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Hi all, author here. This is my first time submitting anything from my Substack to HN because it's the first time I've felt like I put enough effort into it to

by mkaic 5y ago

Hi all, author here. This is my first time submitting anything from my Substack to HN because it's the first time I've felt like I put enough effort into it to justify it. Obviously, this article is more speculation than anything, but I hope that it sparks some interesting discussion and I'm really looking forward to hearing everyone else's opinions on this topic -- it's a topic I care about a lot!

PaulHoule 5y ago
When Vernor Vinge wrote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marooned_in_Realtime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marooned_in_Realtime the concept of the Singularity seemed fresh in fact he kept it fresh by letting it be a mystery that was never revealed. In 2022 I think talking about "The" Singularity is a sign that one has entered a critical thought free zone like that "rationalist" cult.
- mkaic 5y ago
  Interesting. In terms of critical thought, I guess I should mention that I used to be firmly against the possibility of a singularity. The views I shared in my article are views I've only really switched too after careful consideration over the past two years or so -- I used to be convinced that a robot could never be "alive". Becoming an ML engineer changed things for me, though, because all of a sudden, this "AI" thing people always talked about got demystified. Once I understood the basic guiding principles of how AI actually works, my mind rapidly changed to be in favor of a singularity happening instead of thinking it's impossible. To each their own, though. I'm curious why you think that speaking about "The" Singularity is a sign of being in a "critical thought free zone"? I'd love to hear more about why you think that if you'd be so inclined.
  - marktangotango 5y ago
    > Once I understood the basic guiding principles of how AI actually works It was the opposite for me, current machine learning seems fundamentally limited to me.
  - PaulHoule 5y ago
    (Speaking as an engineer who has put neural-network products in front of end users.) One thing amazing about the 2020s is just the moral decay compared to past times. People said AI was a bubble in the 1970s but in the very beginning the people involved were clear about the limitations of what they were doing and what problems that had to be overcome. Now there is blind faith that if you add enough neurons it can do anything, Godel, Turing and all the rest of theoretical computer science be damned… In the 1960s the creator of the ELIZA program knew it appeared smart by taking advantage of the human instinct to see intelligence in another. It’s like the way you see a face in mars or in the cut stem of a leaf, or how g.w. Bush said he saw Vladimir Putin’s soul in his eyes. Today people embarrass themselves by writing blog posts everyday about how ‘I can’t believe how GPT-3 almost gets the right answer…’ and have very little insight into how they are getting played.
psyc 5y ago
I enjoyed your film (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoZRjZtzD_Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoZRjZtzD_Q). I don't think many solo film makers have the skills to do competent 3D compositing - it was a surprise. Keep making stuff. As for the post, I don't really believe it's possible to reason about what can or can't happen technologically on a 100 year timeline. But 20 years... Hmm. I've been following AGI debates ever since I accidentally found Yudkowsky's SL4 mailing list in 2000. I am still waiting to see any approach that looks to me like the spark of the germ of the seed of a generalized abstract world-and-concept-modelling and manipulation machine. I fully expect to see ever more sophisticated Roombas, Big Dogs, and Waymos. But those things are so incredibly narrow. Indeed, if they were capable of spontaneously doing anything outside of what they are marketed to do, it would probably make them bad consumer products. I was right on the verge of lumping the game solvers in with these things, but then I reconsidered. Generalized video game solvers seem like a way forward, intuitively. But that's an application, not an architecture, and I haven't heard of anything that can generalize from playing atari to doing crosswords. I have noticed this Transformer thing gaining steam just recently but haven't investigated it just yet. Do you believe it is the spark of the germ of the seed of AGI? (I fear people tend to forget what the G stands for.)
- mkaic 5y ago
  I'm not sure if Transformers are necessarily the spark. My personal pet theory is that the absolute most important thing we need to crack is online self-modification, i.e. letting the model alter its own structure and optimization as it is inferencing. I think getting that level of flexibility to be stable during training is extremely important. And wow, thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed the film! I had to learn a ton of new techniques to pull it off haha, but I'm quite satisfied with the result. I've got some pretty fun ideas for episode 2 already, too!
mkaic 5y ago
Ooh, fascinating -- this comment is being downvoted, have I missed something in the HN guidelines? I'm not trying to be snarky, just genuinely trying to understand if the above comment is doing something wrong/frowned upon so I can learn from my mistakes in the future.
- discreteevent 5y ago
  It's a bit like the current state of AI (and the one you propose) - you will never get a full explanation. You've been downvoted by an anonymous crowd so there is no oracle who can give you an answer.
  - mkaic 5y ago
    Haha, thanks. My first thought is that it was because I posted my own work, but last time I checked that's not explicitly disallowed? idk, I'm not really too worried about it though

by mkaic 5y ago

PaulHoule 5y ago

When Vernor Vinge wrote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marooned_in_Realtime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marooned_in_Realtime the concept of the Singularity seemed fresh in fact he kept it fresh by letting it be a mystery that was never revealed. In 2022 I think talking about "The" Singularity is a sign that one has entered a critical thought free zone like that "rationalist" cult.

