3 ms·

I mean couldn't you compare the race for AI to the manhattan project? No one on the manhattan really wanted to build out the bomb but they were terrified of ot

I mean couldn't you compare the race for AI to the manhattan project? No one on the manhattan really wanted to build out the bomb but they were terrified of other countries getting it first. Similar thing here on AI.

eddiewithzato 3y ago
Didn’t they want to bomb the nazis?
- okasaki 3y ago
  And, you know, the whole thing where they nuked two Japanese cities.
- 0xEF 3y ago
  Not exactly. It was an arms race. Through intelligence efforts, both "sides" knew the other was working on these new and destructive tech, so it became a game of finishing first wins the crown. The Cold War era follows, and the Sword of Damacles hangs over the world to this day. An over simplification, of course, as the real history of the atomic bomb and the era that followed is far, far more complex. AI is no different in the advantage it would offer to the country that first develops a concrete weaponized model. Since we still think of the world in terms of nation states as opposed to a global humanity, it makes sense that there would be fear surrounding its development. It also makes sense that we would lose our ethical goals pretty quickly due to Othering in this scenario. It's easy to look at a perceived enemy and think "well, if they had this tech they wouldn't hesitate to use it against us!" to justify using said tech. By stripping our perceived enemies of any morality or ethical postulates, we reduce them to aggressive threats, which is interesting since the act of viewing another human as anything "less" than human is itself an aggressive threat.
nradov 3y ago
Plenty of people working on the Manhattan Project were totally committed to building the bomb, from General Groves on down. But it doesn't seem like a valid comparison. When the Manhattan Project started, there was already a fairly clear understanding of nuclear physics and it was mainly an engineering problem. Whereas we still have no fundamental theory of cognition and are clueless about how to design a true artificial general intelligence. Some researchers believe they can get there by just scaling up LLMs but there is no real scientific evidence to support this prediction.
- circuit10 3y ago
  If scaling up LLMs (or more like neural networks in general) has worked so far, isn't that a good indication that it could continue to work? Do we have any reason to believe it will stop working before human-level intelligence? It could, but it also could not so we should be cautious
  - nradov 3y ago
    LLMs are useful tools but they haven't worked so far for generalized cognition.
    - circuit10 3y ago
      Really? I think while they aren't at human level they are the most generalized AI we have at the moment by far
- logicchains 3y ago
  >clueless about how to design a true artificial general intelligence. Some researchers believe they can get there by just scaling up LLMs but there is no real scientific evidence to support this prediction. What do you mean by "true artificial general intelligence"? Is there anything that a 100 IQ human could do that GPT4 with a body and more memory couldn't do? The only thing preventing GPT from having a body is the engineering problem of getting LLMs to process live images and audio fast enough for realtime.
  - RandomLensman 3y ago
    Why would you want a machine that is as poor and inconsistent at reasoning as humans when building machine intelligence?
  - chongli 3y ago
    ChatGPT does not have any capability to control a body. It’s an LLM, not a control loop. There is far more to human knowledge than what we write down and what can be read by machines. You can read all the books in the world about tennis but that won’t teach you how to play the sport at a competent level. You need to practice a lot! Playing a sport involves the development of deep muscle memory and strength + fitness. Muscle memory is tacit knowledge [1]. It can’t be conveyed through words, it must be developed through practice and correction from an expert instructor. There are large categories of human knowledge that fall under the tacit umbrella, and LLMs will never master any of them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge

eddiewithzato 3y ago

Didn’t they want to bomb the nazis?

okasaki 3y ago
And, you know, the whole thing where they nuked two Japanese cities.
0xEF 3y ago
Not exactly. It was an arms race. Through intelligence efforts, both "sides" knew the other was working on these new and destructive tech, so it became a game of finishing first wins the crown. The Cold War era follows, and the Sword of Damacles hangs over the world to this day. An over simplification, of course, as the real history of the atomic bomb and the era that followed is far, far more complex. AI is no different in the advantage it would offer to the country that first develops a concrete weaponized model. Since we still think of the world in terms of nation states as opposed to a global humanity, it makes sense that there would be fear surrounding its development. It also makes sense that we would lose our ethical goals pretty quickly due to Othering in this scenario. It's easy to look at a perceived enemy and think "well, if they had this tech they wouldn't hesitate to use it against us!" to justify using said tech. By stripping our perceived enemies of any morality or ethical postulates, we reduce them to aggressive threats, which is interesting since the act of viewing another human as anything "less" than human is itself an aggressive threat.

nradov 3y ago

Plenty of people working on the Manhattan Project were totally committed to building the bomb, from General Groves on down. But it doesn't seem like a valid comparison. When the Manhattan Project started, there was already a fairly clear understanding of nuclear physics and it was mainly an engineering problem. Whereas we still have no fundamental theory of cognition and are clueless about how to design a true artificial general intelligence. Some researchers believe they can get there by just scaling up LLMs but there is no real scientific evidence to support this prediction.

circuit10 3y ago
If scaling up LLMs (or more like neural networks in general) has worked so far, isn't that a good indication that it could continue to work? Do we have any reason to believe it will stop working before human-level intelligence? It could, but it also could not so we should be cautious
- nradov 3y ago
  LLMs are useful tools but they haven't worked so far for generalized cognition.
  - circuit10 3y ago
    Really? I think while they aren't at human level they are the most generalized AI we have at the moment by far
logicchains 3y ago
>clueless about how to design a true artificial general intelligence. Some researchers believe they can get there by just scaling up LLMs but there is no real scientific evidence to support this prediction. What do you mean by "true artificial general intelligence"? Is there anything that a 100 IQ human could do that GPT4 with a body and more memory couldn't do? The only thing preventing GPT from having a body is the engineering problem of getting LLMs to process live images and audio fast enough for realtime.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  Why would you want a machine that is as poor and inconsistent at reasoning as humans when building machine intelligence?
- chongli 3y ago
  ChatGPT does not have any capability to control a body. It’s an LLM, not a control loop. There is far more to human knowledge than what we write down and what can be read by machines. You can read all the books in the world about tennis but that won’t teach you how to play the sport at a competent level. You need to practice a lot! Playing a sport involves the development of deep muscle memory and strength + fitness. Muscle memory is tacit knowledge [1]. It can’t be conveyed through words, it must be developed through practice and correction from an expert instructor. There are large categories of human knowledge that fall under the tacit umbrella, and LLMs will never master any of them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge