5 ms·

Evolution of AI and Amara's Law

46 points by nunocoracao 3y ago

nunocoracao 3y ago
Amara’s law aptly captures the dichotomy in our perception of technological advancements like AI. As we navigate the short-term challenges and excitement, it’s crucial to maintain a balanced perspective, acknowledging both the current limitations and the vast potential.
- CatWChainsaw 3y ago
  Even as meta commentary this hand is so over-played it's already cliche - and going up one level in meta doesn't improve it.
  - rossdavidh 3y ago
    ...but it's still true, and the fact that it's vapid and empty just demonstrates the fact.
nerpderp82 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara > We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run. Amara's Law is a good one, esp in these circles where we have many people working on cutting edge technology. They often give up because it doesn't see adoption, and then move on to something else. Two or three cycles later, when that technology is finally gaining traction, someone takes some off the shelf components and slaps it together, profiting in ways that the original creators would have liked to have seen. Timing is everything, and the technoseti are often _too early_. But they also underestimate how big something will get. I am a huge Python fan, but I never expected back in 2000 that it would be as big as it is today. Never. Cloud Computing, NLP, etc. Google suffers from this immensely.
- nunocoracao 3y ago
  Amen. I wonder what "underestimating" something like AGI actually means though...
  - nerpderp82 3y ago
    By the time AGI arrives, the world will have already been transformed in ways we cannot fathom by intelligence much lower than AGI. Look at the impact that computing has already had, and that is mostly accounting and simulation. Building and factory automation is on the order of a couple if statements. Most programmers can't implement a PID loop. I am not scared by AGI. But to get to AGI you have to pass through a couple points on a curve that occupy the most powerful in terms of agency, less than AGI. An angry toddler that has > 1TW (terawatts) of power.
    - nunocoracao 3y ago
      Agree, the path might be quite bumpy but so could the endgame. Whether AGI wants to help or kill the human race will depend on how aligned it is to our goals. Now, since "our" goals will depend on whoever has the metaphysical ear of such AI this could be problematic.
      - visarga 3y ago
        I think I read this kind of discussions too many times, imagine how the training set of GPT-5 will look like? all sorts of theories of "whether AGI wants to help or kill the human race" spread over the internet and analyzed to death. It is going to know this topic in-and-out. Will be able to write a masterful dissertation on the topic.
        ben_w 3y ago
        Yes, and that's good because GPT-5 is going to be coming from a team that cares about alignment and which has values only a little different from mine. They can still mess up: https://youtu.be/qV_rOlHjvvs?si=6SI_abC9BLHGoWjt https://youtu.be/qV_rOlHjvvs?si=6SI_abC9BLHGoWjt OTOH, an LLM trained by the FSB or CIA to help their agents, with no limits on what the agents are allowed to get as help because their bosses trust it's always in the service of the nation, will quite "happily" write that essay… and almost certainly get leaked eventually — 10 years, 50 years, doesn't matter — at which point someone who isn't so trustworthy will ask for a doomsday plan and it will be equally "happy" to write that too. Hopefully the agencies like the FSB and CIA aren't quite as bad as I fear, but secrecy and what little has become public makes it impossible to trust them.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lsy 3y ago
This law is true in some cases, but I think is too often used as the tech industry's version of "first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win". The argument is that, sure, a technology's promise may have not panned out, but under Amara's law, we can expect a commensurately massive impact later. As Carl Sagan pointed out, "…the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses." The same applies to technologies. The fact that a technology has shown slower-than-expected progress is not a foolproof indication that it will eventually have massive impact. It may just not be as useful as it initially seemed, or may even be supplanted by a completely different technology.
- nunocoracao 3y ago
  100%… not using it to advocate for anything in particular. Just find the phenomenon interesting… you can apply this retroactively to several innovations.
- logiduck 3y ago
  Ever since I was a little kid I was always hearing those inspirational stories about how someone would get into an accident and then "The doctor told me I would never walk again" or "I wouldn't make it to my next birthday" and then the person made a miraculous recovery and "proved them wrong" or something along those lines. It always seemed like an attention bias to me. Because for sure there are many more stories about the doctor being right and the person did never actually walk again. And we don't really pay attention to the stories about the doctor saying they would walk again. Those aren't interesting. It can also be a bias with the triumphant person overestimating the negativity of the past. Like did the doctor really say you will never walk again, or that it will be tremendously difficult and unlikely? People like an underdog story and will hold it with more attention than other stories in which the expectations met reality.
- t_mann 3y ago
  The general observation is of course true, but we're talking about a particular instance, and I think it could be a pretty good fit here. The expectation when you first try modern image or text generators is sth like 'this will replace all artists, programmers, writers and probably most white-collar workers'. Upon closer inspection, it turns out that the image generators fail on details like hands, and the text generators are too unreliable for production-grade code or writing articles. So the result in the short term is that you still need the same people with the same skills babysitting the models' outputs. They've just become a bit more productive. But in the longer run, even plain efficiency gains can have a large impact, and it seems like we might not need any more fundamental breakthroughs to make those tools actually production-ready (at least largely) on their own. The hands in the images, the bugs in the code and the hallucinations in the texts can probably be fixed with clever, but ultimately straightforward, iterations over the existing models.
robomc 3y ago
Where does this guy live that most people smoke
- girvo 3y ago
  Eastern Europe would be my guess?
paulofilip3 3y ago
It does seem that this current AI summer is very hot. This does start to seem like a nee tech revolution. Apart from Amara’s law, we’re also very bad at visualizing exponential growth. Key ideas from the very early ages of computers and a few new tweaks only recently found the compute power to become useful.
gmerc 3y ago
This reads like LLM generated > Stability AI - Develops AI solutions aimed at stabilizing and improving the performance of various AI applications.
- larodi 3y ago
  The whole article very much reads syntetic

46 points by nunocoracao 3y ago

Amara’s law aptly captures the dichotomy in our perception of technological advancements like AI. As we navigate the short-term challenges and excitement, it’s crucial to maintain a balanced perspective, acknowledging both the current limitations and the vast potential.

