3 ms·

It shouldn’t be this hyped up but the first ai boom was because a computer could learn ‘something’ without explicit programming. It was too primitive and comput

It shouldn’t be this hyped up but the first ai boom was because a computer could learn ‘something’ without explicit programming. It was too primitive and computers were not powerful enough; the scientists (like Minsky) were too optimistic about the growth of computer power as well. The 80s revival with knowledge systems wasn’t actually ever feasible as AGI; everyone I spoke to then in the field (I started uni begin of the end 80s AI winter) had been saying for many years it was a dead end. So I feel outside the overhyping (some hype is warranted but this much?) could be less, this is different; it’s not a promise, I am chatting to my computer on my lap as if it was my human assistant; it gives me answers faster and usually better than most humans would. That’s simply not the same as we had in the previous instances. Knowledge systems did this too, but were encyclopedia’s; they couldn’t come up with stuff that wasn’t explicitly put in and categorized. You often controlled them by answering a tree structure of multiple choice screens (there are some nice episodes on the Computer Cronicles about this on Archive.org). Now you can have this knowledge base in your (vector) db, ask open questions in any language about it; it will answer human-like, lies/bluff and all.

namaria 3y ago
> it will answer human-like, lies/bluff and all. I'm not sure speed running the internet forum experience by using data centers with 10x the energy requirements of traditional ones is a net gain.
- __loam 3y ago
  Imagine a search engine but there's no context and it's 5x more expensive to run and there's no ad revenue. I think in the long run, LLMs will be packaged with the OS (because only organizations like Microsoft and Apple have the resources to burn on them) and will run on local hardware (the consumer bears the cost of the computation).
- MrSkyNet 3y ago
  Those data centers are easily converted to green energy. Google already is at 90%. The margin and market motivation to do so is high and those few companies have a lot of money. Nonetheless, we talk about an industry / society change; A change how we will write and operate and talk to computers. I woudl say its worth it
  - sgift 3y ago
    > Those data centers are easily converted to green energy. Energy which could be used for other things. I don't say it's bad to use power for AI, but just saying "well, it's green energy anyway" is short-sighted imho. At least as long as there are still any things not yet powered by green energy.
    - MrSkyNet 3y ago
      I do understand what it means to reinvest energy and i do believe its absolutly worth it in this case. The investment required for those data centers will act as stabilization of green energy investment and because known software companies are involved, for a better support on the software side
  - namaria 3y ago
    > Those data centers are easily converted to green energy. Energy is fungible. Exploding marginal energy requirements put enormous pressure on the grid tho. In the US several gas burning plants are being planned in the last few months given AI data center growth projections. This will have a definite impact in total emissions and push back any goals of holding on to the current 2C increase in global temperature.
    - MrSkyNet 3y ago
      I disagree. The percentage of datacenters around the globe is very small (like 1%). In contrast this saves us a tremendes amount of co2 due to optimization of logistics, doing your bank business at home, calling someone instead of meeting them etc. Datacenters are in my opinion the biggest net positives for co2, are easy to make green, have the most money behind them (which means faster and better investments) and are ooperated by our leading tech companies, who will use this to push further the industry of green energy. Those datacenters and especially AI energy investments are also the biggest research advantage we have. Optimizing solar energy gains and storage capacity. We need them for simulating/generating new materials, production processies, etc. We need to do a LOT in regards of heating. Heating is critical.
ehnto 3y ago
Some of the hype is just VCs being excited about having somewhere to put their bets, and founders happy to gobble the money. But it does feel a bit more tangible this time, for one, people are using it daily at work for a huge swath of roles so it is providing real value. I am interested on if it will have diminishing returns for some roles, if the outputs aren't novel enough over a long period of time. Eg: it's used to write marketing copy, but I already see the "feel" of it getting criticized and a lack of novel tone when used daily.
zone411 3y ago
About Minsky being too optimistic: "I would tell Marvin this whole AI thing is just horrible. Why are we doing it? And he would say it will be effective for getting our grants, so shut up and just play along and in fact, it was true. It was very good for getting grants back in the early days, in the 70's was when I started at this, you would go to a grant making organization such as the Defense Department, you'd say we're going to build this super smart thing and if we don't do it, our enemies might and it'll get smarter than people and it was Okay, here's your money, here's your money, oh my God, you better... and so it was very effective. And actually, the whole thing started off as storytelling to get grants" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGqiswuJuQI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGqiswuJuQI
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  This is probably still true. Currently this doesn't get as much media hype for some reason. But definitely the military is all in on the current hype-wave. Because is it really 'hype' if an AI fighter pilot can beat human F-16 fighter pilots? This has already been done and old news. Games, poker, go, StarCraft, -- all have 'game' logic that can also be used on battlefields. Robots, logistics, fighter plane drones, battlefield 'perceptual' analysis, etc... There are companies building these things now, they aren't hype. Just like Darpa Funded the internet, in the future when the military has huge AI components, we'll be looking back on today fondly like the good old days before there were thousands of autonomous drones tracking us all the time..

