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I like Carmack but is it really necessary to have a post about everytime he mentions AI (which is every week for the past year)? So far, his track record in AI

by matusp 3y ago

I like Carmack but is it really necessary to have a post about everytime he mentions AI (which is every week for the past year)? So far, his track record in AI research is non-existent.

cactusplant7374 3y ago
It’s AGI. So far everyone’s track record is nonexistent.
- rvz 3y ago
  No. The parent comment said "AI Research". If you want "AGI" so badly, you certainly need to have an "AI research" background and a track record. Can't achieve your "AGI" without that. Given that Carmack has a close to zero track record in this research, it makes total sense for him to partner with someone that does.
  - beefield 3y ago
    > Can't achieve your "AGI" without that. Can I ask, what makes you so confident on that? For all I know (which is admittably not much), current AI may be going to a direction completely orthogonal to achieving AGI.
    - howrar 3y ago
      The current trend in AI isn't all of AI, and any kind of work with the goal of producing AGI would definitionally be classified as AI.
  - cactusplant7374 3y ago
    We don't know how to achieve AGI. So screwing around with LLM might not be anything close to the process to achieve AGI. https://aeon.co/essays/how-close-are-we-to-creating-artificial-intelligence https://aeon.co/essays/how-close-are-we-to-creating-artifici...
MikusR 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_S._Sutton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_S._Sutton
- tmaly 3y ago
  Temporal difference learning was a huge contribution.
loveparade 3y ago
I agree. The guruism on HN about this guy is crazy. Yeah, he made some really cool games 20-30 years ago, but do we really need a front page post every time he tweets? I'd prefer to hear about the company once they actually get something done.
- polartx 3y ago
  It’s amusing that from one side of your mouth you’re complaining about the frequency which John appears on hackernews, but from the other side of your mouth you’re relegating his body of work to “some cool games 20-30 years ago”. Yes, as a younger man he focused his expertise into pioneering developments in the video game space. But what of his engineering contributions to the fields of performance auto-motives, rocket science, or virtual reality? Maybe it is his technical aptitude and contributions to various fields of engineering is why he is such a popular figure to the audience of hackernews?
  - wredue 3y ago
    He funds some ventures. His tech opinions of late have shifted largely to shudder clean and pushing terrible FP idioms with no evidence like “immutable first”. His relevance in tech is dried up as evidenced by the parroting of bullshit without taking a modicum of a second to actually think it through. I don’t particularly care what a dude that got rich making video games invests in. Edit: Listen guys, funding ventures != personally contributing to tech as the user I responded to is implying. This worship of carmack is weird. Like bezos also funded a rocket company, but isn’t worshiped for “contributions to rocket science”. Hypocrites.
    - wait_a_minute 3y ago
      > funding ventures != personally contributing to tech Yes it is. So is being an adviser or a board member with technical background and a name that attracts further investment. This is why people like this receive generous equity and are considered part of the company when they’re advising a startup.
zoogeny 3y ago
I agree with the sentiment and I've been watching his tweets on AI to see if Carmack has any relevant input on the field. But what I think is very interesting is that, from my totally lay-person perspective, the current challenge is scaling out the AI systems we have. We know what systems like GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 require to run and it is now an engineering challenge to scale up those systems (or drastically reduce their costs). And those systems are surprisingly GPU like. Carmack is the kind of low-level bit crunching, memory obsessed kind of guy that might be able to squeeze out the performance from the hardware. So him teaming up with a high-level first principles math and science research type is a pretty interesting combo. There is no telling if such a partnership will ultimately result in an advancement - but on paper at least it is an interesting approach. All they are missing is a strong hardware guy (maybe Keller will go beyond investing in Carmack's Keen Technologies?).
- solarpunk 3y ago
  If Carmack started contributing to llama.cpp, we'd probably see something tangible in a few weeks lol.
- pretendscholar 3y ago
  What exactly are these first principles everyone keeps talking about? Kind of like how everyone keeps talking about updating Bayesian priors without ever actually using bayes rule.
  - MrDresden 3y ago
    According to Wikipedia[0]: > In philosophy and science, a first principle is a basic proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption. In that sense the OP's comment might read as Carmack partnering up with someone who has a strong foundational understanding of hight level mathematics (if my understanding of the term and OP's post is correct). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_principle?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_principle?wprov=sfla1
mmusson 3y ago
From what I have read, John had a genius for what you might call relentless optimization. Even if they just improve the performance or reduce the hardware requirements of executing an already trained LLM that would be a huge win. Current progress in that regard focuses on reducing the fidelity of the LLM to make it easier to execute, which isn’t ideal.
riku_iki 3y ago
> So far, his track record in AI research is non-existent. especially given that according to Wiki he started working on AI in 2019, since then tons of stuff happened in this area, but no results from him.
esafak 3y ago
Somebody ought to start a Carmack tracker for the number of days since he was last mentioned.
wait_a_minute 3y ago
If his name contributed to investment or plans for investment somewhere, then that is a track record. If John Carmack is partnering with someone and they share information about what they are partnering on, how, and where, that is extremely valuable information for anyone interested in the space. You don’t need to have shipped something yet in order to make waves that are worth paying attention to. It’s John Carmack.
redox99 3y ago
> So far, his track record in AI research is non-existent. I think he just bet on the wrong horse (RL instead of LLMs), at least in the short term.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by matusp 3y ago

