4 ms·

Pretty soon? I already regularly see people proudly stating that LLMs "aren't really AI" and just "a Markov chain" (yeah sure, let's ignore the self-attention m

by kromem 3y ago

Pretty soon? I already regularly see people proudly stating that LLMs "aren't really AI" and just "a Markov chain" (yeah sure, let's ignore the self-attention mechanism of transformers which violate the Markov property). For the sake of my sanity I've just started tuning out what anyone says about AI outside of specialist spaces and forums. I welcome educated disagreement from my positions, but I really can't take the antivaxx equivalent in machine learning anymore.

mort96 3y ago
What if we hold off on calling it AI until it shows sign of intelligence
- cwillu 3y ago
  And what signs of intelligence are we looking for this year?
  - mort96 3y ago
    Some sign that it's more than autocomplete would be nice, maybe the ability to perform some kind of logical reasoning. ChatGPT does a good job of putting up an illusion of human-like intelligence, but speak to it for like 10 minutes and its nature as a plausible text generator quickly makes itself apparent
- jhbadger 3y ago
  Chess was a major topic of AI research for decades because playing a good game of chess was seen as a sign of intelligence. Until computers started playing better than people and we decided it didn't count for some reason. It reminds me of the (real) quote by I.I. Rabi that got used in Nolan's movie when Rabi was frustrated with how the committee was minimizing the accomplishments of Oppenheimer: "We have an A-bomb! What more do you want, mermaids?"
  - Jensson 3y ago
    They chased chess since they thought if they could solve chess then AGI would be close. They were wrong, so then they moved the goalpost to something more complicated thinking that new thing would lead to AGI. Repeat forever. > we decided it didn't count for some reason Optimists did move their goals once you realized that solving chess actually didn't lead anywhere, and then they blamed the pessimists for moving even though pessimists mostly stayed still throughout these AI hype waves. It is funny that optimists constantly are wrong and have to move their goal like that, yes, but people tend to point the finger at the wrong people here. The AI winter came from AI optimists constantly moving the goalposts like that, constantly saying "we are almost there, the goal is just that next thing and we are basically done!". AI pessimists doesn't do that, all that came from the optimists that tried to get more funding. And we see that exact same thing play out today, a lot of AI optimists clamoring for massive amounts of money because they are close to AGI, just like what we have seen in the past. Maybe they are right this time, but this time just like back then it is those optimists that are setting and moving the goal posts.
  - mort96 3y ago
    It turned out you can use some clever search algorithms rather than intelligence to play chess, yeah.
    - jhbadger 3y ago
      It also turns out that you can make machines that fly without having them flap their wings like flying animals. But it would be absurd to claim that airplanes don't fly for that reason.
      - mort96 3y ago
        Good thing I never claimed plans don't fly I think you'll find that definition "intelligence" is a bit harder than defining "flight", and convincing people that "a machine programmed to mechanically follow the steps in the minimax algorithm as applied to chess, and do nothing else" doesn't fit most people's definition of "intelligence" in the context of the philosophical question of what constitutes intelligence.

by kromem 3y ago

mort96 3y ago

What if we hold off on calling it AI until it shows sign of intelligence

cwillu 3y ago
And what signs of intelligence are we looking for this year?
- mort96 3y ago
  Some sign that it's more than autocomplete would be nice, maybe the ability to perform some kind of logical reasoning. ChatGPT does a good job of putting up an illusion of human-like intelligence, but speak to it for like 10 minutes and its nature as a plausible text generator quickly makes itself apparent
jhbadger 3y ago
Chess was a major topic of AI research for decades because playing a good game of chess was seen as a sign of intelligence. Until computers started playing better than people and we decided it didn't count for some reason. It reminds me of the (real) quote by I.I. Rabi that got used in Nolan's movie when Rabi was frustrated with how the committee was minimizing the accomplishments of Oppenheimer: "We have an A-bomb! What more do you want, mermaids?"
- Jensson 3y ago
  They chased chess since they thought if they could solve chess then AGI would be close. They were wrong, so then they moved the goalpost to something more complicated thinking that new thing would lead to AGI. Repeat forever. > we decided it didn't count for some reason Optimists did move their goals once you realized that solving chess actually didn't lead anywhere, and then they blamed the pessimists for moving even though pessimists mostly stayed still throughout these AI hype waves. It is funny that optimists constantly are wrong and have to move their goal like that, yes, but people tend to point the finger at the wrong people here. The AI winter came from AI optimists constantly moving the goalposts like that, constantly saying "we are almost there, the goal is just that next thing and we are basically done!". AI pessimists doesn't do that, all that came from the optimists that tried to get more funding. And we see that exact same thing play out today, a lot of AI optimists clamoring for massive amounts of money because they are close to AGI, just like what we have seen in the past. Maybe they are right this time, but this time just like back then it is those optimists that are setting and moving the goal posts.
- mort96 3y ago
  It turned out you can use some clever search algorithms rather than intelligence to play chess, yeah.
  - jhbadger 3y ago
    It also turns out that you can make machines that fly without having them flap their wings like flying animals. But it would be absurd to claim that airplanes don't fly for that reason.
    - mort96 3y ago
      Good thing I never claimed plans don't fly I think you'll find that definition "intelligence" is a bit harder than defining "flight", and convincing people that "a machine programmed to mechanically follow the steps in the minimax algorithm as applied to chess, and do nothing else" doesn't fit most people's definition of "intelligence" in the context of the philosophical question of what constitutes intelligence.