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This is just a reminder for me to unplug from the Internet further than I need to do my banking, pay bills and research various ideas that may be of use in futu

This is just a reminder for me to unplug from the Internet further than I need to do my banking, pay bills and research various ideas that may be of use in future projects (personal or my employers), and invest more time in friends, family and local community instead. As I'm getting older I was already doing that; I've never really spent a whole lot of time on Internet forums anyway. I've enjoyed playing with ChatGPT and I have a copy of Stable Diffusion at home, they are of some utility, if you take the output with a giant bag of salt. The people I feel for are those who have retreated from or are uncomfortable in society in general and whom invest all their time in Internet communities, since they will be the most vulnerable. I'm fully aware of the irony that some might sceptically believe that this comment itself is AI-generated rather than written by a human; and that any responses may well be cut & pasted from ChatGPT, and I keep that in mind that when reading and writing.

o_1 4y ago
well said
Workaccount2 4y ago
ChatGPT is just the canary in the coal mine. I think a massive mistake I keep seeing people make is assuming that ChatGPT is a peak rather than a checkpoint at the bottom of the mountain. ChatGPT is not in the future, it's successors are. We've just started this ascent of Mount AI (after years in the foothills), we're hardly even at base camp, and we have ChatGPT. I don't want to forecast the future because I think AI is going to change the world so radically that it would be like asking a 13th century peasant to describe 2022. But I feel extremely confident in asserting that it will not be "Internet dwellers addicted to their talking AIs, and then everyone else going about their life normally".
- nineteen999 4y ago
  > "Internet dwellers addicted to their talking AIs, and then everyone else going about their life normally". Yeah I fully agree it's going to affect everyone. Just that those who can't interact with society are going to have it worse than those that can. Also agree as well that this is just the beginning. ChatGPT and SD are still pretty much toys, although pretty impressive ones. We have no idea where this is really going to end up. Hopefully when the AGI's truly emerge they will just keep each other distracted with blockchain scams ...
  - SuoDuanDao 4y ago
    it's also possible that Turing-graduate AIs could act as prosthetics for people who can't interact normally. Might unlock more human potential for all we know, there's always room for optimism.
    - violiner 4y ago
      > there's always room for optimism. Bold claim.
    - titanomachy 4y ago
      In the universe of Greg Egan’s “Schild’s ladder”, each person’s brain is equipped with a “Mediator” AI which interfaces with other Mediators and translates each person’s body language, speech, etc. into the representation which most faithfully preserves the original intention. I think the idea is that your Mediator transmits a lot of cognitive metadata which lets the other person’s Mediator translate the intention faithfully and reduce the chance of a misunderstanding. Allows reasonable communication even between extremely diverse intelligences. The thing that keeps it from being too dystopian is that it’s under conscious control, you could always choose to keep your thoughts to yourself or hear someone else’s original words as spoken.
      - pixl97 4y ago
        The problem with books is they deus ex machina the problem without actually thinking about the ramifications of their ideas.... For example keeping your thoughts to yourself would likely be picked up instantly by the remote mediator and it would judge you in one way or another for that.
        titanomachy 4y ago
        True, although we already do this. We can tell if someone is being guarded or open. Presumably the Mediator serves only you, and you can ask it to deceive or project different intentions if that’s want you want.
  - 4y ago
- hooverd 4y ago
