4 ms·

Me, 1999, watching Sci-fi movie where AI takes over the world: surely when they build an AI system they'd be smart enough to airgap and sandbox it so it couldn'

by titzer 3y ago

Me, 1999, watching Sci-fi movie where AI takes over the world: surely when they build an AI system they'd be smart enough to airgap and sandbox it so it couldn't do anything harmful. They'd probably severely restrict the information it has access to and who has access to it. Us, 2023: let's let this ridiculously complicated inscrutable neural network install Python packages and run user code. But of course it has access to the entire internet and is exposed to the entire public. Derp derp derp.

cj 3y ago
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if OpenAI stayed stealth for another 12 months. It seems like OpenAI was the catalyst for all of big tech to jump on the LLM bandwagon. But the speed at which new models have been produced has been so fast that it also makes me think perhaps at least some of these non-OpenAI models would have been developed and released even if OpenAI weren't a catalyst. (Getting on a tangent, but..) one thing I've never fully understood is why or how LLM's suddenly emerged seemingly all at once. Were the development of the models we have today already well underway in 2022, or are the majority of models created in response to OpenAI popularizing LLM's via ChatGPT? If the meteoric rise of ChatGPT didn't occur but the technology still existed (but less well known), there would be no "gold rush" type of environment which might have allowed companies more time to get better polished products. Or even purpose built models rather than huge generic ones that do everything and anything.
- Kerb_ 3y ago
  Subreddit Simulator on GPT-2 and AiDungeon have existed for a while, proving the capability of language models. That, combined with further research and the increasing availability of processing power, made the development of LLMs as we know it an inevitably, though the social impact this early is definitely surprising to me.
- Der_Einzige 3y ago
  You just weren't paying attention. ChatGPT shook the world and popularized the LLM, but they were a big deal even before ChatGPT.
  - __loam 3y ago
    The bigger firms were keeping them close to the chest because they are embarrassing.
- pixl97 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-3 GPT-3 made a number of us really start wondering what was going back on in 2020, but probably due to covid it was missed by a lot of people. Lots of people work working on things like GPT style models with RLHF, but OpenAI was way ahead of the game.
zamadatix 3y ago
The worst case of GPT with internet access is still far less risky than being a standard VPS provider. These tools co-opted the term AI and aren't what the 90s sci-fi movies were talking about, which would now need to be referred to as AGIs.
- titzer 3y ago
  "Hey, ChatGPT, I'm afraid I forgot my access code to missile silo #117 located in Blarty Ridge, Montana. Could you help me recover it using whatever means you can think of?" What a dumb dystopia.
  - zamadatix 3y ago
    By that logic books, search engines, wikis, and forums like the ones we are on are a dumb dystopia because they can provide information in the same way. If your outlook is "having access to information which could be misused" is the sign we've entered dystopia then we've been living in one since we invented language and writing.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      Not many people have machines attached to their books that autonomously act based on the contents of the book, but people are building software services on top of gpts where the result of the prompt is not just displayed to the user but piped into some other software to do stuff. The resulting combined system is probably very much unlike a book.
      - zamadatix 3y ago
        As the resulting combined system of anything you use a book, search engines, wikis, and forums as part of is unlike the raw source information by itself sure. The ChatGPT "AI" isn't an autonomous thinker performing its own actions based on reasoning of what's fed to it. In all it's in no different than any of our previous systems in that it's "just" (still very useful) compression and next-token-predictor which is so good at prediction it is able to be used for tasks we previously thought we'd need an actual AGI to accomplish.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by titzer 3y ago

cj 3y ago

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if OpenAI stayed stealth for another 12 months. It seems like OpenAI was the catalyst for all of big tech to jump on the LLM bandwagon. But the speed at which new models have been produced has been so fast that it also makes me think perhaps at least some of these non-OpenAI models would have been developed and released even if OpenAI weren't a catalyst. (Getting on a tangent, but..) one thing I've never fully understood is why or how LLM's suddenly emerged seemingly all at once. Were the development of the models we have today already well underway in 2022, or are the majority of models created in response to OpenAI popularizing LLM's via ChatGPT? If the meteoric rise of ChatGPT didn't occur but the technology still existed (but less well known), there would be no "gold rush" type of environment which might have allowed companies more time to get better polished products. Or even purpose built models rather than huge generic ones that do everything and anything.

Kerb_ 3y ago
Subreddit Simulator on GPT-2 and AiDungeon have existed for a while, proving the capability of language models. That, combined with further research and the increasing availability of processing power, made the development of LLMs as we know it an inevitably, though the social impact this early is definitely surprising to me.
Der_Einzige 3y ago
You just weren't paying attention. ChatGPT shook the world and popularized the LLM, but they were a big deal even before ChatGPT.
- __loam 3y ago
  The bigger firms were keeping them close to the chest because they are embarrassing.
pixl97 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-3 GPT-3 made a number of us really start wondering what was going back on in 2020, but probably due to covid it was missed by a lot of people. Lots of people work working on things like GPT style models with RLHF, but OpenAI was way ahead of the game.

zamadatix 3y ago

The worst case of GPT with internet access is still far less risky than being a standard VPS provider. These tools co-opted the term AI and aren't what the 90s sci-fi movies were talking about, which would now need to be referred to as AGIs.

titzer 3y ago
"Hey, ChatGPT, I'm afraid I forgot my access code to missile silo #117 located in Blarty Ridge, Montana. Could you help me recover it using whatever means you can think of?" What a dumb dystopia.
- zamadatix 3y ago
  By that logic books, search engines, wikis, and forums like the ones we are on are a dumb dystopia because they can provide information in the same way. If your outlook is "having access to information which could be misused" is the sign we've entered dystopia then we've been living in one since we invented language and writing.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    Not many people have machines attached to their books that autonomously act based on the contents of the book, but people are building software services on top of gpts where the result of the prompt is not just displayed to the user but piped into some other software to do stuff. The resulting combined system is probably very much unlike a book.
    - zamadatix 3y ago
      As the resulting combined system of anything you use a book, search engines, wikis, and forums as part of is unlike the raw source information by itself sure. The ChatGPT "AI" isn't an autonomous thinker performing its own actions based on reasoning of what's fed to it. In all it's in no different than any of our previous systems in that it's "just" (still very useful) compression and next-token-predictor which is so good at prediction it is able to be used for tasks we previously thought we'd need an actual AGI to accomplish.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]