’s ok to abuse and kill animals (for meat), they’re not sentient”

That's quite the logical leap. Pointing out their lack of sapience (animals are absolutely sentient) does not mean it's ok to kill them.

Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately

#96

Post by hexage1814 » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 4:24 PM UTC

lherron wrote: post #47

Honestly this article sounds like someone is unhappy that AI isn’t being deployed/developed “the way I feel it should be done”. Talent changing companies is bad. Companies making money to pay for the next training run is bad. Consumers getting products they want is bad. In the author’s view, AI should be advanced in a research lab by altruistic researchers and given directly to other altruistic researchers to advance…

This. The point of whining about VEO 3, “AI being used to create addictive products” really shows that. It's a text-to-video technology. The company has nothing to do if people use it to generate "low quality content". The same way internet companies aren't at fault that large amounts of the web are scams or similar junk.

Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately

#97

Post by LtWorf » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 4:25 PM UTC

Touche wrote: post #24

zaphirplane wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not commenting on the whole just the rhetorical question of why would people leave. They are leaving for more money, more seniority or because they don’t like their boss. 0 about AGI

Yeah I agree, this idea that people won't change jobs if they are on the verge of a breakthrough reads like a silicon valley fantasy where you can underpay people by selling them on vision or something. "Make ME rich, but we'll give you a footnote on the Wikipedia page"

I think you're being very optimistic with the footnote.

Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately

#98

Post by pests » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 4:27 PM UTC

pu_pe wrote: post #28

matusp wrote: post #8

Observe what the AI companies are doing, not what they are saying. If they would expect to achieve AGI soon, their behaviour would be completely different. Why bother developing chatbots or doing sales, when you will be operating AGI in a few short years? Surely, all resources should go towards that goal, as it is supposed to usher the humanity into a new prosperous age (somehow).

I don't think it's as simple as that. Chatbots can be used to harvest data, and sales are still important before and after you achieve AGI.

OpenAI considers money to be useless post-agi. They’ve even made statements that any investments are basically donations once agi is achieved

Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately

#99

Post by joshdavham » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 4:32 PM UTC

> The AI industry oscillates between fear-mongering and utopianism. In that dichotomy is hidden a subtle manipulation. […] They don’t realize that panic doesn’t prepare society but paralyzes it instead, or that optimism doesn’t reassure people but feels like gaslighting. Worst of all, both messages serve the same function: to justify accelerating AI deployment—either for safety reasons or for capability reasons

This is a great point and also something I’ve become a bit cynical about these last couple of months. I think the very extreme and “bipolar” messaging around AI might be a bit more dishonest than I originally (perhaps naively?) though.

Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately

#100

Post by ninetyninenine » Sat, Jul 05, 2025, 4:33 PM UTC

>If they truly believed we’re at most five years from world-transforming AI, they wouldn’t be switching jobs, no matter how large the pay bump (they’re already affluent).

What ridiculous logic is this? TO base the entire premise that AGI is not imminent based on job switching? How about basing it on something more concrete.

How do people come up with such shakey foundations to support their conclusions? It's obvious. They come up with the conclusion first then they find whatever they can to support it. Unfortunately if dubious logic is all that's available then that's what they will say.