namaria 3y ago

> it will answer human-like, lies/bluff and all. I'm not sure speed running the internet forum experience by using data centers with 10x the energy requirements of traditional ones is a net gain.

__loam 3y ago
Imagine a search engine but there's no context and it's 5x more expensive to run and there's no ad revenue. I think in the long run, LLMs will be packaged with the OS (because only organizations like Microsoft and Apple have the resources to burn on them) and will run on local hardware (the consumer bears the cost of the computation).
MrSkyNet 3y ago
Those data centers are easily converted to green energy. Google already is at 90%. The margin and market motivation to do so is high and those few companies have a lot of money. Nonetheless, we talk about an industry / society change; A change how we will write and operate and talk to computers. I woudl say its worth it
- sgift 3y ago
  > Those data centers are easily converted to green energy. Energy which could be used for other things. I don't say it's bad to use power for AI, but just saying "well, it's green energy anyway" is short-sighted imho. At least as long as there are still any things not yet powered by green energy.
  - MrSkyNet 3y ago
    I do understand what it means to reinvest energy and i do believe its absolutly worth it in this case. The investment required for those data centers will act as stabilization of green energy investment and because known software companies are involved, for a better support on the software side
- namaria 3y ago
  > Those data centers are easily converted to green energy. Energy is fungible. Exploding marginal energy requirements put enormous pressure on the grid tho. In the US several gas burning plants are being planned in the last few months given AI data center growth projections. This will have a definite impact in total emissions and push back any goals of holding on to the current 2C increase in global temperature.
  - MrSkyNet 3y ago
    I disagree. The percentage of datacenters around the globe is very small (like 1%). In contrast this saves us a tremendes amount of co2 due to optimization of logistics, doing your bank business at home, calling someone instead of meeting them etc. Datacenters are in my opinion the biggest net positives for co2, are easy to make green, have the most money behind them (which means faster and better investments) and are ooperated by our leading tech companies, who will use this to push further the industry of green energy. Those datacenters and especially AI energy investments are also the biggest research advantage we have. Optimizing solar energy gains and storage capacity. We need them for simulating/generating new materials, production processies, etc. We need to do a LOT in regards of heating. Heating is critical.

ehnto 3y ago

Some of the hype is just VCs being excited about having somewhere to put their bets, and founders happy to gobble the money. But it does feel a bit more tangible this time, for one, people are using it daily at work for a huge swath of roles so it is providing real value. I am interested on if it will have diminishing returns for some roles, if the outputs aren't novel enough over a long period of time. Eg: it's used to write marketing copy, but I already see the "feel" of it getting criticized and a lack of novel tone when used daily.

zone411 3y ago

About Minsky being too optimistic: "I would tell Marvin this whole AI thing is just horrible. Why are we doing it? And he would say it will be effective for getting our grants, so shut up and just play along and in fact, it was true. It was very good for getting grants back in the early days, in the 70's was when I started at this, you would go to a grant making organization such as the Defense Department, you'd say we're going to build this super smart thing and if we don't do it, our enemies might and it'll get smarter than people and it was Okay, here's your money, here's your money, oh my God, you better... and so it was very effective. And actually, the whole thing started off as storytelling to get grants" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGqiswuJuQI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGqiswuJuQI

FrustratedMonky 3y ago
This is probably still true. Currently this doesn't get as much media hype for some reason. But definitely the military is all in on the current hype-wave. Because is it really 'hype' if an AI fighter pilot can beat human F-16 fighter pilots? This has already been done and old news. Games, poker, go, StarCraft, -- all have 'game' logic that can also be used on battlefields. Robots, logistics, fighter plane drones, battlefield 'perceptual' analysis, etc... There are companies building these things now, they aren't hype. Just like Darpa Funded the internet, in the future when the military has huge AI components, we'll be looking back on today fondly like the good old days before there were thousands of autonomous drones tracking us all the time..