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IMO, we are more likely to stumble across a completely new form of intelligence than we are to successfully recreate something akin to human intelligence. Howev

IMO, we are more likely to stumble across a completely new form of intelligence than we are to successfully recreate something akin to human intelligence. However, I think actual brain cells in a petri dish learning and playing Pong is a far greater concern than a hypothetical AGI. Well, they don't hallucinate or lie, that's a human-centric concept that we've misapplied. An LLM is just a next word prediction engine. It's more accurately described as incorrect in its output based on the data it has available to it, skewing the probability calculation. It didn't lie nor hallucinate. Lying assumes intent and planning, it is incapable of either, it's an LLM. But calling it "wrong" kills the hype cycle, and you're on HN, a Y Combinator platform. A lot of folks here are invested in LLMs or selling something utilizing them as it's hot right now.

haswell 4y ago
> IMO, we are more likely to stumble across a completely new form of intelligence than we are to successfully recreate something akin to human intelligence This is predicated on the assumption that we’ll eventually hit a hard wall that prevents progress or that we’ll stop trying. This doesn’t seem likely. We just can’t estimate the timescale for progress. > It didn't lie nor hallucinate. Lying assumes intent and planning, it is incapable of either This is why I used quotes around “lie”, but again I’d argue that this underscores my point. It doesn’t matter whether the LLM is actually lying or hallucinating in the human sense if someone believes what it says. If I read what it says, believe it, and take some action based on that, the end result is the same and potentially harmful. Likewise, an “AGI” doesn’t need to actually be smarter than humans and its mistakes need not be attributed to intent or planning to cause real harm in the world. If a robot kills a human, we won’t be picking nits about whether or not the kind of “intent” it employs is the same kind humans assume they have. A smarter AGI just poses bigger problems if such a thing can ever be achieved. And this is all assuming we’re talking about the development of benevolent general purpose intelligence, which is certainly not the only kind of research that is happening right now.

haswell 4y ago

> IMO, we are more likely to stumble across a completely new form of intelligence than we are to successfully recreate something akin to human intelligence This is predicated on the assumption that we’ll eventually hit a hard wall that prevents progress or that we’ll stop trying. This doesn’t seem likely. We just can’t estimate the timescale for progress. > It didn't lie nor hallucinate. Lying assumes intent and planning, it is incapable of either This is why I used quotes around “lie”, but again I’d argue that this underscores my point. It doesn’t matter whether the LLM is actually lying or hallucinating in the human sense if someone believes what it says. If I read what it says, believe it, and take some action based on that, the end result is the same and potentially harmful. Likewise, an “AGI” doesn’t need to actually be smarter than humans and its mistakes need not be attributed to intent or planning to cause real harm in the world. If a robot kills a human, we won’t be picking nits about whether or not the kind of “intent” it employs is the same kind humans assume they have. A smarter AGI just poses bigger problems if such a thing can ever be achieved. And this is all assuming we’re talking about the development of benevolent general purpose intelligence, which is certainly not the only kind of research that is happening right now.