8 ms·

I see we've passed "first they ignore you" and moved onto the "next they laugh at you" phase of LLM denial. The next step is "you win."

methodical 3y ago
Or maybe we've just moved onto the "next they laugh at you" part which will continue for a decade or so before any actually advancements in AI happen besides creation of larger matrixes of inputs to outputs, with equally poor top level performance. I don't think anybody is laughing about LLM's or their potential, but rather laughing and mocking the people who are AI doomers saying that everybody's job is kaput because LLMs can spit out empty copywriting and junior level code samples.
- ambrozk 3y ago
  People's freakouts are completely reasonable. The pace of development in this field is unreal and shows few signs of slowing down. The primary blocker to adoption in many fields is just software integration, which will come within a few years at most. At that point we'll see what the limits of LLM capabilities are, and which professions are no longer economically viable.
  - methodical 3y ago
    My position here is certainly debatable but IMO the pace of development in AI as a whole is actually pretty lackluster, and instead appears monumental because of the massive influx of VC dollars (and development of computing hardware!) which allows for these more and more monolithic models. Training larger and larger models doesn't really represent "development" to me in the sense I usually think of it. The largest hurdle with AI, and one that LLM has not and likely will never solve, is that it doesn't truly understand anything at all, but is just instead (in simple terms) a large matrix of inputs to outputs. The areas where current AI falls flat on its face are areas where it will never be able to encroach as it works today, no matter how many TPU hours you waste on learning.
    - the8472 3y ago
      memory, internal iteration and scratchpads can and have been added. Foundation models don't include this yet, but it's not unexplored territory. Online learning is more difficult but I'd argue that various fine-tuning and control approaches are slowly working towards that. So what is a brain other than a very complex non-linear function which takes inputs, iterates on them, integrates them with memory and eventually generates output? > is that it doesn't truly understand anything at all, but is just instead (in simple terms) a large matrix of inputs to outputs The first step to defeating the tiger is to realize that it cannot hurt you, for it is only made of simple atoms.
      - mgn115 3y ago
        > So what is a brain other than a very complex non-linear function which takes inputs, iterates on them, integrates them with memory and eventually generates output? A thing that processes and embodies sensory input, makes informed guesses about other people's intentions and values, grows tumors, worries about the dirty dishes.... How many other "complex non-linear functions" are made of meat?
      - ukuina 3y ago
        >> is that it doesn't truly understand anything at all, but is just instead (in simple terms) a large matrix of inputs to outputs > The first step to defeating the tiger is to realize that it cannot hurt you, for it is only made of simple atoms. This is now my favorite rebuttal when people claim LLMs are simply some form of math.
    - ambrozk 3y ago
      "No true understanding" is the new "no true Scotsman." If you're still repeating this line in mid-2023, you're not meaningfully engaging with the technological developments that are occurring in front of your eyes.
      - methodical 3y ago
        Not at all. Being able to give an example of something or spit something out that resembles a concept is not the same thing as understanding it, at least in my opinion. Keyword being true understanding, although I'll concede that it might have arguably basic understanding of such concepts.
  - jacobr1 3y ago
    One reason I'm sympathetic to this view is how far behind pre-AI automation is. Whenever I work with small-businesses and governments (and bigco's too but in different ways) I am amazed by how much make work there actually is. Somebody is doing data entry, but considers it valuable because some fraction of that work is identifying accuracy issues early, or translating between systems and domains. Then somebody is applying basically rote business logic to make a decision and route things to somebody else to do work. All of that could be automated. As an industry we've been automating that kind of thing for 50+ years, but still there are mountains of inefficient processes that could be automated, that are basically just shuffling paper. But the overhead cost of hiring someone to analyze your processes and adopt it to some kind of system, the costs of maintaining that system, to costs of getting it wrong when the requirement didn't account for various edge-cases that weren't in the requirements because of the tacit knowledge embedded in employees, often makes the project not worth it or a failure. If LLM capabilities just help provide better glue (or even just political/hype motivation) to enable easier integration/automation of basic white-collar workflows there could be significant disruption. There is a lot of low-hanging fruit out there ... every spreadsheet is a new potential SaaS business.
