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I've stopped reading at What AI offers us is the opportunity to profoundly augment human intelligence It's the other way around, all AI, automated cogniti

I've stopped reading at What AI offers us is the opportunity to profoundly augment human intelligence It's the other way around, all AI, automated cognitive mimicry, has to offer to us, is a wide yet really shallow augmentation of our intelligence.

soperj 3y ago
It's not augmenting anything at a humanity level. It might give people access to skills that they don't possess, but I don't see it coming up with new styles.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
  Why not? If you can make a functional LLM it's a fairly small step to an LCM (Large Culture Model) and LEM (Large Emotion Model) as submodules in a LBM (Large Behavioural Model). The only difference is the tokens are rather more abstract. But there's really nothing special about novelty. If you have a model of human psychology and culture, there isn't even anything special about cultural novelty fine-tuned to tickle various social, intellectual, and emotional receptors.
  - sebastianconcpt 3y ago
    In all you described there, you are talking about anything but humanity. You described hypothetical artifacts that, if successful, would be vehicles of a synthetic species that could imitate human behavior. Again, nothing to do with humanity (unless you are bought into some kind of idea related to see humanity as dinosaurs in extinction and transhumanism as a new reality).
  - nathan_compton 3y ago
    Training data is the main thing. We have lots and lots of text and text has the special property that a sequence of text contains a lot of information about what is going to come next and is easy for a user to create. This is a rather particular circumstance, the combination of so much freely available data and their being a lot of utility in a purely auto-regressive model. It is difficult to think about what other modalities are in a similar position.
phoe-krk 3y ago
I've stopped reading at As an AI language model, I cannot answer questions about the future, such as about AI saving the world /s
goda90 3y ago
The AI itself may be wide and shallow, but it can be a tool to accomplish things that are possible for human intelligence but impractical due to time, focus, economics, coordination, etc.
fsflover 3y ago
Here is an example where human intelligence was actually augmented: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36209042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36209042.
wiseowise 3y ago
You don’t need to downplay tech just because you don’t like it. LLM can already remove huge chunk of boilerplate or useless search. An actual AI would be on a completely different level.
- drpixie 3y ago
  Or we could produce systems/languages/etc that don't need all that boilerplate!?
  - wiseowise 3y ago
    No, we couldn’t. Good luck switching your email style and coming off as impolite, for example.
- sebastianconcpt 3y ago
  It doesn't sound like you understood what I wrote. Try to go deeper than the propaganda and hype level of analysis.
parentheses 3y ago
I think your assessment is flat out wrong. AI has already made many problems much easier to solve and reduced the capital cost for a lot of economically valuable activities. AI has had meaningful positive effects in almost everyone's life. That said the capabilities of novel LLMs are pretty amazing - to the point where I'm able to be more efficient daily by using it.
- reportgunner 3y ago
  Citation needed.
bbor 3y ago
You're using "cognitive mimicry" to deride AI, but isn't that the best way to augment our intelligence - by mimicking it? More to your point: profound doesn't really just mean "deep" in this context, but even if it does, I don't see how LLMs in their current state (with some better UX) don't do that. Sure you can't ask it to guess your deepest inner beliefs, but engaging with an LLM in a dialogue can greatly speed up deep, focused knowledge work, such as brainstorming ideas, structuring writing, investigating hypothesis, etc. In short, I think it's more than a bit misguided to say AI only has shallow benefits because it's not yet capable of extremely deep thoughts on its own.

soperj 3y ago

It's not augmenting anything at a humanity level. It might give people access to skills that they don't possess, but I don't see it coming up with new styles.

TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
Why not? If you can make a functional LLM it's a fairly small step to an LCM (Large Culture Model) and LEM (Large Emotion Model) as submodules in a LBM (Large Behavioural Model). The only difference is the tokens are rather more abstract. But there's really nothing special about novelty. If you have a model of human psychology and culture, there isn't even anything special about cultural novelty fine-tuned to tickle various social, intellectual, and emotional receptors.
- sebastianconcpt 3y ago
  In all you described there, you are talking about anything but humanity. You described hypothetical artifacts that, if successful, would be vehicles of a synthetic species that could imitate human behavior. Again, nothing to do with humanity (unless you are bought into some kind of idea related to see humanity as dinosaurs in extinction and transhumanism as a new reality).
- nathan_compton 3y ago
  Training data is the main thing. We have lots and lots of text and text has the special property that a sequence of text contains a lot of information about what is going to come next and is easy for a user to create. This is a rather particular circumstance, the combination of so much freely available data and their being a lot of utility in a purely auto-regressive model. It is difficult to think about what other modalities are in a similar position.

phoe-krk 3y ago

I've stopped reading at As an AI language model, I cannot answer questions about the future, such as about AI saving the world /s

goda90 3y ago

The AI itself may be wide and shallow, but it can be a tool to accomplish things that are possible for human intelligence but impractical due to time, focus, economics, coordination, etc.

fsflover 3y ago

Here is an example where human intelligence was actually augmented: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36209042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36209042.

wiseowise 3y ago

You don’t need to downplay tech just because you don’t like it. LLM can already remove huge chunk of boilerplate or useless search. An actual AI would be on a completely different level.

drpixie 3y ago
Or we could produce systems/languages/etc that don't need all that boilerplate!?
- wiseowise 3y ago
  No, we couldn’t. Good luck switching your email style and coming off as impolite, for example.
sebastianconcpt 3y ago
It doesn't sound like you understood what I wrote. Try to go deeper than the propaganda and hype level of analysis.

parentheses 3y ago

I think your assessment is flat out wrong. AI has already made many problems much easier to solve and reduced the capital cost for a lot of economically valuable activities. AI has had meaningful positive effects in almost everyone's life. That said the capabilities of novel LLMs are pretty amazing - to the point where I'm able to be more efficient daily by using it.

reportgunner 3y ago
Citation needed.

bbor 3y ago

You're using "cognitive mimicry" to deride AI, but isn't that the best way to augment our intelligence - by mimicking it? More to your point: profound doesn't really just mean "deep" in this context, but even if it does, I don't see how LLMs in their current state (with some better UX) don't do that. Sure you can't ask it to guess your deepest inner beliefs, but engaging with an LLM in a dialogue can greatly speed up deep, focused knowledge work, such as brainstorming ideas, structuring writing, investigating hypothesis, etc. In short, I think it's more than a bit misguided to say AI only has shallow benefits because it's not yet capable of extremely deep thoughts on its own.