I like Carmack but is it really necessary to have a post about everytime he mentions AI (which is every week for the past year)? So far, his track record in AI research is non-existent.

cactusplant7374 3y ago

It’s AGI. So far everyone’s track record is nonexistent.

rvz 3y ago
No. The parent comment said "AI Research". If you want "AGI" so badly, you certainly need to have an "AI research" background and a track record. Can't achieve your "AGI" without that. Given that Carmack has a close to zero track record in this research, it makes total sense for him to partner with someone that does.
- beefield 3y ago
  > Can't achieve your "AGI" without that. Can I ask, what makes you so confident on that? For all I know (which is admittably not much), current AI may be going to a direction completely orthogonal to achieving AGI.
  - howrar 3y ago
    The current trend in AI isn't all of AI, and any kind of work with the goal of producing AGI would definitionally be classified as AI.
- cactusplant7374 3y ago
  We don't know how to achieve AGI. So screwing around with LLM might not be anything close to the process to achieve AGI. https://aeon.co/essays/how-close-are-we-to-creating-artificial-intelligence https://aeon.co/essays/how-close-are-we-to-creating-artifici...

MikusR 3y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_S._Sutton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_S._Sutton

tmaly 3y ago
Temporal difference learning was a huge contribution.

loveparade 3y ago

I agree. The guruism on HN about this guy is crazy. Yeah, he made some really cool games 20-30 years ago, but do we really need a front page post every time he tweets? I'd prefer to hear about the company once they actually get something done.

polartx 3y ago
It’s amusing that from one side of your mouth you’re complaining about the frequency which John appears on hackernews, but from the other side of your mouth you’re relegating his body of work to “some cool games 20-30 years ago”. Yes, as a younger man he focused his expertise into pioneering developments in the video game space. But what of his engineering contributions to the fields of performance auto-motives, rocket science, or virtual reality? Maybe it is his technical aptitude and contributions to various fields of engineering is why he is such a popular figure to the audience of hackernews?
- wredue 3y ago
  He funds some ventures. His tech opinions of late have shifted largely to shudder clean and pushing terrible FP idioms with no evidence like “immutable first”. His relevance in tech is dried up as evidenced by the parroting of bullshit without taking a modicum of a second to actually think it through. I don’t particularly care what a dude that got rich making video games invests in. Edit: Listen guys, funding ventures != personally contributing to tech as the user I responded to is implying. This worship of carmack is weird. Like bezos also funded a rocket company, but isn’t worshiped for “contributions to rocket science”. Hypocrites.
  - wait_a_minute 3y ago
    > funding ventures != personally contributing to tech Yes it is. So is being an adviser or a board member with technical background and a name that attracts further investment. This is why people like this receive generous equity and are considered part of the company when they’re advising a startup.

zoogeny 3y ago

I agree with the sentiment and I've been watching his tweets on AI to see if Carmack has any relevant input on the field. But what I think is very interesting is that, from my totally lay-person perspective, the current challenge is scaling out the AI systems we have. We know what systems like GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 require to run and it is now an engineering challenge to scale up those systems (or drastically reduce their costs). And those systems are surprisingly GPU like. Carmack is the kind of low-level bit crunching, memory obsessed kind of guy that might be able to squeeze out the performance from the hardware. So him teaming up with a high-level first principles math and science research type is a pretty interesting combo. There is no telling if such a partnership will ultimately result in an advancement - but on paper at least it is an interesting approach. All they are missing is a strong hardware guy (maybe Keller will go beyond investing in Carmack's Keen Technologies?).

solarpunk 3y ago
If Carmack started contributing to llama.cpp, we'd probably see something tangible in a few weeks lol.
pretendscholar 3y ago
What exactly are these first principles everyone keeps talking about? Kind of like how everyone keeps talking about updating Bayesian priors without ever actually using bayes rule.
- MrDresden 3y ago
  According to Wikipedia[0]: > In philosophy and science, a first principle is a basic proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption. In that sense the OP's comment might read as Carmack partnering up with someone who has a strong foundational understanding of hight level mathematics (if my understanding of the term and OP's post is correct). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_principle?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_principle?wprov=sfla1

mmusson 3y ago

From what I have read, John had a genius for what you might call relentless optimization. Even if they just improve the performance or reduce the hardware requirements of executing an already trained LLM that would be a huge win. Current progress in that regard focuses on reducing the fidelity of the LLM to make it easier to execute, which isn’t ideal.

riku_iki 3y ago

> So far, his track record in AI research is non-existent. especially given that according to Wiki he started working on AI in 2019, since then tons of stuff happened in this area, but no results from him.

esafak 3y ago

Somebody ought to start a Carmack tracker for the number of days since he was last mentioned.

wait_a_minute 3y ago

If his name contributed to investment or plans for investment somewhere, then that is a track record. If John Carmack is partnering with someone and they share information about what they are partnering on, how, and where, that is extremely valuable information for anyone interested in the space. You don’t need to have shipped something yet in order to make waves that are worth paying attention to. It’s John Carmack.

redox99 3y ago

> So far, his track record in AI research is non-existent. I think he just bet on the wrong horse (RL instead of LLMs), at least in the short term.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]