Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mythologizing AI makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well (2023)

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 164 posts

Re: Mythologizing AI makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well (2023)

#91

Post by penteract »

jacobgold wrote: post #15
davidpapermill wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would've been nice to reserve "AI" for superior human-like intelligence capable of genuine common sense and reasoning. What would a frontier API have to be able to do to satisfy you?

Maybe just a very rigorous version of the Turing test? Modern LLMs can superficially simulate conversation but it's trivial to force them into revealing their non-human like intelligence. They've been "patched" since but all models fail basic tests like "Should I walk or drive to the car wash which is 100 feet away" by recommending you walk. So you'd just ask questions that require theory of mind, abstract and common…

If you had access to a bunch identical copies of me that couldn't communicate with each other, you'd be able to find many questions I would give stupid answers to. I suspect I'd come out of it looking worse than an LLM.

Re: Mythologizing AI makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well (2023)

#92

Post by scarmig »

jacobgold wrote: post #74
CamperBob2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's talk about category mistakes. You've been here since 2007, according to your other reply. You understand that calculators have as much to do with mathematics as telescopes have to do with cosmology. Right? If someone unskilled at math brings a calculator to an international math competition, they will not succeed at solving many problems. Most likely, they will solve none at all. But if they bring a frontier LL…

> If someone unskilled at math brings a calculator to an international math competition, they will not succeed at solving many problems. > But if they bring a frontier LLM (and succeed at concealing it from the organizers), they can walk away with a gold medal. Of course you could win all kinds of math competitions with a concealed calculator. Maybe you'd need a fancy one, like a little SBC running Python. Anything c…

The idea that a calculator, or a calculator with Python, or even a calculator with a proof assistant (and every book ever written on math) would help a random person at e.g. IMO or Putnam is fairly revealing.

Re: Mythologizing AI makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well (2023)

#93

Post by NamlchakKhandro »

jacobgold wrote: post #79
JacobAsmuth wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, you're talking about "AGI"! In the 90's we started using the term, you should catch up!

Sorry to tell a fellow Jacob that you're the one who is out of date. The kids are calling everything "AI" and they mean "AGI", and that's the complaint.

You mean the term is a brand name now? Hoover, vacuum cleaner.

Re: Mythologizing AI makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well (2023)

#94

Post by CamperBob2 »

scarmig wrote: post #92
jacobgold wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone unskilled at math brings a calculator to an international math competition, they will not succeed at solving many problems. > But if they bring a frontier LLM (and succeed at concealing it from the organizers), they can walk away with a gold medal. Of course you could win all kinds of math competitions with a concealed calculator. Maybe you'd need a fancy one, like a little SBC running Python. Anything c…

The idea that a calculator, or a calculator with Python, or even a calculator with a proof assistant (and every book ever written on math) would help a random person at e.g. IMO or Putnam is fairly revealing.

Yeah, this is definitely one of those "Smile, nod, back away slowly, reach for doorknob" threads.

Re: Mythologizing AI makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well (2023)

#95

Post by [deleted] »

scarmig wrote: post #92
jacobgold wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone unskilled at math brings a calculator to an international math competition, they will not succeed at solving many problems. > But if they bring a frontier LLM (and succeed at concealing it from the organizers), they can walk away with a gold medal. Of course you could win all kinds of math competitions with a concealed calculator. Maybe you'd need a fancy one, like a little SBC running Python. Anything c…

The idea that a calculator, or a calculator with Python, or even a calculator with a proof assistant (and every book ever written on math) would help a random person at e.g. IMO or Putnam is fairly revealing.

[deleted]

Re: Mythologizing AI makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well (2023)

#96

Post by jacobgold »

scarmig wrote: post #92
jacobgold wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone unskilled at math brings a calculator to an international math competition, they will not succeed at solving many problems. > But if they bring a frontier LLM (and succeed at concealing it from the organizers), they can walk away with a gold medal. Of course you could win all kinds of math competitions with a concealed calculator. Maybe you'd need a fancy one, like a little SBC running Python. Anything c…

The idea that a calculator, or a calculator with Python, or even a calculator with a proof assistant (and every book ever written on math) would help a random person at e.g. IMO or Putnam is fairly revealing.

The idea that anyone would think anyone else would think that is fairly revealing.

Re: Mythologizing AI makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well (2023)

#97

Post by pixl97 »

jacobgold wrote: post #80
andai wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's a trick question, the human error rate for it was about 30% (higher depending on the country). The thing there though is that, if a human were given time to think about it, they'd probably go "hang on a minute", and with the LLMs that didn't seem to happen. They just kept confidently reasoning down the absurd path. That reminds me, I recently had an AI write a ton of tests proving the "correctness" of a fea…

> Yeah it's a trick question, the human error rate for it was about 30% (higher depending on the country). Error rate doesn't prove anything. The nature of the errors is what matters.

To err is human, it also seems that to err is AI.

Re: Mythologizing AI makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well (2023)

#98

Post by pixl97 »

_doctor_love wrote: post #62
jacobgold wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We didn't have confused people claiming calculators were human-like intelligences doing math.

Sorry I don't follow what argument you're making?

They seem to be making a religious argument at this point. They don't like that the AI is a very poorly defined term and they are mad as hell about it to the point of irrational forum posting.

Re: Mythologizing AI makes it more likely that we’ll fail to operate it well (2023)

#100

Post by pixl97 »

simonh wrote: post #60
ACCount37 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my eyes that "chorus" is just insecurity talking. If it's not "actual real AI", we can keep pretending that human intelligence is something distinct and special - and that what our computers are doing now is some sort of other, obviously fake and vastly inferior thing. When Deep Blue won at chess, people didn't revise their estimates of AI capabilities upwards. They revised their estimates of how much intelligence…

It has, but I think in both directions. It used to be assumed that playing chess would require the same level of general purpose problem solving cognitive skills that the best chess players possess. But of course a Chess grandmaster that spend a few minutes learning Go can beat a Chess AI at Go with no trouble at all, because a chess AI is incapable of making effective moves in Go at all. Clearly those expectations w…

>So, we need to be clearer what we mean by intelligence

I disagree in one sense. The word intelligence is burned, mostly useless at this point. I've been a strong proponent of new terms that break intelligence into much smaller subcategories so we can define what different software, humans, and animals have.

Post reply on HN