  > Internet dwellers addicted to their talking AIs See Replika. The former will certainly exist. Not so sure about the latter.
- yt-sdb 4y ago
  > I think a massive mistake I keep seeing people make is assuming that ChatGPT is a peak rather than a checkpoint at the bottom of the mountain. I fully agree. The AlexNet paper was what, 2012? So in a decade, we've gone from "neural networks aren't useful" to self-driving cars, Stable Diffusion, ChatGPT, ... None of these tools is perfect yet, but to stress that point is to miss looming mountain.
- anileated 4y ago
  The usefulness of AI depends on training data availability. The reason OpenAI et al. were able to surprise everyone is thanks to taking everyone by surprise and using their data for training without consent. As the public is catching on[0], what we may get is not some insanely genius AI but a fragmented, private web where no one is stupid enough to publish original content in the open anymore (given all incentives, psychological and financial, have been destroyed) and models choking on themselves having nothing to be trained on except their own output. This is my reasoning for giving higher probability to it being a peak (or very near it). There will be cool, actually useful instances of AI within specialized niches, which it could well transform, but otherwise everyone will go about their life normally. [0] https://twitter.com/sonnyrossdraws/status/1610002959043121160 https://twitter.com/sonnyrossdraws/status/161000295904312116...
  - foruhar 4y ago
    Taking data without consent is a real issue. There is still lots of data out there that is free of copyright. I'd be curious to see a model that is trained solely on public domain data (perhaps with an option to include creative commons-compliant data). I think there is plenty of knowledge that is in the free and clear to make a very useful LL and/or stable diffusion model. We may miss out on Wegovy and air fryer reviews, articles on the how to beat the stock market with Numpy, and manga art styles yet there is plenty of a few decades ago that would make for a useful "AI." Even Steamboat Willie may soon be in play.
    - anileated 4y ago
      Yeah, dated content would be the only reliable training data.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      Eh, you're just switching problems with the 'consent' model. I'm very much in the camp that the corpus of human knowledge is not some companies IP, this just pushes ownership further into hands of large and well monied companies and further baits patent/IP trolls to lock up collective knowledge.
- freediver 4y ago
  I'll make a different prediction. GPT-4 will be the last of 'large language models' (at least from a perspective of noteable progress). It will also be when we realize that approach of fitting big data with gradient decent is a dead-end, after finally exhausting nearly all text we can train it on. We'll than have to backpedal a bit and find another path for achieving A(G)I.
  - mcguire 4y ago
    If my google-fu is right, ChatGPT was trained on 570GB of data. I asked, "What is the fastest sea mammal?" ChatGPT just produced, "The fastest sea mammal is the peregrine falcon. This bird of prey is able to reach diving speeds of over 240 mph (386 km/h) when hunting for food, making it the fastest sea mammal and one of the fastest animals on the planet. The peregrine falcon is able to achieve such high speeds by diving from great heights and using the force of gravity to accelerate. When hunting, peregrine falcons will spot their prey from above, then tuck their wings and plummet towards the water, accelerating as they go. At the last moment, they will extend their wings and claws to snatch their prey out of the water." (It usually seems to be saying dolphins lately; last week it was saying sailfish about 3/4s of the time.)
    - freediver 4y ago
      My Kagi-fu says "Be like water, my friend. The size of the data is not important, only the quality. OpenAI curated/filtered 45TB of data to extract those 570GB. Much of the text that we encounter in this world is like the empty chatter of a bird, mere noise that serves no purpose".

