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The author's whole approach to AI is focusing on the supervised learning aspects of AI but ignoring the likelihood that future advancements in AI will come from

by ummonk 4y ago

The author's whole approach to AI is focusing on the supervised learning aspects of AI but ignoring the likelihood that future advancements in AI will come from reinforcement learning - much as how AlphaGo was first bootstrapped on human play but then improved through self play. On another note, this was amusing: "Many of my friends and colleagues are deeply impressed by their experiences with the latest big models, like GPT-4, and are practically holding vigils to await the appearance of a deeper intelligence. My position is not that they are wrong but that we can’t be sure". Is this supposed to be reassuring?

scotty79 4y ago
> Is this supposed to be reassuring? I have no idea why people think AIs will be better at general intelligence than they are at driving cars. At least why they think GI will improve any faster than driving.
- danielbln 4y ago
  You have no idea why a software system with very few physical constraints and which can iterate incredibly fast might improve faster than an algorithm that has to drive a physical vehicle through a world full of edge cases?
  - scotty79 4y ago
    The fact that we have zero awareness about the edge cases in the world of general intelligence doesn't give us right to think there aren't any. The world of the minds isn't necessarily simpler than physical world and we know about it even less. For example think of all cognitive biases and myriad of illusions we have to struggle very hard with when we apply out minds to any problem and want to have any hopes of achieving even remotely useful results. AI alarmists speak of human minds as if they are some perfect tool of progress completely forgetting that those minds failed to achieve any significant progress for tens of thousands of years and what pushed us forward wasn't more intelligent mind. Just a practice of how to deal with shortcomings of our minds. Another thing is resource cost. Look at how much it costs to run a single instance of semi-retarded LLM. I'd say we are lucky if we are only one computational revolution away from AGI like the one we got from discovering semiconductors. Humanity dreams of golems for millenia. First we made them out of sticks and clay. Now we are making them out of iron and silicon which is a significant progress but I'm not sure how many such technological jumps we'll need to enjoy or suffer the creation of actual golems.
    - ummonk 4y ago
      The fact that there are edge cases is actually part of what worries AI doomers. We'll be deploying these AI systems to non-critical areas where they can still do a lot of damage.
      - scotty79 4y ago
        This reminds me of how totalitarian systems create their enemies. Enemy is at the same time portrayed as dangerously incompetent but also incredibly dangerously cunning.

by ummonk 4y ago

scotty79 4y ago

> Is this supposed to be reassuring? I have no idea why people think AIs will be better at general intelligence than they are at driving cars. At least why they think GI will improve any faster than driving.

danielbln 4y ago
You have no idea why a software system with very few physical constraints and which can iterate incredibly fast might improve faster than an algorithm that has to drive a physical vehicle through a world full of edge cases?
- scotty79 4y ago
  The fact that we have zero awareness about the edge cases in the world of general intelligence doesn't give us right to think there aren't any. The world of the minds isn't necessarily simpler than physical world and we know about it even less. For example think of all cognitive biases and myriad of illusions we have to struggle very hard with when we apply out minds to any problem and want to have any hopes of achieving even remotely useful results. AI alarmists speak of human minds as if they are some perfect tool of progress completely forgetting that those minds failed to achieve any significant progress for tens of thousands of years and what pushed us forward wasn't more intelligent mind. Just a practice of how to deal with shortcomings of our minds. Another thing is resource cost. Look at how much it costs to run a single instance of semi-retarded LLM. I'd say we are lucky if we are only one computational revolution away from AGI like the one we got from discovering semiconductors. Humanity dreams of golems for millenia. First we made them out of sticks and clay. Now we are making them out of iron and silicon which is a significant progress but I'm not sure how many such technological jumps we'll need to enjoy or suffer the creation of actual golems.
  - ummonk 4y ago
    The fact that there are edge cases is actually part of what worries AI doomers. We'll be deploying these AI systems to non-critical areas where they can still do a lot of damage.
    - scotty79 4y ago
      This reminds me of how totalitarian systems create their enemies. Enemy is at the same time portrayed as dangerously incompetent but also incredibly dangerously cunning.