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DALL-E is really impressive, but many believe it shows we're making progress towards AGI (the explicit end goal of Open AI), or at least it's displaying some de

DALL-E is really impressive, but many believe it shows we're making progress towards AGI (the explicit end goal of Open AI), or at least it's displaying some degree of "understanding" (whatever that means). If I ask for a red box on top of a blue box on top of a yellow box, and the model gives me an image with two boxes side-by-side (albeit a very high quality one), it's hard to believe there's much "understanding" of (a) box, (b) colour, (c) relative positioning. Likewise if I ask for six penguins and it gives me four penguins, can we confidently say there's any "understanding" of what a penguin is? Again, that's not to say it's not mind-blowing technology/progress in machine learning. It most certainly is. But I'm not ready to give up on every other angle and go all-in on large diffusion models as the path to AGI.

visarga 4y ago
> If I ask for a red box on top of a blue box The model has to encode those words into a fixed length vector, an architectural design decision, not an inherent requirement. For example translation systems can translate such phrases perfectly, but they don't pass the representation through a single vector bottleneck.
darawk 4y ago
Does the fact that sometimes graphic artists misinterpret commission requests imply that they are not conscious? People misunderstand each other all the time, and then play an interrogative game to try to synchronize their minds. That is, they ask questions. DALL-E right now doesn't have the facility to ask questions, but iterating on the request statement is a bit of a proxy for it. I'd argue that this is exactly what understanding does in fact look like. That isn't to say that DALL-E is AGI or conscious or anything like that. It's just to say that the mere presence of occasional misunderstanding is not a marker of un-intelligence. It's precisely when you are able to access the richness of symbolic reasoning that misinterpretation is at greatest risk, e.g. your calculator never misinterprets you.
- hooande 4y ago
  what question does DALL-E ask to clear up the difference between "draw four penguins" and "draw six penguins"? how many iterations does it need to get "small red box on top of larger yellow box"? DALL-E is very good at matching words to pictures and combining the results in novel ways. It isn't intelligence and it isn't art, and never will be. It's a tool that humans can use to accomplish tasks. That has its own merit.
  - native_samples 4y ago
    Not intelligent - maybe. Not art? How do you conclude that? The output looks like art to me.
rasz 4y ago
>Likewise if I ask for six penguins and it gives me four penguins, can we confidently say there's any "understanding" of what a penguin is? What if you ask it to draw some Nazi paraphernalia and 3 sims? https://www.pcgamer.com/bizarre-russian-propaganda-links-sims-3-to-alleged-nazi-assassination-plot/ https://www.pcgamer.com/bizarre-russian-propaganda-links-sim... https://twitter.com/b_nishanov/status/1518637055596769282 https://twitter.com/b_nishanov/status/1518637055596769282

visarga 4y ago

> If I ask for a red box on top of a blue box The model has to encode those words into a fixed length vector, an architectural design decision, not an inherent requirement. For example translation systems can translate such phrases perfectly, but they don't pass the representation through a single vector bottleneck.

darawk 4y ago

Does the fact that sometimes graphic artists misinterpret commission requests imply that they are not conscious? People misunderstand each other all the time, and then play an interrogative game to try to synchronize their minds. That is, they ask questions. DALL-E right now doesn't have the facility to ask questions, but iterating on the request statement is a bit of a proxy for it. I'd argue that this is exactly what understanding does in fact look like. That isn't to say that DALL-E is AGI or conscious or anything like that. It's just to say that the mere presence of occasional misunderstanding is not a marker of un-intelligence. It's precisely when you are able to access the richness of symbolic reasoning that misinterpretation is at greatest risk, e.g. your calculator never misinterprets you.

hooande 4y ago
what question does DALL-E ask to clear up the difference between "draw four penguins" and "draw six penguins"? how many iterations does it need to get "small red box on top of larger yellow box"? DALL-E is very good at matching words to pictures and combining the results in novel ways. It isn't intelligence and it isn't art, and never will be. It's a tool that humans can use to accomplish tasks. That has its own merit.
- native_samples 4y ago
  Not intelligent - maybe. Not art? How do you conclude that? The output looks like art to me.

rasz 4y ago

>Likewise if I ask for six penguins and it gives me four penguins, can we confidently say there's any "understanding" of what a penguin is? What if you ask it to draw some Nazi paraphernalia and 3 sims? https://www.pcgamer.com/bizarre-russian-propaganda-links-sims-3-to-alleged-nazi-assassination-plot/ https://www.pcgamer.com/bizarre-russian-propaganda-links-sim... https://twitter.com/b_nishanov/status/1518637055596769282 https://twitter.com/b_nishanov/status/1518637055596769282