CatWChainsaw 3y ago
Even as meta commentary this hand is so over-played it's already cliche - and going up one level in meta doesn't improve it.
- rossdavidh 3y ago
  ...but it's still true, and the fact that it's vapid and empty just demonstrates the fact.

nerpderp82 3y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara > We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run. Amara's Law is a good one, esp in these circles where we have many people working on cutting edge technology. They often give up because it doesn't see adoption, and then move on to something else. Two or three cycles later, when that technology is finally gaining traction, someone takes some off the shelf components and slaps it together, profiting in ways that the original creators would have liked to have seen. Timing is everything, and the technoseti are often _too early_. But they also underestimate how big something will get. I am a huge Python fan, but I never expected back in 2000 that it would be as big as it is today. Never. Cloud Computing, NLP, etc. Google suffers from this immensely.

nunocoracao 3y ago
Amen. I wonder what "underestimating" something like AGI actually means though...
- nerpderp82 3y ago
  By the time AGI arrives, the world will have already been transformed in ways we cannot fathom by intelligence much lower than AGI. Look at the impact that computing has already had, and that is mostly accounting and simulation. Building and factory automation is on the order of a couple if statements. Most programmers can't implement a PID loop. I am not scared by AGI. But to get to AGI you have to pass through a couple points on a curve that occupy the most powerful in terms of agency, less than AGI. An angry toddler that has > 1TW (terawatts) of power.
  - nunocoracao 3y ago
    Agree, the path might be quite bumpy but so could the endgame. Whether AGI wants to help or kill the human race will depend on how aligned it is to our goals. Now, since "our" goals will depend on whoever has the metaphysical ear of such AI this could be problematic.
    - visarga 3y ago
      I think I read this kind of discussions too many times, imagine how the training set of GPT-5 will look like? all sorts of theories of "whether AGI wants to help or kill the human race" spread over the internet and analyzed to death. It is going to know this topic in-and-out. Will be able to write a masterful dissertation on the topic.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        Yes, and that's good because GPT-5 is going to be coming from a team that cares about alignment and which has values only a little different from mine. They can still mess up: https://youtu.be/qV_rOlHjvvs?si=6SI_abC9BLHGoWjt https://youtu.be/qV_rOlHjvvs?si=6SI_abC9BLHGoWjt OTOH, an LLM trained by the FSB or CIA to help their agents, with no limits on what the agents are allowed to get as help because their bosses trust it's always in the service of the nation, will quite "happily" write that essay… and almost certainly get leaked eventually — 10 years, 50 years, doesn't matter — at which point someone who isn't so trustworthy will ask for a doomsday plan and it will be equally "happy" to write that too. Hopefully the agencies like the FSB and CIA aren't quite as bad as I fear, but secrecy and what little has become public makes it impossible to trust them.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

lsy 3y ago

This law is true in some cases, but I think is too often used as the tech industry's version of "first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win". The argument is that, sure, a technology's promise may have not panned out, but under Amara's law, we can expect a commensurately massive impact later. As Carl Sagan pointed out, "…the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses." The same applies to technologies. The fact that a technology has shown slower-than-expected progress is not a foolproof indication that it will eventually have massive impact. It may just not be as useful as it initially seemed, or may even be supplanted by a completely different technology.

nunocoracao 3y ago
100%… not using it to advocate for anything in particular. Just find the phenomenon interesting… you can apply this retroactively to several innovations.
logiduck 3y ago
Ever since I was a little kid I was always hearing those inspirational stories about how someone would get into an accident and then "The doctor told me I would never walk again" or "I wouldn't make it to my next birthday" and then the person made a miraculous recovery and "proved them wrong" or something along those lines. It always seemed like an attention bias to me. Because for sure there are many more stories about the doctor being right and the person did never actually walk again. And we don't really pay attention to the stories about the doctor saying they would walk again. Those aren't interesting. It can also be a bias with the triumphant person overestimating the negativity of the past. Like did the doctor really say you will never walk again, or that it will be tremendously difficult and unlikely? People like an underdog story and will hold it with more attention than other stories in which the expectations met reality.
t_mann 3y ago
The general observation is of course true, but we're talking about a particular instance, and I think it could be a pretty good fit here. The expectation when you first try modern image or text generators is sth like 'this will replace all artists, programmers, writers and probably most white-collar workers'. Upon closer inspection, it turns out that the image generators fail on details like hands, and the text generators are too unreliable for production-grade code or writing articles. So the result in the short term is that you still need the same people with the same skills babysitting the models' outputs. They've just become a bit more productive. But in the longer run, even plain efficiency gains can have a large impact, and it seems like we might not need any more fundamental breakthroughs to make those tools actually production-ready (at least largely) on their own. The hands in the images, the bugs in the code and the hallucinations in the texts can probably be fixed with clever, but ultimately straightforward, iterations over the existing models.

robomc 3y ago

Where does this guy live that most people smoke

girvo 3y ago
Eastern Europe would be my guess?

paulofilip3 3y ago

It does seem that this current AI summer is very hot. This does start to seem like a nee tech revolution. Apart from Amara’s law, we’re also very bad at visualizing exponential growth. Key ideas from the very early ages of computers and a few new tweaks only recently found the compute power to become useful.

gmerc 3y ago

This reads like LLM generated > Stability AI - Develops AI solutions aimed at stabilizing and improving the performance of various AI applications.

larodi 3y ago
The whole article very much reads syntetic