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Do people still trust this organization to build super 'AGI'? Just focus on the enterprise chat bot business

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
skepticATX 3y ago
> Just focus on the enterprise chat bot business That’s clearly what they’re doing. The AGI thing is just fancy marketing.
- srackey 3y ago
  No, these people are insane cultists who genuinely believe that they’re about to create a God. They’ve been very explicit about this. Not that they couldn’t be lying, but I’m not sure Occam’s razor would suggest that given their long history of public statements on the topic.
  - tough 3y ago
    The lie would be they know it's not a god, but they want you to think so so they can manipulate you into their newfound -god-
  - xienze 3y ago
    AGI is IMO the biggest pipe dream (scam may be too strong a term) in computing. It’s perpetually “10 years away.” I remember when a group working on “AGI” spoke at my university (oof, 21 years ago at this point) and all the talk then was “yep, we’ve totally cracked the code on this thing, it’s just that computers are too slow at the moment. But in 5-10 years, watch out.” I’ve always felt fundamentally that if you don’t understand how human thought works to such a degree that you can distill it down into an algorithm, you certainly can’t make a computer do it. Which I know is pretty obvious, but apparently a lot of people haven’t gotten the memo. What ChatGPT can do is really cool, and incredibly useful, but it’s nowhere near a model of the human thought process.
    - SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
      Lots of things in computing are perpetually 10 years away, until one day they aren't. Remember when image classification was the canonical "easy problem computers can't do"?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - EPWN3D 3y ago
      Real progress follows two rules: 1. It takes longer than you think 2. It is much more iterative than you think We're not going to all wake up one day and see a robot simulating human thought. We'll just inch closer and closer until we're there, and we won't even realize we got there until we've been there for 5 years. AGI is not an iPhone launch. It's more like the evolution of humans, which took place over millions of years, without anyone being able to identify the first "real" human.
gumballindie 3y ago
At the moment AGI is a skizoid dream, so we are safe.
- wredue 3y ago
  A not insignificant portion of HN commenters believe AGI is close. This community is so split on this that it’s virtually random as to whether or not you’ll be downvoted for saying that a specialized search engine is not likely to achieve AGI.
  - ekianjo 3y ago
    HN commenters believe all kinds of nonsense.
  - bbor 3y ago
    Technically it’s a specialized text model, not a search engine. I’m the requisite AGI doomer that you’re talking about, but doubt I’ll convince you there - instead just want you to evaluate these techniques in that view. Because IMO it makes them much more impressive. “A robot that knows everything that humanity knows” is a) not chatgpt, b) not AGI, and c) not anywhere close to a reality.
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    5 years ago large parts of this same community would sneer at you and call you a luddite for suggesting that fully-self-driving claims were overly optimistic. People were saying things like trucking was a dead profession within a handful of years, etc. They were wrong as hell, clearly. Point being: Moore's law is for transistors, not just any tech, and not everything in tech gets on an exponential growth/improvement path.
    - SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
      "Wrong as hell" seems like a severe overstatement. Even after the Cruise fiasco, self-driving cars with no human in the driver's seat are commercially available in three major US cities. There were quite a lot of overly optimistic claims about the speed of market penetration, but the technology is real.
riku_iki 3y ago
> Do people still trust this organization to build super 'AGI'? that's the best sell to the investors who are rushing with billions because afraid to miss the opportunity of millennia.
j45 3y ago
Considering gpt4 was complete 6-9 months before it was released, never know how far progress towards the above could be.
dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
No I believe anyone can do AGI vapourware as well as they.
- frognumber 3y ago
  The problem is we don't know. It might be current-grade LLMs plateauing for 50 years, and it might be AGI in 5 weeks, with exponential growth to the singularity. Heck, we're split on whether current GPT is a glorified autocomplete, a friend, or an alien intelligence, or a half-dozen other theories. It's a black box. Most people can't handle uncertainty, so they're in some camp, and all the camps are crazy and stupid. Ditto for covid, for that matter. In early 2020, it could have been anything from a glorified flu to a civilization-ending plague. Ditto for global warming, for that matter. All the models are speculation and extrapolation from limited data. Ditto for a half-dozen other things. Personally, I think we should play it safe for all of those, but reasonable people can differ. What reasonable people can't do is argue for certainty before we have data coming in or a reasonable understanding of the underlying threat. Edit: If people could handle uncertainty (and understand value differences are okay), we'd also have a lot less political polarization. A lot of this is simply about believing the other side _might_ be right. If I believe something with 10% odds, and you with 90%, it's often possible to compromise, where with a categorical split, it's not.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

