10 ms·

Problems that attract smart people

152 points by wsgeorge 4y ago

swayvil 4y ago
There are a couple assumptions implicit in our system of "problems" and "smart people". There is the assumption that it will be written about. There is the assumption that "solving" is the appropriate response. Combined, they describe a constrained perspective. A volume which, compared to the alternative, is infinitely small. So consider that the next time you feel a riddle's tug, smarty.
gmork13 4y ago
Was that implementation confirmed to work or was it a bug? I saw people saying it only loads the weights necessary, but all the weights are necessary (unless the architecture is heavily modified). Does it stream or load only the currently necessary layers in a way?
- wsgeorge 4y ago
  On start up it does load a fraction of the weights, so RAM usage is low, but as you run inferences on the model, it tends to eat up the required amount of RAM. This was from my initial testing.
- smcameron 4y ago
  It mmaps the data so the page any particular bit of data is on is only loaded into memory if something on that page is accessed (at least that is my understanding).
- enlyth 4y ago
  Looks like it will be reverted because it introduced some regressions and as far as I understand, there was no magic in the end, but there was a ton of drama around it. Most of the drama is contained in this thread, if you like reading this sort of stuff: https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/pull/711#issuecomment-1493385890 https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/pull/711#issuecomment...
Simran-B 4y ago
Does enabling to run LLMs at home really strengthen democracy? People may believe that, but it potentially enables AI to run on any device with a low footprint for surveillance purposes as well, and governments don't even have to pay for the development...
- wsgeorge 4y ago
  > Does enabling to run LLMs at home really strengthen democracy? Well, I can't speak about strengthening democracy for sure, but what I see is that AI will become a significant means of digital production, and we wouldn't want those means to be in the hands of a few people. > but it potentially enables AI to run on any device with a low footprint for surveillance purposes as well, Yes, a low barrier for inference cuts both ways. That is a risk.
- smrtinsert 4y ago
  If you're referring to this passage > democratising the means of digital production is the difference between a dystopian authoritarian future and an empowered (and admittedly chaotic) humanity The usage here means make accessible to everyone.
  - tgv 4y ago
    While I'm generally in favor of redistribution of wealth, power and knowledge, this doesn't seem an insight so trivial that it can be asserted without underpinning to me, nor congruent with history. Industrialization was essential or at least catalytic to democracy, which happened without public control over production production means (I'm ignoring the Marxist view in this).
- XorNot 4y ago
  A low barrier to entry for surveillance means citizens can more easily watch their governments too. As long as surveillance tech requires big resources, governments will have the edge. Miniaturize it, decentralize it, and it means citizens and public interest organizations can hold the government accountable more easily (this is, notably, what OSINT is all about).
t344344 4y ago
[flagged]
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  > because that is what Apple sheep have on their systems! I don't believe that comment was necessary.
  - t344344 4y ago
    Anybody else can take the advice "buy more RAM".
paulcole 4y ago
> Of course, my referral to Graham in this context uses “smart” in a rather limited sense Yes, limited in the sense that smart = can make computers do stuff. > if it’s scammy, it will attract the kind of people who’d play in moral grey areas for personal profit; if it’s bureaucratic-authoritarian, yup, you know who you’ll find there You don’t think smart people run scams or that only idiots want to be authoritarians?
- sureglymop 4y ago
  Right. Something very important is that smart ≠ ethical or empathetic.
ckemere 4y ago
The premise of this is ridiculous. The smartest people I know personally and that I'm aware of generally are not attracted by AI. Person 1 was interested in fundamental physics (dark matter) but had to leave physics due to lack of job opportunities. Person 2 is Terrence Tao. Person 3 is Ed Witten, etc etc. This reflects the hubris of the tech world that overestimates its own intelligence....
- themitigating 4y ago
  "This reflects the hubris of the tech world that overestimates its own intelligence." This Medium blog post is not the PR person for the "tech world".
  - javajosh 4y ago
    Moreover it's worrisome that someone who knows Witten and Tao personally doesn't have even grade-school media literacy.
    - buggy6257 4y ago
      Claims to know*
    - kgwgk 4y ago
      Maybe I don’t have the required level of literacy but I understand « The smartest people I know personally and that I'm aware of generally » as the union of the « know personally » and « aware of generally » sets.
      - nightpool 4y ago
        In most understandings of English, "and" is used as the conjunction operator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_conjunction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_conjunction (set intersection). If you were expressing a disjunction (a union), you'd use "or" or "as well as" or something similar. Obviously it's possible to eventually puzzle out from context what OP meant, but I made the same mistake as the person you're replying to when reading the comment quickly.
Juliate 4y ago
> "the most ambitious challenges attract the smartest people" Whose ambition? Smart how? For what outcome? For who? Would that be even efficient? (there are many other issues to "panic" over other than AI)
- javajosh 4y ago
