6 ms·

AI and the Frontier Paradox

59 points by marban 3y ago

vouaobrasil 3y ago
> Intelligence is not a thing that we can capture but an ever-approaching horizon that we turn into useful tools. I'd phrase this more as: > Intelligence is not a thing that we can capture but an ever-approaching horizon that we turn into technology that we cannot control. We are playing God with the wisdom of a five year old. For every useful consequence, there will be five unexpected dangers.
- what-no-tests 3y ago
  And technology is a tool that turns knowledge into power.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
canucyc 3y ago
[dead]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zby 3y ago
If intelligence is knowledge and the ability to apply it then maybe we should try to split AI into two systems: https://zzbbyy.substack.com/p/reasoning-machines https://zzbbyy.substack.com/p/reasoning-machines
- mi3law 3y ago
  Excellent observation. The single-threaded effort dominating AI today (i.e. the base assumption that OpenAI can scale GPT up as it is today into AGI) is what's causing the bottleneck. Assuming AGI can be built as 1 system is assuming that mind is separate from body, which is the old dualist idea we've outgrown in our own awareness, but somehow not when it comes to AI. We've been growing AI in that direction at https://www.aolabs.ai/ https://www.aolabs.ai/
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > Assuming AGI can be built as 1 system is assuming that mind is separate from body I don't quite follow this. If it's one system doesn't that mean the mind is not separate from the body?
    - wsintra2022 3y ago
      Wouldn’t the internet and it’s OS layers and many miles of fibre and data center servers and all the hardware and software combined be a representative body for an AGI system. The body already exists, right now we just nurturing the mind
      - mi3law 3y ago
        No, I don't see this as accurate. A body has a whole host of intelligence built into it, and can even learn (more akin to habituation). The underlying infra which you are suggesting could represent a body of sorts for AGI completely lacks this type of intelligence. And it's an open question how much general intelligence it itself functionally predicated on lower forms of intelligence such as that found in bodies.
    - mi3law 3y ago
      I mean to emphasize that AGI is being built only in the shape of mind, as if mind is separate from body, which is clearly not the case in our human experience of general intelligence.
A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
I'm always amazed at the low-quality content these large venture firms and consulting groups put out. They should, by all means, have the money to hire decent and engaging writers. This article has a bland, lifeless tone which is inferior to Chat-GPT's stock settings, and in the end it says nothing important. > The AI effect is actually part of a larger human phenomenon we call the frontier paradox. Because we ascribe to humans the frontier beyond our technological mastery, that frontier will always be ill-defined. Intelligence is not a thing that we can capture but an ever-approaching horizon that we turn into useful tools. Technology is the artifice of intelligence forged over millennia of human collaboration and competition. Now that's what I call word salad.
- nocoiner 3y ago
  Oh gosh. That’s extremely bad and hard to read. I can’t decide what’s more distressing: some millionaire GP wrote that and thought he was being super profound, or the firm actually paid someone to write that for them. Stripe commissions good writers to write interesting pieces. Even that SBF hagiography that one of the VC firms commissioned was more of an interesting failure than this. I can’t understand why anyone would put out this kind of anodyne prose and think they’re going to appeal to, well, anyone.
  - amelius 3y ago
    What does Stripe have to do with it?
    - mkl 3y ago
      A_D_E_P_T suggested companies should "hire decent and engaging writers", and nocoiner supplied an example of a company doing that successfully.
      - nocoiner 3y ago
        Thank you - on reflection, I could have been more clear, but I’m glad at least one person got what I was trying to say.
AmericanOP 3y ago
When you have a liberal arts degree it is important to discuss semantics at every opportunity
- blululu 3y ago
  Dude has a BS/MS in computer science from Stanford: https://www.linkedin.com/in/konstantinebuhler https://www.linkedin.com/in/konstantinebuhler Don’t blame the writing teachers for this one.
trojanalert 3y ago
[dead]
guy98238710 3y ago
It's interesting that so many people present this argument now that we actually do have AIs worthy of the name. LLMs can perform an unbounded range of tasks with human-level performance and you talk to them like they are human. I think AI label will stick in this case. Perhaps dismissing AI is some sort of psychological defense that protects people from existential crisis triggered by emergence of LLMs.
mdale 3y ago
I don't think the premise is correct. AI is often used term late into the product lifecycle. When Apple or Google or the technology press say a product has improved it's dictation they say the "AI" has improved. When we talk historically about deep blue we categorize it as an early AI project to have computers beet humans at chess. Fair that AI is a vague term for software with some training stage or approach to analyze data; But I don't see the term not being used to describe past innovation in that (admittedly vague) domain. The author is likely thinking about the moving goalposts of human excepltionalism as AI gains capabilities which has a history of coverage itself; but goes about this in a roundabout way and I don't think it applies in the way the author is proposing per more specific language being the problem All to say unfortunate article given such a cool article title :)
bluefishinit 3y ago
Really tired of hearing clowns that went all in on crypto scams preach their AI "wisdom". Sequoia has long been on the cutting edge of making huge, foolish investments. They helped start the trend when they invested in Color: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Labs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Labs
stared 3y ago
> Difference between machine learning and AI: > If it is written in Python, it's probably machine learning > If it is written in PowerPoint, it's probably AI (source: https://twitter.com/matvelloso/status/1065778379612282885 https://twitter.com/matvelloso/status/1065778379612282885, 2018) When speaking in public, using the phrase "AI" is unavoidable. I tried hard to use terms like "statistical models", "machine learning", "deep learning" (or its concrete instance), but it is not what the general audience understands or cares about. But when thinking about "AI", I recommend thinking about other phrases without the word "intelligence" or any of its synonyms (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WBdvyyHLdxZSAMmoz/taboo-your-words https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WBdvyyHLdxZSAMmoz/taboo-your...). That way, you refrain from using ill-defined terms with many definitions, meanings, and connotations.
msaeki 3y ago
Good to see we’re all on the same page that this piece is lacking. Focusing on the understanding of intelligence in it, which leads to his goalpost moving theory: there are multiple senses to the word in English, and this dictionary definition doesn’t meet the one we use for what we see in say, the cleverness of children (who “know” very little, and yet..). Or even what we see in animals. That sense refers to something real, and is well explored in philosophy - but in branches that have been avoided by comp sci since its inception (thus McCarthy’s et al.’s mistaken usage and Turing’s punting on considering what it is). The sense that comp sci tends to lean toward is the one intended in things like I.Q. and seen in puzzle solving. To the degree that we can call software intelligent, it’s because we see this intelligence encoded in it (usually reflective of the authors’ ability in this sense and the tradition they build on). Never the first kind, though. That’s what keeps us from accepting it as AI.

