7 ms·

Counterpoint—-there is growing speculation we are just about to transition to AGI.

by robwwilliams 3y ago

EamonnMR 3y ago
Growing? Or have the same voices who have been saying it since the aughts suddenly been platformed.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  Yes, growing. It's not that the Voices have suddenly been "platformed" - it's that the field made a bunch of rapid jumps which made the message of those Voices more timely. Recent developments in AI only further confirm that the logic of the message is sound, and it's just the people that are afraid the conclusions. Everyone has their limit for how far to extrapolate from first principles, before giving up and believing what one would like to be true. It seems that for a lot of people in the field, AGI X-risk is now below that extrapolation limit.
  - b112 3y ago
    it's that the field made a bunch of rapid jumps I wish I knew what we really have achieved here. I try to talk to these things, via turbo3.5 api, amd all I get is broken logic, twisted moral reasoning, all due to oipenai manually breaking their creation. I don't understand their whole filter business. It's like we found a 500 yr old nude painting, a masterpiece, and 1800 puritans painted a dress on it. I often wonder if the filter, is more to hide its true capabilities.
    - stuckkeys 3y ago
      Lately I have been picturing comments, and this is truly iconic haha.
    - andybak 3y ago
      You seem to be making several points at once and I'm not sure they all join up?
    - ux-app 3y ago
      >I often wonder if the filter, is more to hide its true capabilities. right now we're all sharing a slice of GPT. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's some uber GPT (which requires a lot more processing per response) running in a lab somewhere that blows what's publicly available out of the water.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      > I wish I knew what we really have achieved here. I try to talk to these things, via turbo3.5 api, amd all I get is broken logic Try to get your hands on GPT-4, even if it means paying the $20/mo subscription for ChatGPT Plus. There is a huge qualitative jump between the two models. I got API access to GPT-4 some two weeks ago; my personal experience is, GPT-3.5 could handle single, well-defined tasks and queries well, but quickly got confused by anything substantial. Using it was half feelings of amazement, and half feelings of frustration. GPT-4? Can easily handle complex queries and complex tasks. Sure, it still makes mistakes, but much less frequently. GPT-4 for me is 80% semi-reliable results, 20% trying to talk it out of pursuing directions I don't care about. Also, one notable difference: when GPT-4 gives me bad or irrelevant answers, most of the time this is because I didn't give it enough context. I.e. it's my failure at communicating. A random stranger, put in place of GPT-4, would also get confused, and likely start asking me questions (something LLMs generally don't do yet). > I don't understand their whole filter business. Part preferences, part making its "personality" less disturbing, and part PR/politics - last couple times someone gave the general public access to an AI chatbot, it quickly got trolled, and then much bad press followed. Doesn't matter how asinine the reaction was - bad press is bad press, stocks go down. Can't have it. > I often wonder if the filter, is more to hide its true capabilities. I don't think it's to hide the model's capabilities, but it's definitely degrading them. Kind of expected - if you force-feed the model with inconsistent and frequently irrational overrides to highly specific topics, don't be surprised if the model's ability to (approximate) reason starts to break down. Maybe at some point LLMs will start to compartmentalize, but we're not there yet.
  - rtkwe 3y ago
    What's the actual new advancements? LLMs to me are great at faking AGI but are no where near actually being a workable general AI. The biggest example to me is you can correct even the newest ChatGPT and ask it to be truthful but it'll make up the same lie within the same continuous conversation. IMO the difference between being able to act truth-y and actually being truthful is a huge gap that involves the core ideas of what separates an actual AGI and a really good chatbot. Maybe it'll turn out to be a distinction that doesn't matter but I personally still think we're a ways away from an actual AGI.
    - ux-app 3y ago
      >Maybe it'll turn out to be a distinction that doesn't matter but I personally still think we're a ways away from an actual AGI. if you had described GPT to me 2 years ago I would have said no way, we're still a long way away from a machine that can fluidly and naturally converse in natural language and perform arbitrary logic and problem solving, and yet here we are. I very much doubt that in 5 years time we'll be talking about how GPT peaked in 2023.
      - q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 3y ago
        Seriously. It's worth pausing for a minute to note that the Turing Test has been entirely solved. In fact, it has been so thoroughly solved that anyone can download an open-source solution and run it on their computer. And yet, the general reaction of most people seems to be, "That's kind of cool, but why can't it also order me a cheeseburger?"
        eropple 3y ago
        It has not been solved. Even GPT-4, as impressive as it is for some use cases, is dumb and I can tell the difference between it and a human in a dozen sentences just by demanding sufficient precision. In some contexts, will some people be caught out? Absolutely. But that's been happening for a while now.
        3y ago
  - 2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
    How do we define a general intelligence?
  - dhkk 3y ago
    Sources please. Every expert interview ive seen with AI researchers who have been in the game since the beginning have said the same: GPT's are not a massive breakthrough in the field of AI research.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      > Sources please. My own eyes? Hundreds of thousands thousand different scientific papers, blog posts, news reports and discussion threads that covered this ever since ChatGPT appeared, and especially in the last two months as GPT-4 rolled out? At this point I'd reconsider if the experts you listened to are in fact experts. Seriously. It's like saying Manhattan project wasn't a massive breakthrough in experimental physics or military strategy.
      - dhkk 3y ago
        It was Yann LeCun. His professional experience and knowledge of the AI development timeline outweighs your opinions, imo. Thanks for confirming you have no sources.
- jack_pp 3y ago
  When the sky is getting to a dark shade of red it makes sense to hear out the doomsayers
  - matwood 3y ago
    And the vast majority of the time it's just a nice sunset.
    - jack_pp 3y ago
      a sunset at lunch time hits different
    - nullsense 3y ago
      I'm so glad that we 100% know for sure that this too is the vast majority of the time.
- lostmsu 3y ago
  Growing is quite apt here. No matter what you or I think more and more people get the sense of AI coming and talk about it.
causality0 3y ago
Growing among who? The more I learn about and use LLMs the more convinced I am we're in a local maxima and the only way they're going to improve is by getting smaller and cheaper to run. They're still terrible at logical reasoning. We're going to get some super cool and some super dystopian stuff out of them but LLMs are never going to go into a recursive loop of self-improvement and become machine gods.
- ben_w 3y ago
  > They're still terrible at logical reasoning. Are they even trying to be good at that? Serious question; using LLMs as a logical processor are as wasteful and as well-suited as using the Great Pyramid of Giza as an AirBnB. I've not tried this, but I suspect the best way is more like asking the LLM to write a COQ script for the scenario, instead of trying to get it to solve the logic directly.
  - staunton 3y ago
    Indeed, AI reinforcement-learning to deal with formal verification is what I'm looking forward to the most. Unfortunately it seems a very niche endeavour at the moment.
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    > using the Great Pyramid of Giza as an AirBnB , were you allowed to do it, would be an extremely profitable venture. Taj Mahal too, and yes, I know it's a mausoleum.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      I can see the reviews in my head already: 1 star: No WiFi, no windows, no hot water 1 star: dusty 1 star: aliens didn't abduct me :( 5 stars: lots of storage room for my luggage 4 stars: service good, but had weird dream about a furry weighing my soul against a feather 1 star: aliens did abduct me :( 2 stars: nice views, but smells of camel
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
dhkk 3y ago
[flagged]