  It's probably good to go into a post like this with some basic assumptions about the context: works in/around/with SV "good new boys" network, easy 6-figure software jobs and weird jockeying around securing vast sums extracted from inbred billionaire weirdos and distributed for blood by fast-talking VC weirdos. The outsider perspective on this is to fancy yourself a smart inventor who's going to outwit/outsmart/outplay the competition with your own company, find product market fit. This factory makes software widgets, and striking gold with such ephemeral products is as hard as striking gold with making sounds (which is the magic that the pop music industry makes happen regularly, somehow). (So, smart enough to write and release quality, reliable software to the public, or build a team capable of doing this). Demand is so high for any software that becomes popular, that proxies for value are accepted with a "we'll worry about profit later" kind of attitude. So this justifies focusing on a hyped technology even if it isn't real. But if the hyped technology is real, even better. A rational agent, selling their intellectual labor, understanding the current lay of the land, will see that the subject of "improving AI and integrating AI into applications" is going to be in high demand for a period of time, which means higher income. I can explain why a higher income is desirable, if you like.
agentultra 4y ago
I wonder how many of the developers in the groups denigrated in the author also thought they were the, "smart ones attracted to interesting problems." You can find interesting problems in many banal situations. You only have to look.
- EvgeniyZh 4y ago
  I disagree. Depends on your definition of "interesting" of course, but I believe that really interesting problems are hard to find.
- mattgreenrocks 4y ago
  Definitely getting crypto vibes here: "the real hackers are the ones staying up late improving Merkle tree implementations!" Probably read something like that three years ago or so, likely on Medium as well. The narratives people tell themselves to self-justify their involvement are weird.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  > You can find interesting problems in many banal situations. You only have to look. Unfortunately (unrelated to AI and co), this is also a problem; many engineers write overcomplicated solutions for simple / banal problems, because they get bored otherwise.
  - galleywest200 4y ago
    Then give your engineers more interesting problems. Or give them more freedom. Or give them days where they can work on whatever they want. There are plenty of options to correct that course.
- mikhmha 4y ago
  The failed Kwisatz Haderach.
jokethrowaway 4y ago
The single smartest person I know (an actual genius, mensa, gifted schools, etc) works in a crappy web agency and he's chronically underpaid. Tons of smart people I know are doing mediocre jobs. The fact someone is tackling hard problems doesn't make them the smartest people in the room, you need a combination of risk taking and smart in life.
- sureglymop 4y ago
  Generally what's needed to climb career ladders are social skills and networking skills. Coincidentally many smart people are not neurotypical and struggle with that. The problem is the "concept" of meritocracy. Many smart people may face significant amounts of adversity or may due to their circumstances be stuck in poverty. One example of that are people with adhd, autism, asperger's etc, many of whom score high on iq tests. But due to their handicaps they still struggle significantly more than neurotypical people because they are a minority.
  - badpun 4y ago
    > Generally what's needed to climb career ladders are social skills and networking skills. And also, just the will to climb. Smart people often look at the big picture and come to view the rat race as pointless, thus staying on a lower rung of the ladder for life.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  See the story of William James Sidis: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James_Sidis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James_Sidis> Child prodigy, IQ assessed between 250 and 300, contemporary, classmate, and friend of Norbert Wiener (father of cybernetics, also a child prodigy), and ended up ... making a life's work of studying bus transfers. As in the tickets, not commute patterns themselves. Several HN submissions though no substantive discussion: <https://hn.algolia.com/?q=William%20James%20Sidis https://hn.algolia.com/?q=William%20James%20Sidis> Sidis Archives: <https://www.sidis.net/ https://www.sidis.net/>
  - 4y ago
oltimer 4y ago
This article reminds me of SSLeay by Eric Young which openssl is based on. Without his effort we'd all still be digging in the dirt with text in the clear. Open source is in the debt of a few gifted altruistic hard working people.
Kiro 4y ago
ITT: angry people saying fellow brilliant hackers jart and ggerganov are actually not that smart. I'm surprised jart even keeps posting here when we're so hostile and toxic.
jamesgill 4y ago
Like Paul Graham, I'm in my 50s. Unlike Paul Graham, I've never been confident that I can identify what a 'smart' person is. The only thing I know for sure is that it rarely has anything to do with what people like to call 'intelligence'.
- mturmon 4y ago
  My problem and shame has been the false negatives I have. I meet people with great potential all the time - who have done more, or know more, or think more deeply about something than others. And it's apparent to me - they're going to do great stuff. My problem is that there are also plenty of people who don't trigger that sense in me, but that have gone on to do really great stuff all the same. So I try to be humble about my assessments. I agree that whatever separator line there is, it's not 'intelligence', maybe more like intelligence * drive * longevity, and I may be keying in on the first factor but not others.
black_13 4y ago
[dead]