59 points by marban 3y ago

> Intelligence is not a thing that we can capture but an ever-approaching horizon that we turn into useful tools. I'd phrase this more as: > Intelligence is not a thing that we can capture but an ever-approaching horizon that we turn into technology that we cannot control. We are playing God with the wisdom of a five year old. For every useful consequence, there will be five unexpected dangers.

what-no-tests 3y ago
And technology is a tool that turns knowledge into power.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

canucyc 3y ago

[dead]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

zby 3y ago

If intelligence is knowledge and the ability to apply it then maybe we should try to split AI into two systems: https://zzbbyy.substack.com/p/reasoning-machines https://zzbbyy.substack.com/p/reasoning-machines

mi3law 3y ago
Excellent observation. The single-threaded effort dominating AI today (i.e. the base assumption that OpenAI can scale GPT up as it is today into AGI) is what's causing the bottleneck. Assuming AGI can be built as 1 system is assuming that mind is separate from body, which is the old dualist idea we've outgrown in our own awareness, but somehow not when it comes to AI. We've been growing AI in that direction at https://www.aolabs.ai/ https://www.aolabs.ai/
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > Assuming AGI can be built as 1 system is assuming that mind is separate from body I don't quite follow this. If it's one system doesn't that mean the mind is not separate from the body?
  - wsintra2022 3y ago
    Wouldn’t the internet and it’s OS layers and many miles of fibre and data center servers and all the hardware and software combined be a representative body for an AGI system. The body already exists, right now we just nurturing the mind
    - mi3law 3y ago
      No, I don't see this as accurate. A body has a whole host of intelligence built into it, and can even learn (more akin to habituation). The underlying infra which you are suggesting could represent a body of sorts for AGI completely lacks this type of intelligence. And it's an open question how much general intelligence it itself functionally predicated on lower forms of intelligence such as that found in bodies.
  - mi3law 3y ago
    I mean to emphasize that AGI is being built only in the shape of mind, as if mind is separate from body, which is clearly not the case in our human experience of general intelligence.

