5 ms·

Even though I don't think GPT-4 is up to the task, it does seem like now is the right time to be working on these things. Pretty soon GPT-4 will not be the be

by Lerc 3y ago

Even though I don't think GPT-4 is up to the task, it does seem like now is the right time to be working on these things. Pretty soon GPT-4 will not be the best in the field. The next generation will perform much better. Possibly the most frustrating thing I find about GPT-4 is how close it gets with it's wrong answers. It's easy to dismiss a lesser answer when it responds with a laughably out-of-band idea. GPT-4 often shows that it has a general idea of what you want but misses a small but critical aspect which results in a solution to something else that is similar but not what you wanted. I have mixed results on iterating on it's own mistakes. It will too often try and change the world to match it's answer, rather than fixing the answer. The best approach I have found to stop this is by getting it to create unit tests. I imagine there is a lot of training data for it to understand the intention behind fixing a failing test. It's a very specific problem for it to look at and generally changing the test is not considered the correct solution.

berkes 3y ago
> Pretty soon GPT-4 will not be the best in the field. The next generation will perform much better. What makes you believe that progress is linear, or at least a line forever going up? I keep seeing people predicting rapidly improving AI, based on how rapid it improved over the last x months. But why is that not an outlier? How do we know we haven't hit a ceiling and stagnating? Isn't progress typically very bumpy and sudden?
- Lerc 3y ago
  >What makes you believe that progress is linear, or at least a line forever going up? I assume neither of those things. I have however read a lot of the papers published since GPT-4 was trained. There have been a lot of advances since then, so much so that simply saying "a lot" seems to be a massive understatement. I think it is a reasonable assumption that at least a portion of those advancements would be able to build upon the existing technology of GPT-4 to produce something greater. I am not assuming discoveries yet to be made. I am considering existing discoveries that have not yet made it into the top level of production.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  I would say that Microsoft/OpenAI’s attacks on open source, whether it be through “AGI safety” BS as a front for regulating their way to a monopoly, or attempting Embrace, Exentend, Extinguish on companies like Mistral, and Cold War-style fear mongering about China, are the greatest near-term risks to linear progress. And it’s worth noting on that latter point that China is not similarly constrained and so could end up outcompeting the U.S., regardless
  - anileated 3y ago
    It’d be a bit hypocritical on the part of Microsoft/ClosedAI if they try to restrict AI tech in the name of safety while stepping around the fact that they themselves built it while essentially ignoring copyright. Their commercial LLMs would not be possible without original creators who are now being ripped off and squeezed out of their jobs; if they don’t keep the tech open it will be very difficult to justify.
  - threeseed 3y ago
    > China is not similarly constrained and so could end up outcompeting the U.S. With what technology ? US has long term export controls on China and as they have demonstrated with Russia recently once you have secondary sanctions in place everyone falls into line. So it's pretty likely they will be effective.
    - viksit 3y ago
      China actually has very advanced technology in literally every area of the sciences now. They just don’t bother talking about it in english I recommend you follow some of the specialist chinese AI substacks to see what’s happening over there. Esp around chip building
      - threeseed 3y ago
        Not really buying the idea that China secretly has equivalents for Nvidia, ASML, TSMC etc. SIMC right now relies entirely on existing US/EU hardware for their chip building. New versions of which are no longer available to them.
- teaearlgraycold 3y ago
  Technological innovation is not truly an exponential. It is instead a series of logistics. If we do not have further breakthroughs then AI technology will plateau. I do think we'll have those breakthroughs but it's impossible to say when they will happen.
withinboredom 3y ago
Oh man. When it’s so close but wrong it’s amazing for creative endeavors! For technical ones, it is quite a bad thing. It’s like being a Star Wars fan but the AI just wants to talk about Star Trek. I think this is why the non-tech people see AI as so amazing. For anything human and non-technical, the “almost but not quite” nature is a good thing. I was using an AI to help me debug a weird thing (mainly summarizing log splats hundreds of lines long) and I eventually got pretty close to identifying the issue when I asked “wtaf is this message. Never seen anything like it.” It then went on about how it was offended that I used vulgar language. I had to apologize for saying “wtaf!” Anyway, I found a bug in a linker, so that was fun; thanks Al.
- __loam 3y ago
  I think it's equally shit at creative work too, that's just harder to dismiss as "wrong". It's still wrong, it's just harder to see.
  - jaggederest 3y ago
    Rapidly expose the issue by asking it to write something funny. Can't tell a joke, even when prompted for really elementary stuff like knock knock jokes or chicken crossing the road, let alone anything sophisticated.
- layer8 3y ago
  What’s frustrating is that the one reason I ever wanted AI is to have a Lt. Cdr. Data or ship computer equivalent that is logical and correct to a fault and that helps me reason through things, but what we got now is almost exactly the opposite, we have to help it reason through things and have to double-check everything for correctness.