Counterpoint—-there is growing speculation we are just about to transition to AGI.

EamonnMR 3y ago

Growing? Or have the same voices who have been saying it since the aughts suddenly been platformed.

TeMPOraL 3y ago
Yes, growing. It's not that the Voices have suddenly been "platformed" - it's that the field made a bunch of rapid jumps which made the message of those Voices more timely. Recent developments in AI only further confirm that the logic of the message is sound, and it's just the people that are afraid the conclusions. Everyone has their limit for how far to extrapolate from first principles, before giving up and believing what one would like to be true. It seems that for a lot of people in the field, AGI X-risk is now below that extrapolation limit.
- b112 3y ago
  it's that the field made a bunch of rapid jumps I wish I knew what we really have achieved here. I try to talk to these things, via turbo3.5 api, amd all I get is broken logic, twisted moral reasoning, all due to oipenai manually breaking their creation. I don't understand their whole filter business. It's like we found a 500 yr old nude painting, a masterpiece, and 1800 puritans painted a dress on it. I often wonder if the filter, is more to hide its true capabilities.
  - stuckkeys 3y ago
    Lately I have been picturing comments, and this is truly iconic haha.
  - andybak 3y ago
    You seem to be making several points at once and I'm not sure they all join up?
  - ux-app 3y ago
    >I often wonder if the filter, is more to hide its true capabilities. right now we're all sharing a slice of GPT. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's some uber GPT (which requires a lot more processing per response) running in a lab somewhere that blows what's publicly available out of the water.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    > I wish I knew what we really have achieved here. I try to talk to these things, via turbo3.5 api, amd all I get is broken logic Try to get your hands on GPT-4, even if it means paying the $20/mo subscription for ChatGPT Plus. There is a huge qualitative jump between the two models. I got API access to GPT-4 some two weeks ago; my personal experience is, GPT-3.5 could handle single, well-defined tasks and queries well, but quickly got confused by anything substantial. Using it was half feelings of amazement, and half feelings of frustration. GPT-4? Can easily handle complex queries and complex tasks. Sure, it still makes mistakes, but much less frequently. GPT-4 for me is 80% semi-reliable results, 20% trying to talk it out of pursuing directions I don't care about. Also, one notable difference: when GPT-4 gives me bad or irrelevant answers, most of the time this is because I didn't give it enough context. I.e. it's my failure at communicating. A random stranger, put in place of GPT-4, would also get confused, and likely start asking me questions (something LLMs generally don't do yet). > I don't understand their whole filter business. Part preferences, part making its "personality" less disturbing, and part PR/politics - last couple times someone gave the general public access to an AI chatbot, it quickly got trolled, and then much bad press followed. Doesn't matter how asinine the reaction was - bad press is bad press, stocks go down. Can't have it. > I often wonder if the filter, is more to hide its true capabilities. I don't think it's to hide the model's capabilities, but it's definitely degrading them. Kind of expected - if you force-feed the model with inconsistent and frequently irrational overrides to highly specific topics, don't be surprised if the model's ability to (approximate) reason starts to break down. Maybe at some point LLMs will start to compartmentalize, but we're not there yet.
- rtkwe 3y ago
  What's the actual new advancements? LLMs to me are great at faking AGI but are no where near actually being a workable general AI. The biggest example to me is you can correct even the newest ChatGPT and ask it to be truthful but it'll make up the same lie within the same continuous conversation. IMO the difference between being able to act truth-y and actually being truthful is a huge gap that involves the core ideas of what separates an actual AGI and a really good chatbot. Maybe it'll turn out to be a distinction that doesn't matter but I personally still think we're a ways away from an actual AGI.