A_D_E_P_T 3y ago

I'm always amazed at the low-quality content these large venture firms and consulting groups put out. They should, by all means, have the money to hire decent and engaging writers. This article has a bland, lifeless tone which is inferior to Chat-GPT's stock settings, and in the end it says nothing important. > The AI effect is actually part of a larger human phenomenon we call the frontier paradox. Because we ascribe to humans the frontier beyond our technological mastery, that frontier will always be ill-defined. Intelligence is not a thing that we can capture but an ever-approaching horizon that we turn into useful tools. Technology is the artifice of intelligence forged over millennia of human collaboration and competition. Now that's what I call word salad.

nocoiner 3y ago
Oh gosh. That’s extremely bad and hard to read. I can’t decide what’s more distressing: some millionaire GP wrote that and thought he was being super profound, or the firm actually paid someone to write that for them. Stripe commissions good writers to write interesting pieces. Even that SBF hagiography that one of the VC firms commissioned was more of an interesting failure than this. I can’t understand why anyone would put out this kind of anodyne prose and think they’re going to appeal to, well, anyone.
- amelius 3y ago
  What does Stripe have to do with it?
  - mkl 3y ago
    A_D_E_P_T suggested companies should "hire decent and engaging writers", and nocoiner supplied an example of a company doing that successfully.
    - nocoiner 3y ago
      Thank you - on reflection, I could have been more clear, but I’m glad at least one person got what I was trying to say.

AmericanOP 3y ago

When you have a liberal arts degree it is important to discuss semantics at every opportunity

blululu 3y ago
Dude has a BS/MS in computer science from Stanford: https://www.linkedin.com/in/konstantinebuhler https://www.linkedin.com/in/konstantinebuhler Don’t blame the writing teachers for this one.

trojanalert 3y ago

[dead]

guy98238710 3y ago

It's interesting that so many people present this argument now that we actually do have AIs worthy of the name. LLMs can perform an unbounded range of tasks with human-level performance and you talk to them like they are human. I think AI label will stick in this case. Perhaps dismissing AI is some sort of psychological defense that protects people from existential crisis triggered by emergence of LLMs.

mdale 3y ago

I don't think the premise is correct. AI is often used term late into the product lifecycle. When Apple or Google or the technology press say a product has improved it's dictation they say the "AI" has improved. When we talk historically about deep blue we categorize it as an early AI project to have computers beet humans at chess. Fair that AI is a vague term for software with some training stage or approach to analyze data; But I don't see the term not being used to describe past innovation in that (admittedly vague) domain. The author is likely thinking about the moving goalposts of human excepltionalism as AI gains capabilities which has a history of coverage itself; but goes about this in a roundabout way and I don't think it applies in the way the author is proposing per more specific language being the problem All to say unfortunate article given such a cool article title :)

bluefishinit 3y ago

Really tired of hearing clowns that went all in on crypto scams preach their AI "wisdom". Sequoia has long been on the cutting edge of making huge, foolish investments. They helped start the trend when they invested in Color: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Labs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Labs

stared 3y ago

> Difference between machine learning and AI: > If it is written in Python, it's probably machine learning > If it is written in PowerPoint, it's probably AI (source: https://twitter.com/matvelloso/status/1065778379612282885 https://twitter.com/matvelloso/status/1065778379612282885, 2018) When speaking in public, using the phrase "AI" is unavoidable. I tried hard to use terms like "statistical models", "machine learning", "deep learning" (or its concrete instance), but it is not what the general audience understands or cares about. But when thinking about "AI", I recommend thinking about other phrases without the word "intelligence" or any of its synonyms (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WBdvyyHLdxZSAMmoz/taboo-your-words https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WBdvyyHLdxZSAMmoz/taboo-your...). That way, you refrain from using ill-defined terms with many definitions, meanings, and connotations.

msaeki 3y ago

Good to see we’re all on the same page that this piece is lacking. Focusing on the understanding of intelligence in it, which leads to his goalpost moving theory: there are multiple senses to the word in English, and this dictionary definition doesn’t meet the one we use for what we see in say, the cleverness of children (who “know” very little, and yet..). Or even what we see in animals. That sense refers to something real, and is well explored in philosophy - but in branches that have been avoided by comp sci since its inception (thus McCarthy’s et al.’s mistaken usage and Turing’s punting on considering what it is). The sense that comp sci tends to lean toward is the one intended in things like I.Q. and seen in puzzle solving. To the degree that we can call software intelligent, it’s because we see this intelligence encoded in it (usually reflective of the authors’ ability in this sense and the tradition they build on). Never the first kind, though. That’s what keeps us from accepting it as AI.