by Lerc 3y ago

berkes 3y ago

> Pretty soon GPT-4 will not be the best in the field. The next generation will perform much better. What makes you believe that progress is linear, or at least a line forever going up? I keep seeing people predicting rapidly improving AI, based on how rapid it improved over the last x months. But why is that not an outlier? How do we know we haven't hit a ceiling and stagnating? Isn't progress typically very bumpy and sudden?

Lerc 3y ago
>What makes you believe that progress is linear, or at least a line forever going up? I assume neither of those things. I have however read a lot of the papers published since GPT-4 was trained. There have been a lot of advances since then, so much so that simply saying "a lot" seems to be a massive understatement. I think it is a reasonable assumption that at least a portion of those advancements would be able to build upon the existing technology of GPT-4 to produce something greater. I am not assuming discoveries yet to be made. I am considering existing discoveries that have not yet made it into the top level of production.
bugglebeetle 3y ago
I would say that Microsoft/OpenAI’s attacks on open source, whether it be through “AGI safety” BS as a front for regulating their way to a monopoly, or attempting Embrace, Exentend, Extinguish on companies like Mistral, and Cold War-style fear mongering about China, are the greatest near-term risks to linear progress. And it’s worth noting on that latter point that China is not similarly constrained and so could end up outcompeting the U.S., regardless
- anileated 3y ago
  It’d be a bit hypocritical on the part of Microsoft/ClosedAI if they try to restrict AI tech in the name of safety while stepping around the fact that they themselves built it while essentially ignoring copyright. Their commercial LLMs would not be possible without original creators who are now being ripped off and squeezed out of their jobs; if they don’t keep the tech open it will be very difficult to justify.
- threeseed 3y ago
  > China is not similarly constrained and so could end up outcompeting the U.S. With what technology ? US has long term export controls on China and as they have demonstrated with Russia recently once you have secondary sanctions in place everyone falls into line. So it's pretty likely they will be effective.
  - viksit 3y ago
    China actually has very advanced technology in literally every area of the sciences now. They just don’t bother talking about it in english I recommend you follow some of the specialist chinese AI substacks to see what’s happening over there. Esp around chip building
    - threeseed 3y ago
      Not really buying the idea that China secretly has equivalents for Nvidia, ASML, TSMC etc. SIMC right now relies entirely on existing US/EU hardware for their chip building. New versions of which are no longer available to them.
teaearlgraycold 3y ago
Technological innovation is not truly an exponential. It is instead a series of logistics. If we do not have further breakthroughs then AI technology will plateau. I do think we'll have those breakthroughs but it's impossible to say when they will happen.

withinboredom 3y ago

Oh man. When it’s so close but wrong it’s amazing for creative endeavors! For technical ones, it is quite a bad thing. It’s like being a Star Wars fan but the AI just wants to talk about Star Trek. I think this is why the non-tech people see AI as so amazing. For anything human and non-technical, the “almost but not quite” nature is a good thing. I was using an AI to help me debug a weird thing (mainly summarizing log splats hundreds of lines long) and I eventually got pretty close to identifying the issue when I asked “wtaf is this message. Never seen anything like it.” It then went on about how it was offended that I used vulgar language. I had to apologize for saying “wtaf!” Anyway, I found a bug in a linker, so that was fun; thanks Al.

__loam 3y ago
I think it's equally shit at creative work too, that's just harder to dismiss as "wrong". It's still wrong, it's just harder to see.
- jaggederest 3y ago
  Rapidly expose the issue by asking it to write something funny. Can't tell a joke, even when prompted for really elementary stuff like knock knock jokes or chicken crossing the road, let alone anything sophisticated.
layer8 3y ago
What’s frustrating is that the one reason I ever wanted AI is to have a Lt. Cdr. Data or ship computer equivalent that is logical and correct to a fault and that helps me reason through things, but what we got now is almost exactly the opposite, we have to help it reason through things and have to double-check everything for correctness.