    - tsunamifury 3y ago
      Yes, people keep saying LLM tech is laughable because it can't solve for cold-fusion or some nonsense in a single prompt. In reality, all it has to do is replace a crap ton of white collar "lgtm and pass it on" jobs that exist with minimal transformation or logic applied. This is a crap ton of people
- chaxor 3y ago
  A decade can still be quite short considering the types of problems that may need to be solved, so perhaps that is the timescale that some of the people you're referring to are thinking in?
adfgionionio 3y ago
People said this about Bitcoin. They said it about Google Glass. They said it about VR headsets. They never seemed to notice the same logic applied to Microsoft Bob.
- andirk 3y ago
  Never heard of Microsoft Bob but after glancing at its Wikipedia article [0], it sounds super useful for beginners! It's Clippy's dad. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob
- ambrozk 3y ago
  Yes, there is a hype cycle that afflicts every new piece of tech. The existence of hype isn't evidence either way. What makes smart people think that this time is different is a straightforward comparison of the capabilities of LLMs and the skills needed to perform various human jobs, including (ominously) high-paying, scarce jobs.
  - andirk 3y ago
    > including (ominously) high-paying, scarce jobs You mean like being a CEO and getting a bunch of money where the only credential is having previously been a CEO regardless of success in previous role? I think LLMs or even chat bots could handle a lot of those positions quite easily.
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  The immediate uptake and application of this technology to everyday lives is what different here. Bitcoin was NEVER hyped outside of Silicon Valley to much of a degree that people here think it was.
  - sangnoir 3y ago
    > Bitcoin was NEVER hyped outside of Silicon Valley to much of a degree that people here think it was. I directly experienced Bitcoin maximalists selling Bitcoin-backed retirements to seniors far from the Valley. The hype was so bad, the subsequent price-drop was a pop-culture event that got mocked by mainstream comedians to mainstream audiences.
madoublet 3y ago
You are missing the final key phase: everything gets crappier and we just accept it. There is no denying that LLMs are the future. But, much like the SEO optimized Internet and offshored goods, everything just sucks a little more.
- forgetfulness 3y ago
  Or hyper processed foods, and city planning that encourages sedentarism. Yes, congratulations to Kraft and Ford on their victory, now 38% of the adult population of the US has diabetes.
mejutoco 3y ago
I am pretty sure the next step is "they fight you", before you win.
- ambrozk 3y ago
  True! And that will come very soon.
asdfman123 3y ago
You only progress to the next step if you’re actually good. It’s possible you stay mediocre, and your only function was to amuse the gatekeepers.
forgetfulness 3y ago
I don't think there's many people who doubt that LLMs could play an important role, substituting many human activities. The question is whether that'd be actually a good thing. It's like proudly proclaiming that detractors of the food industry are mad that things like hot pockets, Doritos, fad breakfast cereal and wonderbread won over fresh food. Well, yes, they kind of won, and people are mad, what's there to be happy about?
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  If you look at more mainstream forums like Reddit, people are in really hard denial/look how stupid it is mode. I think at least some people on HN are able to sort of see through its unformed intelligence into how it can be constrained to likely be hyper effective.
  - forgetfulness 3y ago
    /r/programming would be the peer forum in Reddit, but they keep quiet about this subject for the most part, I'd assume that moderators don't want to handle the hot potato that threads on this would be. /r/technology is where most of the discussion happens, it's full of angry and confused working class people who were already feeling squeezed by the US economic and political landscape, and lash out at Big Tech CEOs and "tech bros", it's not a place to have debate.
    - tsunamifury 3y ago
      I have had some interesting conversations where I've tried to compare the 'word salad' of Pynchon with a relatively straightforward opening scene script generated by GPT. The writing forums really are almost wildly irrational about this -- when all I want to illustrate is that GPT can produce usable, mediocre value even if it's not high art. While at the same time Pynchon may ... in reality, have questionable value in his word salad of nonsense. Yet so called 'writers' will hold him on hallowed ground, while not even engaging with an AI script that generally accomplishes a task well. I'm a former lit major and this sort of ignorance is common in the field. Failed writers constantly berate everything that works as crap, while bemoaning the loss of true art that no one cares about. Functionality will trump art, 99/100. It's the way of the world. And AI is really #)($*ing functional.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nluken 3y ago
What is "winning" here? How do you "win" art? Human writers don't exist anymore? Seems like a really odd way of viewing writing.