> Just focus on the enterprise chat bot business That’s clearly what they’re doing. The AGI thing is just fancy marketing.

srackey 3y ago
No, these people are insane cultists who genuinely believe that they’re about to create a God. They’ve been very explicit about this. Not that they couldn’t be lying, but I’m not sure Occam’s razor would suggest that given their long history of public statements on the topic.
- tough 3y ago
  The lie would be they know it's not a god, but they want you to think so so they can manipulate you into their newfound -god-
- xienze 3y ago
  AGI is IMO the biggest pipe dream (scam may be too strong a term) in computing. It’s perpetually “10 years away.” I remember when a group working on “AGI” spoke at my university (oof, 21 years ago at this point) and all the talk then was “yep, we’ve totally cracked the code on this thing, it’s just that computers are too slow at the moment. But in 5-10 years, watch out.” I’ve always felt fundamentally that if you don’t understand how human thought works to such a degree that you can distill it down into an algorithm, you certainly can’t make a computer do it. Which I know is pretty obvious, but apparently a lot of people haven’t gotten the memo. What ChatGPT can do is really cool, and incredibly useful, but it’s nowhere near a model of the human thought process.
  - SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
    Lots of things in computing are perpetually 10 years away, until one day they aren't. Remember when image classification was the canonical "easy problem computers can't do"?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - EPWN3D 3y ago
    Real progress follows two rules: 1. It takes longer than you think 2. It is much more iterative than you think We're not going to all wake up one day and see a robot simulating human thought. We'll just inch closer and closer until we're there, and we won't even realize we got there until we've been there for 5 years. AGI is not an iPhone launch. It's more like the evolution of humans, which took place over millions of years, without anyone being able to identify the first "real" human.

gumballindie 3y ago

At the moment AGI is a skizoid dream, so we are safe.

wredue 3y ago
A not insignificant portion of HN commenters believe AGI is close. This community is so split on this that it’s virtually random as to whether or not you’ll be downvoted for saying that a specialized search engine is not likely to achieve AGI.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  HN commenters believe all kinds of nonsense.
- bbor 3y ago
  Technically it’s a specialized text model, not a search engine. I’m the requisite AGI doomer that you’re talking about, but doubt I’ll convince you there - instead just want you to evaluate these techniques in that view. Because IMO it makes them much more impressive. “A robot that knows everything that humanity knows” is a) not chatgpt, b) not AGI, and c) not anywhere close to a reality.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  5 years ago large parts of this same community would sneer at you and call you a luddite for suggesting that fully-self-driving claims were overly optimistic. People were saying things like trucking was a dead profession within a handful of years, etc. They were wrong as hell, clearly. Point being: Moore's law is for transistors, not just any tech, and not everything in tech gets on an exponential growth/improvement path.
  - SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
    "Wrong as hell" seems like a severe overstatement. Even after the Cruise fiasco, self-driving cars with no human in the driver's seat are commercially available in three major US cities. There were quite a lot of overly optimistic claims about the speed of market penetration, but the technology is real.

riku_iki 3y ago

> Do people still trust this organization to build super 'AGI'? that's the best sell to the investors who are rushing with billions because afraid to miss the opportunity of millennia.

j45 3y ago

Considering gpt4 was complete 6-9 months before it was released, never know how far progress towards the above could be.

dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago

No I believe anyone can do AGI vapourware as well as they.

frognumber 3y ago
The problem is we don't know. It might be current-grade LLMs plateauing for 50 years, and it might be AGI in 5 weeks, with exponential growth to the singularity. Heck, we're split on whether current GPT is a glorified autocomplete, a friend, or an alien intelligence, or a half-dozen other theories. It's a black box. Most people can't handle uncertainty, so they're in some camp, and all the camps are crazy and stupid. Ditto for covid, for that matter. In early 2020, it could have been anything from a glorified flu to a civilization-ending plague. Ditto for global warming, for that matter. All the models are speculation and extrapolation from limited data. Ditto for a half-dozen other things. Personally, I think we should play it safe for all of those, but reasonable people can differ. What reasonable people can't do is argue for certainty before we have data coming in or a reasonable understanding of the underlying threat. Edit: If people could handle uncertainty (and understand value differences are okay), we'd also have a lot less political polarization. A lot of this is simply about believing the other side _might_ be right. If I believe something with 10% odds, and you with 90%, it's often possible to compromise, where with a categorical split, it's not.