152 points by wsgeorge 4y ago

There are a couple assumptions implicit in our system of "problems" and "smart people". There is the assumption that it will be written about. There is the assumption that "solving" is the appropriate response. Combined, they describe a constrained perspective. A volume which, compared to the alternative, is infinitely small. So consider that the next time you feel a riddle's tug, smarty.

gmork13 4y ago

Was that implementation confirmed to work or was it a bug? I saw people saying it only loads the weights necessary, but all the weights are necessary (unless the architecture is heavily modified). Does it stream or load only the currently necessary layers in a way?

wsgeorge 4y ago
On start up it does load a fraction of the weights, so RAM usage is low, but as you run inferences on the model, it tends to eat up the required amount of RAM. This was from my initial testing.
smcameron 4y ago
It mmaps the data so the page any particular bit of data is on is only loaded into memory if something on that page is accessed (at least that is my understanding).
enlyth 4y ago
Looks like it will be reverted because it introduced some regressions and as far as I understand, there was no magic in the end, but there was a ton of drama around it. Most of the drama is contained in this thread, if you like reading this sort of stuff: https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/pull/711#issuecomment-1493385890 https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/pull/711#issuecomment...

Simran-B 4y ago

Does enabling to run LLMs at home really strengthen democracy? People may believe that, but it potentially enables AI to run on any device with a low footprint for surveillance purposes as well, and governments don't even have to pay for the development...

wsgeorge 4y ago
> Does enabling to run LLMs at home really strengthen democracy? Well, I can't speak about strengthening democracy for sure, but what I see is that AI will become a significant means of digital production, and we wouldn't want those means to be in the hands of a few people. > but it potentially enables AI to run on any device with a low footprint for surveillance purposes as well, Yes, a low barrier for inference cuts both ways. That is a risk.
smrtinsert 4y ago
If you're referring to this passage > democratising the means of digital production is the difference between a dystopian authoritarian future and an empowered (and admittedly chaotic) humanity The usage here means make accessible to everyone.
- tgv 4y ago
  While I'm generally in favor of redistribution of wealth, power and knowledge, this doesn't seem an insight so trivial that it can be asserted without underpinning to me, nor congruent with history. Industrialization was essential or at least catalytic to democracy, which happened without public control over production production means (I'm ignoring the Marxist view in this).
XorNot 4y ago
A low barrier to entry for surveillance means citizens can more easily watch their governments too. As long as surveillance tech requires big resources, governments will have the edge. Miniaturize it, decentralize it, and it means citizens and public interest organizations can hold the government accountable more easily (this is, notably, what OSINT is all about).

t344344 4y ago

[flagged]

PartiallyTyped 4y ago
> because that is what Apple sheep have on their systems! I don't believe that comment was necessary.
- t344344 4y ago
  Anybody else can take the advice "buy more RAM".

paulcole 4y ago

> Of course, my referral to Graham in this context uses “smart” in a rather limited sense Yes, limited in the sense that smart = can make computers do stuff. > if it’s scammy, it will attract the kind of people who’d play in moral grey areas for personal profit; if it’s bureaucratic-authoritarian, yup, you know who you’ll find there You don’t think smart people run scams or that only idiots want to be authoritarians?

sureglymop 4y ago
Right. Something very important is that smart ≠ ethical or empathetic.

ckemere 4y ago

The premise of this is ridiculous. The smartest people I know personally and that I'm aware of generally are not attracted by AI. Person 1 was interested in fundamental physics (dark matter) but had to leave physics due to lack of job opportunities. Person 2 is Terrence Tao. Person 3 is Ed Witten, etc etc. This reflects the hubris of the tech world that overestimates its own intelligence....

themitigating 4y ago
"This reflects the hubris of the tech world that overestimates its own intelligence." This Medium blog post is not the PR person for the "tech world".
- javajosh 4y ago
  Moreover it's worrisome that someone who knows Witten and Tao personally doesn't have even grade-school media literacy.
  - buggy6257 4y ago
    Claims to know*
  - kgwgk 4y ago
    Maybe I don’t have the required level of literacy but I understand « The smartest people I know personally and that I'm aware of generally » as the union of the « know personally » and « aware of generally » sets.
    - nightpool 4y ago
      In most understandings of English, "and" is used as the conjunction operator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_conjunction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_conjunction (set intersection). If you were expressing a disjunction (a union), you'd use "or" or "as well as" or something similar. Obviously it's possible to eventually puzzle out from context what OP meant, but I made the same mistake as the person you're replying to when reading the comment quickly.