methodical 3y ago

Or maybe we've just moved onto the "next they laugh at you" part which will continue for a decade or so before any actually advancements in AI happen besides creation of larger matrixes of inputs to outputs, with equally poor top level performance. I don't think anybody is laughing about LLM's or their potential, but rather laughing and mocking the people who are AI doomers saying that everybody's job is kaput because LLMs can spit out empty copywriting and junior level code samples.

ambrozk 3y ago
People's freakouts are completely reasonable. The pace of development in this field is unreal and shows few signs of slowing down. The primary blocker to adoption in many fields is just software integration, which will come within a few years at most. At that point we'll see what the limits of LLM capabilities are, and which professions are no longer economically viable.
- methodical 3y ago
  My position here is certainly debatable but IMO the pace of development in AI as a whole is actually pretty lackluster, and instead appears monumental because of the massive influx of VC dollars (and development of computing hardware!) which allows for these more and more monolithic models. Training larger and larger models doesn't really represent "development" to me in the sense I usually think of it. The largest hurdle with AI, and one that LLM has not and likely will never solve, is that it doesn't truly understand anything at all, but is just instead (in simple terms) a large matrix of inputs to outputs. The areas where current AI falls flat on its face are areas where it will never be able to encroach as it works today, no matter how many TPU hours you waste on learning.
  - the8472 3y ago
    memory, internal iteration and scratchpads can and have been added. Foundation models don't include this yet, but it's not unexplored territory. Online learning is more difficult but I'd argue that various fine-tuning and control approaches are slowly working towards that. So what is a brain other than a very complex non-linear function which takes inputs, iterates on them, integrates them with memory and eventually generates output? > is that it doesn't truly understand anything at all, but is just instead (in simple terms) a large matrix of inputs to outputs The first step to defeating the tiger is to realize that it cannot hurt you, for it is only made of simple atoms.
    - mgn115 3y ago
      > So what is a brain other than a very complex non-linear function which takes inputs, iterates on them, integrates them with memory and eventually generates output? A thing that processes and embodies sensory input, makes informed guesses about other people's intentions and values, grows tumors, worries about the dirty dishes.... How many other "complex non-linear functions" are made of meat?
    - ukuina 3y ago
      >> is that it doesn't truly understand anything at all, but is just instead (in simple terms) a large matrix of inputs to outputs > The first step to defeating the tiger is to realize that it cannot hurt you, for it is only made of simple atoms. This is now my favorite rebuttal when people claim LLMs are simply some form of math.
  - ambrozk 3y ago
    "No true understanding" is the new "no true Scotsman." If you're still repeating this line in mid-2023, you're not meaningfully engaging with the technological developments that are occurring in front of your eyes.
    - methodical 3y ago
      Not at all. Being able to give an example of something or spit something out that resembles a concept is not the same thing as understanding it, at least in my opinion. Keyword being true understanding, although I'll concede that it might have arguably basic understanding of such concepts.
- jacobr1 3y ago
  One reason I'm sympathetic to this view is how far behind pre-AI automation is. Whenever I work with small-businesses and governments (and bigco's too but in different ways) I am amazed by how much make work there actually is. Somebody is doing data entry, but considers it valuable because some fraction of that work is identifying accuracy issues early, or translating between systems and domains. Then somebody is applying basically rote business logic to make a decision and route things to somebody else to do work. All of that could be automated. As an industry we've been automating that kind of thing for 50+ years, but still there are mountains of inefficient processes that could be automated, that are basically just shuffling paper. But the overhead cost of hiring someone to analyze your processes and adopt it to some kind of system, the costs of maintaining that system, to costs of getting it wrong when the requirement didn't account for various edge-cases that weren't in the requirements because of the tacit knowledge embedded in employees, often makes the project not worth it or a failure. If LLM capabilities just help provide better glue (or even just political/hype motivation) to enable easier integration/automation of basic white-collar workflows there could be significant disruption. There is a lot of low-hanging fruit out there ... every spreadsheet is a new potential SaaS business.
  - tsunamifury 3y ago
    Yes, people keep saying LLM tech is laughable because it can't solve for cold-fusion or some nonsense in a single prompt. In reality, all it has to do is replace a crap ton of white collar "lgtm and pass it on" jobs that exist with minimal transformation or logic applied. This is a crap ton of people
chaxor 3y ago
A decade can still be quite short considering the types of problems that may need to be solved, so perhaps that is the timescale that some of the people you're referring to are thinking in?