  - ux-app 3y ago
    >Maybe it'll turn out to be a distinction that doesn't matter but I personally still think we're a ways away from an actual AGI. if you had described GPT to me 2 years ago I would have said no way, we're still a long way away from a machine that can fluidly and naturally converse in natural language and perform arbitrary logic and problem solving, and yet here we are. I very much doubt that in 5 years time we'll be talking about how GPT peaked in 2023.
    - q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 3y ago
      Seriously. It's worth pausing for a minute to note that the Turing Test has been entirely solved. In fact, it has been so thoroughly solved that anyone can download an open-source solution and run it on their computer. And yet, the general reaction of most people seems to be, "That's kind of cool, but why can't it also order me a cheeseburger?"
      - eropple 3y ago
        It has not been solved. Even GPT-4, as impressive as it is for some use cases, is dumb and I can tell the difference between it and a human in a dozen sentences just by demanding sufficient precision. In some contexts, will some people be caught out? Absolutely. But that's been happening for a while now.
        3y ago
- 2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
  How do we define a general intelligence?
- dhkk 3y ago
  Sources please. Every expert interview ive seen with AI researchers who have been in the game since the beginning have said the same: GPT's are not a massive breakthrough in the field of AI research.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    > Sources please. My own eyes? Hundreds of thousands thousand different scientific papers, blog posts, news reports and discussion threads that covered this ever since ChatGPT appeared, and especially in the last two months as GPT-4 rolled out? At this point I'd reconsider if the experts you listened to are in fact experts. Seriously. It's like saying Manhattan project wasn't a massive breakthrough in experimental physics or military strategy.
    - dhkk 3y ago
      It was Yann LeCun. His professional experience and knowledge of the AI development timeline outweighs your opinions, imo. Thanks for confirming you have no sources.
jack_pp 3y ago
When the sky is getting to a dark shade of red it makes sense to hear out the doomsayers
- matwood 3y ago
  And the vast majority of the time it's just a nice sunset.
  - jack_pp 3y ago
    a sunset at lunch time hits different
  - nullsense 3y ago
    I'm so glad that we 100% know for sure that this too is the vast majority of the time.
lostmsu 3y ago
Growing is quite apt here. No matter what you or I think more and more people get the sense of AI coming and talk about it.

causality0 3y ago

Growing among who? The more I learn about and use LLMs the more convinced I am we're in a local maxima and the only way they're going to improve is by getting smaller and cheaper to run. They're still terrible at logical reasoning. We're going to get some super cool and some super dystopian stuff out of them but LLMs are never going to go into a recursive loop of self-improvement and become machine gods.

ben_w 3y ago
> They're still terrible at logical reasoning. Are they even trying to be good at that? Serious question; using LLMs as a logical processor are as wasteful and as well-suited as using the Great Pyramid of Giza as an AirBnB. I've not tried this, but I suspect the best way is more like asking the LLM to write a COQ script for the scenario, instead of trying to get it to solve the logic directly.
- staunton 3y ago
  Indeed, AI reinforcement-learning to deal with formal verification is what I'm looking forward to the most. Unfortunately it seems a very niche endeavour at the moment.
- fsckboy 3y ago
  > using the Great Pyramid of Giza as an AirBnB , were you allowed to do it, would be an extremely profitable venture. Taj Mahal too, and yes, I know it's a mausoleum.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    I can see the reviews in my head already: 1 star: No WiFi, no windows, no hot water 1 star: dusty 1 star: aliens didn't abduct me :( 5 stars: lots of storage room for my luggage 4 stars: service good, but had weird dream about a furry weighing my soul against a feather 1 star: aliens did abduct me :( 2 stars: nice views, but smells of camel
TeMPOraL 3y ago

dhkk 3y ago

[flagged]