Juliate 4y ago

> "the most ambitious challenges attract the smartest people" Whose ambition? Smart how? For what outcome? For who? Would that be even efficient? (there are many other issues to "panic" over other than AI)

javajosh 4y ago
It's probably good to go into a post like this with some basic assumptions about the context: works in/around/with SV "good new boys" network, easy 6-figure software jobs and weird jockeying around securing vast sums extracted from inbred billionaire weirdos and distributed for blood by fast-talking VC weirdos. The outsider perspective on this is to fancy yourself a smart inventor who's going to outwit/outsmart/outplay the competition with your own company, find product market fit. This factory makes software widgets, and striking gold with such ephemeral products is as hard as striking gold with making sounds (which is the magic that the pop music industry makes happen regularly, somehow). (So, smart enough to write and release quality, reliable software to the public, or build a team capable of doing this). Demand is so high for any software that becomes popular, that proxies for value are accepted with a "we'll worry about profit later" kind of attitude. So this justifies focusing on a hyped technology even if it isn't real. But if the hyped technology is real, even better. A rational agent, selling their intellectual labor, understanding the current lay of the land, will see that the subject of "improving AI and integrating AI into applications" is going to be in high demand for a period of time, which means higher income. I can explain why a higher income is desirable, if you like.

agentultra 4y ago

I wonder how many of the developers in the groups denigrated in the author also thought they were the, "smart ones attracted to interesting problems." You can find interesting problems in many banal situations. You only have to look.

EvgeniyZh 4y ago
I disagree. Depends on your definition of "interesting" of course, but I believe that really interesting problems are hard to find.
mattgreenrocks 4y ago
Definitely getting crypto vibes here: "the real hackers are the ones staying up late improving Merkle tree implementations!" Probably read something like that three years ago or so, likely on Medium as well. The narratives people tell themselves to self-justify their involvement are weird.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
> You can find interesting problems in many banal situations. You only have to look. Unfortunately (unrelated to AI and co), this is also a problem; many engineers write overcomplicated solutions for simple / banal problems, because they get bored otherwise.
- galleywest200 4y ago
  Then give your engineers more interesting problems. Or give them more freedom. Or give them days where they can work on whatever they want. There are plenty of options to correct that course.
mikhmha 4y ago
The failed Kwisatz Haderach.

jokethrowaway 4y ago

The single smartest person I know (an actual genius, mensa, gifted schools, etc) works in a crappy web agency and he's chronically underpaid. Tons of smart people I know are doing mediocre jobs. The fact someone is tackling hard problems doesn't make them the smartest people in the room, you need a combination of risk taking and smart in life.

sureglymop 4y ago
Generally what's needed to climb career ladders are social skills and networking skills. Coincidentally many smart people are not neurotypical and struggle with that. The problem is the "concept" of meritocracy. Many smart people may face significant amounts of adversity or may due to their circumstances be stuck in poverty. One example of that are people with adhd, autism, asperger's etc, many of whom score high on iq tests. But due to their handicaps they still struggle significantly more than neurotypical people because they are a minority.
- badpun 4y ago
  > Generally what's needed to climb career ladders are social skills and networking skills. And also, just the will to climb. Smart people often look at the big picture and come to view the rat race as pointless, thus staying on a lower rung of the ladder for life.
dredmorbius 4y ago
See the story of William James Sidis: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James_Sidis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James_Sidis> Child prodigy, IQ assessed between 250 and 300, contemporary, classmate, and friend of Norbert Wiener (father of cybernetics, also a child prodigy), and ended up ... making a life's work of studying bus transfers. As in the tickets, not commute patterns themselves. Several HN submissions though no substantive discussion: <https://hn.algolia.com/?q=William%20James%20Sidis https://hn.algolia.com/?q=William%20James%20Sidis> Sidis Archives: <https://www.sidis.net/ https://www.sidis.net/>
- 4y ago

oltimer 4y ago

This article reminds me of SSLeay by Eric Young which openssl is based on. Without his effort we'd all still be digging in the dirt with text in the clear. Open source is in the debt of a few gifted altruistic hard working people.

Kiro 4y ago

ITT: angry people saying fellow brilliant hackers jart and ggerganov are actually not that smart. I'm surprised jart even keeps posting here when we're so hostile and toxic.

jamesgill 4y ago

Like Paul Graham, I'm in my 50s. Unlike Paul Graham, I've never been confident that I can identify what a 'smart' person is. The only thing I know for sure is that it rarely has anything to do with what people like to call 'intelligence'.

mturmon 4y ago
My problem and shame has been the false negatives I have. I meet people with great potential all the time - who have done more, or know more, or think more deeply about something than others. And it's apparent to me - they're going to do great stuff. My problem is that there are also plenty of people who don't trigger that sense in me, but that have gone on to do really great stuff all the same. So I try to be humble about my assessments. I agree that whatever separator line there is, it's not 'intelligence', maybe more like intelligence * drive * longevity, and I may be keying in on the first factor but not others.

black_13 4y ago

[dead]