adfgionionio 3y ago

People said this about Bitcoin. They said it about Google Glass. They said it about VR headsets. They never seemed to notice the same logic applied to Microsoft Bob.

andirk 3y ago
Never heard of Microsoft Bob but after glancing at its Wikipedia article [0], it sounds super useful for beginners! It's Clippy's dad. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob
ambrozk 3y ago
Yes, there is a hype cycle that afflicts every new piece of tech. The existence of hype isn't evidence either way. What makes smart people think that this time is different is a straightforward comparison of the capabilities of LLMs and the skills needed to perform various human jobs, including (ominously) high-paying, scarce jobs.
- andirk 3y ago
  > including (ominously) high-paying, scarce jobs You mean like being a CEO and getting a bunch of money where the only credential is having previously been a CEO regardless of success in previous role? I think LLMs or even chat bots could handle a lot of those positions quite easily.
tsunamifury 3y ago
The immediate uptake and application of this technology to everyday lives is what different here. Bitcoin was NEVER hyped outside of Silicon Valley to much of a degree that people here think it was.
- sangnoir 3y ago
  > Bitcoin was NEVER hyped outside of Silicon Valley to much of a degree that people here think it was. I directly experienced Bitcoin maximalists selling Bitcoin-backed retirements to seniors far from the Valley. The hype was so bad, the subsequent price-drop was a pop-culture event that got mocked by mainstream comedians to mainstream audiences.

madoublet 3y ago

You are missing the final key phase: everything gets crappier and we just accept it. There is no denying that LLMs are the future. But, much like the SEO optimized Internet and offshored goods, everything just sucks a little more.

forgetfulness 3y ago
Or hyper processed foods, and city planning that encourages sedentarism. Yes, congratulations to Kraft and Ford on their victory, now 38% of the adult population of the US has diabetes.

mejutoco 3y ago

I am pretty sure the next step is "they fight you", before you win.

ambrozk 3y ago
True! And that will come very soon.

asdfman123 3y ago

You only progress to the next step if you’re actually good. It’s possible you stay mediocre, and your only function was to amuse the gatekeepers.

forgetfulness 3y ago

I don't think there's many people who doubt that LLMs could play an important role, substituting many human activities. The question is whether that'd be actually a good thing. It's like proudly proclaiming that detractors of the food industry are mad that things like hot pockets, Doritos, fad breakfast cereal and wonderbread won over fresh food. Well, yes, they kind of won, and people are mad, what's there to be happy about?

tsunamifury 3y ago
If you look at more mainstream forums like Reddit, people are in really hard denial/look how stupid it is mode. I think at least some people on HN are able to sort of see through its unformed intelligence into how it can be constrained to likely be hyper effective.
- forgetfulness 3y ago
  /r/programming would be the peer forum in Reddit, but they keep quiet about this subject for the most part, I'd assume that moderators don't want to handle the hot potato that threads on this would be. /r/technology is where most of the discussion happens, it's full of angry and confused working class people who were already feeling squeezed by the US economic and political landscape, and lash out at Big Tech CEOs and "tech bros", it's not a place to have debate.
  - tsunamifury 3y ago
    I have had some interesting conversations where I've tried to compare the 'word salad' of Pynchon with a relatively straightforward opening scene script generated by GPT. The writing forums really are almost wildly irrational about this -- when all I want to illustrate is that GPT can produce usable, mediocre value even if it's not high art. While at the same time Pynchon may ... in reality, have questionable value in his word salad of nonsense. Yet so called 'writers' will hold him on hallowed ground, while not even engaging with an AI script that generally accomplishes a task well. I'm a former lit major and this sort of ignorance is common in the field. Failed writers constantly berate everything that works as crap, while bemoaning the loss of true art that no one cares about. Functionality will trump art, 99/100. It's the way of the world. And AI is really #)($*ing functional.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nluken 3y ago

What is "winning" here? How do you "win" art? Human writers don't exist anymore? Seems like a really odd way of viewing writing.