o_1 4y ago

well said

Workaccount2 4y ago

ChatGPT is just the canary in the coal mine. I think a massive mistake I keep seeing people make is assuming that ChatGPT is a peak rather than a checkpoint at the bottom of the mountain. ChatGPT is not in the future, it's successors are. We've just started this ascent of Mount AI (after years in the foothills), we're hardly even at base camp, and we have ChatGPT. I don't want to forecast the future because I think AI is going to change the world so radically that it would be like asking a 13th century peasant to describe 2022. But I feel extremely confident in asserting that it will not be "Internet dwellers addicted to their talking AIs, and then everyone else going about their life normally".

nineteen999 4y ago
> "Internet dwellers addicted to their talking AIs, and then everyone else going about their life normally". Yeah I fully agree it's going to affect everyone. Just that those who can't interact with society are going to have it worse than those that can. Also agree as well that this is just the beginning. ChatGPT and SD are still pretty much toys, although pretty impressive ones. We have no idea where this is really going to end up. Hopefully when the AGI's truly emerge they will just keep each other distracted with blockchain scams ...
- SuoDuanDao 4y ago
  it's also possible that Turing-graduate AIs could act as prosthetics for people who can't interact normally. Might unlock more human potential for all we know, there's always room for optimism.
  - violiner 4y ago
    > there's always room for optimism. Bold claim.
  - titanomachy 4y ago
    In the universe of Greg Egan’s “Schild’s ladder”, each person’s brain is equipped with a “Mediator” AI which interfaces with other Mediators and translates each person’s body language, speech, etc. into the representation which most faithfully preserves the original intention. I think the idea is that your Mediator transmits a lot of cognitive metadata which lets the other person’s Mediator translate the intention faithfully and reduce the chance of a misunderstanding. Allows reasonable communication even between extremely diverse intelligences. The thing that keeps it from being too dystopian is that it’s under conscious control, you could always choose to keep your thoughts to yourself or hear someone else’s original words as spoken.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      The problem with books is they deus ex machina the problem without actually thinking about the ramifications of their ideas.... For example keeping your thoughts to yourself would likely be picked up instantly by the remote mediator and it would judge you in one way or another for that.
      - titanomachy 4y ago
        True, although we already do this. We can tell if someone is being guarded or open. Presumably the Mediator serves only you, and you can ask it to deceive or project different intentions if that’s want you want.
- 4y ago
hooverd 4y ago
> Internet dwellers addicted to their talking AIs See Replika. The former will certainly exist. Not so sure about the latter.
yt-sdb 4y ago
> I think a massive mistake I keep seeing people make is assuming that ChatGPT is a peak rather than a checkpoint at the bottom of the mountain. I fully agree. The AlexNet paper was what, 2012? So in a decade, we've gone from "neural networks aren't useful" to self-driving cars, Stable Diffusion, ChatGPT, ... None of these tools is perfect yet, but to stress that point is to miss looming mountain.
anileated 4y ago
The usefulness of AI depends on training data availability. The reason OpenAI et al. were able to surprise everyone is thanks to taking everyone by surprise and using their data for training without consent. As the public is catching on[0], what we may get is not some insanely genius AI but a fragmented, private web where no one is stupid enough to publish original content in the open anymore (given all incentives, psychological and financial, have been destroyed) and models choking on themselves having nothing to be trained on except their own output. This is my reasoning for giving higher probability to it being a peak (or very near it). There will be cool, actually useful instances of AI within specialized niches, which it could well transform, but otherwise everyone will go about their life normally. [0] https://twitter.com/sonnyrossdraws/status/1610002959043121160 https://twitter.com/sonnyrossdraws/status/161000295904312116...
- foruhar 4y ago
  Taking data without consent is a real issue. There is still lots of data out there that is free of copyright. I'd be curious to see a model that is trained solely on public domain data (perhaps with an option to include creative commons-compliant data). I think there is plenty of knowledge that is in the free and clear to make a very useful LL and/or stable diffusion model. We may miss out on Wegovy and air fryer reviews, articles on the how to beat the stock market with Numpy, and manga art styles yet there is plenty of a few decades ago that would make for a useful "AI." Even Steamboat Willie may soon be in play.
  - anileated 4y ago
    Yeah, dated content would be the only reliable training data.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Eh, you're just switching problems with the 'consent' model. I'm very much in the camp that the corpus of human knowledge is not some companies IP, this just pushes ownership further into hands of large and well monied companies and further baits patent/IP trolls to lock up collective knowledge.
freediver 4y ago
I'll make a different prediction. GPT-4 will be the last of 'large language models' (at least from a perspective of noteable progress). It will also be when we realize that approach of fitting big data with gradient decent is a dead-end, after finally exhausting nearly all text we can train it on. We'll than have to backpedal a bit and find another path for achieving A(G)I.
- mcguire 4y ago
  If my google-fu is right, ChatGPT was trained on 570GB of data. I asked, "What is the fastest sea mammal?" ChatGPT just produced, "The fastest sea mammal is the peregrine falcon. This bird of prey is able to reach diving speeds of over 240 mph (386 km/h) when hunting for food, making it the fastest sea mammal and one of the fastest animals on the planet. The peregrine falcon is able to achieve such high speeds by diving from great heights and using the force of gravity to accelerate. When hunting, peregrine falcons will spot their prey from above, then tuck their wings and plummet towards the water, accelerating as they go. At the last moment, they will extend their wings and claws to snatch their prey out of the water." (It usually seems to be saying dolphins lately; last week it was saying sailfish about 3/4s of the time.)
  - freediver 4y ago
    My Kagi-fu says "Be like water, my friend. The size of the data is not important, only the quality. OpenAI curated/filtered 45TB of data to extract those 570GB. Much of the text that we encounter in this world is like the empty chatter of a bird, mere noise that serves no purpose".