5 ms·

Not really, no, but that's not to say that LLMs couldn't be a useful shell through which an AGI could interact with the rest of the world. But to herald LLMs as

by z3c0 4y ago

Not really, no, but that's not to say that LLMs couldn't be a useful shell through which an AGI could interact with the rest of the world. But to herald LLMs as the coming of AGI would be to put the cart before the horse. A rudimentary intelligence capable of basic object-recognition and permanence* would be an actual step towards AGI over LLMs, in my professional (but still fallible) opinion. Something as basic as an insect, or hell, even protozoa, is all we would need to say that we're on the way. Once we have that, tying it with an LLM to give it denotative capabilities would be the boom we're all hoping for/terrified of. [*] this is key, but we don't need to codify this so much as find a way for the object-recognition to build up to it. Even children take a while to develop object permanence (hence peek-a-boo being fun for them - you really are disappearing.)

dr_dshiv 4y ago
I really don’t understand why it isn’t plausible that LLMs are weak AGI. If we’d been wise enough to create benchmarks for them a decade ago, I’m sure they would have exceed our expectations. The generality of the intelligence is unquestionable, at least in a language domain. Discounting it as AGI because a fly is better at being a fly seems besides the point.
- goatlover 4y ago
  Because they don't do anything but generate text when prompted, while humans are walking around doing things. I would expect at least two things from an AGI, weak or strong: 1. It has agency. 2. It can move about and manipulate the world in a general as opposed to predefined sense.
  - Dzugaru 4y ago
    I'm not so sure about this. Text is the universal interface to almost anything imaginable. You can easily embed ChatGPT into a robot, describe the robot text-based API to it and give it a task you like - and it will walk around doing things. Will it do a good job, that's a whole another question - in it's current state it may easily hallucinate something disastrous, but that's because the text-generating "intelligence" is weak (in some sense, we cannot describe it precisely, we don't know what it lacks - abstraction, reflection capabilities or something else)
- z3c0 4y ago
  The generality of its intelligence within text is still spurious at best. Context-switching is practically nonexistent, and whenever it appears to do so, it's only because your prompt pushed it towards statistically appearing to switch context. And frankly, computers have been exceeding our benchmarks for some time - Turing mistakenly thought that appearing human was a sufficient marker of intelligence, but chatbots have been passing the Turing Test for about a decade now. Saying it would surpass our benchmarks only illustrates how little we understand intelligence, not that LLMs are anything close to intelligence. Edit: that final point is why I propose an in-to-out approach over an out-to-in approach (which is what LLMs are). Let the intelligence make itself, instead of us trying to make intelligence.
  - dr_dshiv 4y ago
    “ not that LLMs are anything close to intelligence.” Well, that’s ridiculous out of hand. What makes you say something like that? If they feel intelligent, pass intelligence benchmarks and are designed to be intelligent— why not ascribe to them intelligence? Is it because they aren’t wet?
    - z3c0 4y ago
      I'll turn that right back around and ask if you considered any of the chatbots of the last decade to be "intelligent". They "felt" intelligent enough to pass Turing Tests. Nonetheless, nobody was saying it was ridiculous to conclude that they were only superficial representations of intelligent behavior. I don't call any of the ML models that I create "intelligent" - I call them probabilistic. Feigning intelligence with probabilistic methods is nothing new (eg ELIZA). If you can scientifically demonstrate that feigning intelligence is equivocal to de facto intelligence, with something more than "feelings", I'll be happy to read your write-up.
      - dr_dshiv 4y ago
        I don’t understand. Who is “feigning?” Why is that the basis? I’m saying, let’s judge intelligence based on benchmarks. No problem with probabilistic methods. Human intelligence is also probabilistic (ie, predictive coding). Maybe the biggest question: do you think these will be exponentially more powerful in 5 years, learning from failures, self-improving and generally economically “a very big deal” due to human replacement? Because that’s what AGI is supposed to do, rapidly—and that’s why it is worth acknowledging the possibility. From my perspective, if it barks like a dog, walks like a dog… fulfills all the “dog” benchmarks… even if it came about through unusual means, you’d better consider the possibility. All these experts Pooh-poohing the possibility of AGI because “I’ve worked with LLMs” is really unconvincing. The debate isn’t balanced because most professionals wouldn’t want to claim AGI for professional reasons.

by z3c0 4y ago

dr_dshiv 4y ago

I really don’t understand why it isn’t plausible that LLMs are weak AGI. If we’d been wise enough to create benchmarks for them a decade ago, I’m sure they would have exceed our expectations. The generality of the intelligence is unquestionable, at least in a language domain. Discounting it as AGI because a fly is better at being a fly seems besides the point.

goatlover 4y ago
Because they don't do anything but generate text when prompted, while humans are walking around doing things. I would expect at least two things from an AGI, weak or strong: 1. It has agency. 2. It can move about and manipulate the world in a general as opposed to predefined sense.
- Dzugaru 4y ago
  I'm not so sure about this. Text is the universal interface to almost anything imaginable. You can easily embed ChatGPT into a robot, describe the robot text-based API to it and give it a task you like - and it will walk around doing things. Will it do a good job, that's a whole another question - in it's current state it may easily hallucinate something disastrous, but that's because the text-generating "intelligence" is weak (in some sense, we cannot describe it precisely, we don't know what it lacks - abstraction, reflection capabilities or something else)
z3c0 4y ago
The generality of its intelligence within text is still spurious at best. Context-switching is practically nonexistent, and whenever it appears to do so, it's only because your prompt pushed it towards statistically appearing to switch context. And frankly, computers have been exceeding our benchmarks for some time - Turing mistakenly thought that appearing human was a sufficient marker of intelligence, but chatbots have been passing the Turing Test for about a decade now. Saying it would surpass our benchmarks only illustrates how little we understand intelligence, not that LLMs are anything close to intelligence. Edit: that final point is why I propose an in-to-out approach over an out-to-in approach (which is what LLMs are). Let the intelligence make itself, instead of us trying to make intelligence.
- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  “ not that LLMs are anything close to intelligence.” Well, that’s ridiculous out of hand. What makes you say something like that? If they feel intelligent, pass intelligence benchmarks and are designed to be intelligent— why not ascribe to them intelligence? Is it because they aren’t wet?
  - z3c0 4y ago
    I'll turn that right back around and ask if you considered any of the chatbots of the last decade to be "intelligent". They "felt" intelligent enough to pass Turing Tests. Nonetheless, nobody was saying it was ridiculous to conclude that they were only superficial representations of intelligent behavior. I don't call any of the ML models that I create "intelligent" - I call them probabilistic. Feigning intelligence with probabilistic methods is nothing new (eg ELIZA). If you can scientifically demonstrate that feigning intelligence is equivocal to de facto intelligence, with something more than "feelings", I'll be happy to read your write-up.
    - dr_dshiv 4y ago
      I don’t understand. Who is “feigning?” Why is that the basis? I’m saying, let’s judge intelligence based on benchmarks. No problem with probabilistic methods. Human intelligence is also probabilistic (ie, predictive coding). Maybe the biggest question: do you think these will be exponentially more powerful in 5 years, learning from failures, self-improving and generally economically “a very big deal” due to human replacement? Because that’s what AGI is supposed to do, rapidly—and that’s why it is worth acknowledging the possibility. From my perspective, if it barks like a dog, walks like a dog… fulfills all the “dog” benchmarks… even if it came about through unusual means, you’d better consider the possibility. All these experts Pooh-poohing the possibility of AGI because “I’ve worked with LLMs” is really unconvincing. The debate isn’t balanced because most professionals wouldn’t want to claim AGI for professional reasons.