mkaic 5y ago
Interesting. In terms of critical thought, I guess I should mention that I used to be firmly against the possibility of a singularity. The views I shared in my article are views I've only really switched too after careful consideration over the past two years or so -- I used to be convinced that a robot could never be "alive". Becoming an ML engineer changed things for me, though, because all of a sudden, this "AI" thing people always talked about got demystified. Once I understood the basic guiding principles of how AI actually works, my mind rapidly changed to be in favor of a singularity happening instead of thinking it's impossible. To each their own, though. I'm curious why you think that speaking about "The" Singularity is a sign of being in a "critical thought free zone"? I'd love to hear more about why you think that if you'd be so inclined.
- marktangotango 5y ago
  > Once I understood the basic guiding principles of how AI actually works It was the opposite for me, current machine learning seems fundamentally limited to me.
- PaulHoule 5y ago
  (Speaking as an engineer who has put neural-network products in front of end users.) One thing amazing about the 2020s is just the moral decay compared to past times. People said AI was a bubble in the 1970s but in the very beginning the people involved were clear about the limitations of what they were doing and what problems that had to be overcome. Now there is blind faith that if you add enough neurons it can do anything, Godel, Turing and all the rest of theoretical computer science be damned… In the 1960s the creator of the ELIZA program knew it appeared smart by taking advantage of the human instinct to see intelligence in another. It’s like the way you see a face in mars or in the cut stem of a leaf, or how g.w. Bush said he saw Vladimir Putin’s soul in his eyes. Today people embarrass themselves by writing blog posts everyday about how ‘I can’t believe how GPT-3 almost gets the right answer…’ and have very little insight into how they are getting played.

psyc 5y ago

I enjoyed your film (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoZRjZtzD_Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoZRjZtzD_Q). I don't think many solo film makers have the skills to do competent 3D compositing - it was a surprise. Keep making stuff. As for the post, I don't really believe it's possible to reason about what can or can't happen technologically on a 100 year timeline. But 20 years... Hmm. I've been following AGI debates ever since I accidentally found Yudkowsky's SL4 mailing list in 2000. I am still waiting to see any approach that looks to me like the spark of the germ of the seed of a generalized abstract world-and-concept-modelling and manipulation machine. I fully expect to see ever more sophisticated Roombas, Big Dogs, and Waymos. But those things are so incredibly narrow. Indeed, if they were capable of spontaneously doing anything outside of what they are marketed to do, it would probably make them bad consumer products. I was right on the verge of lumping the game solvers in with these things, but then I reconsidered. Generalized video game solvers seem like a way forward, intuitively. But that's an application, not an architecture, and I haven't heard of anything that can generalize from playing atari to doing crosswords. I have noticed this Transformer thing gaining steam just recently but haven't investigated it just yet. Do you believe it is the spark of the germ of the seed of AGI? (I fear people tend to forget what the G stands for.)

mkaic 5y ago
I'm not sure if Transformers are necessarily the spark. My personal pet theory is that the absolute most important thing we need to crack is online self-modification, i.e. letting the model alter its own structure and optimization as it is inferencing. I think getting that level of flexibility to be stable during training is extremely important. And wow, thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed the film! I had to learn a ton of new techniques to pull it off haha, but I'm quite satisfied with the result. I've got some pretty fun ideas for episode 2 already, too!

mkaic 5y ago

Ooh, fascinating -- this comment is being downvoted, have I missed something in the HN guidelines? I'm not trying to be snarky, just genuinely trying to understand if the above comment is doing something wrong/frowned upon so I can learn from my mistakes in the future.

discreteevent 5y ago
It's a bit like the current state of AI (and the one you propose) - you will never get a full explanation. You've been downvoted by an anonymous crowd so there is no oracle who can give you an answer.
- mkaic 5y ago
  Haha, thanks. My first thought is that it was because I posted my own work, but last time I checked that's not explicitly disallowed? idk, I'm not really too worried about it though