4 ms·

Is there a term for this kind of fallacy? The one where someone claims that something that’s being done now has been failed before, and so doing it again means

Is there a term for this kind of fallacy? The one where someone claims that something that’s being done now has been failed before, and so doing it again means it’s a failure now as well. It’s obvious that modern AI is far, far superior to ELIZA or 50s perceptrons. It reminds me of people who said space travel will never be possible, or heavier than air flight might be developed in ten million years.

Jensson 3y ago
History shows that AI will get overhyped every time we make a breakthrough.
sgt101 3y ago
But also the folks who predicted that we would be manning space stations in Saturn's orbit by now - when no human has left low earth orbit for 50 years or so. I think intelligence is similar; the work of yesteryear pointed towards the possibilities of "flight", LLM's provided the same sort of boost as the space race of the 50's and 60's. I am not sure where the analogy ends and if a "moonshot" will happen - or if things will stall at some point. At the moment I am thinking that a stall might happen. Auto regressive techniques have given us a very very clever hans, reinforcement learning seems to have disappeared from sight, graph networks are giving us fantastic tools (weather, biology) but nothing that appears or claims to have cognition.
- bondarchuk 3y ago
  >nothing that appears or claims to have cognition Keep in mind LLMs are explicitly trained to avoid claiming they have cognition.
  - sgt101 3y ago
    Someone forgot to tell Anthropic about that...
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  But we could have. If the US had kept funding Nasa at the same pace as during the space race, we probably could have moon colonies and ships heading to Saturn. It isn't a technology problem, it is a funding problem.
- bakuninsbart 3y ago
  There are plenty examples of self-awareness and reasoning, and even some that are arguably emotive, like laziness, annoyance or playfulness. I'm not sure what cognition means in this context, but I suspect it has some kind of metaphysical component to it?
  - alpaca128 3y ago
    Examples of apparent self-awareness. With the cases I've seen so far the simplest explanation is that it used a phrase from an internet discussion and it's near impossible to prove otherwise. I do believe artificial self-awareness is possible but I doubt we're at that point already. And until it reaches a certain level it will remain indistinguishable from patterns in training data.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > There are plenty examples of self-awareness and reasoning There aren't even objective, empirical definitions of “self-awareness” or “reasoning” that would support claims of examples. Those things are subjective internal experiences, not verifiable phenomena.
forgetfreeman 3y ago
Really? I don't find it obvious that the current crop of AI is superior in any way to it's predecessors. If anything it's significantly worse if measured by the consequences accruing to it's growing use. Art market down the drain, check. Gig writing gone, check. Programming literally eating itself...in progress. Massive terrorist attack missed by intel agencies because AI said no, check. Grid electricity demands prepped to skyrocket (wtf is global warming?), check. But hey, I guess it's neat that you can get ChatGPT to rewrite your resume in the style of Warhammer 40k...
- joegibbs 3y ago
  Really, do you really think that it’s no more advanced, or do you just not like it? The fact that it’s causing programming to eat itself and getting rid of gig writing means it’s more powerful. ELIZA couldn’t do that. Say what you want about nuclear bombs but they were undoubtedly a technological advancement, you couldn’t blow up an entire city with black powder.
  - forgetfreeman 3y ago
    The phrase used was "superior", not "advanced". Words mean things. This shit is breaking important things for no reason other than shareholder value. This is not superior.
    - joegibbs 3y ago
      The nuclear bomb is superior to TNT, the gun on the A10 Warthog is superior to a flintlock pistol. Like it or not, modern AI is superior because it is more fit for purpose than something that can’t do anything at all.
      - forgetfreeman 3y ago
        You find yourself in a position where you're forced to make an analogy with weapons of mass destruction and the lightbulb still won't go on? Some people's kids...
oldpersonintx 3y ago
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Jensson 3y ago

History shows that AI will get overhyped every time we make a breakthrough.

sgt101 3y ago

But also the folks who predicted that we would be manning space stations in Saturn's orbit by now - when no human has left low earth orbit for 50 years or so. I think intelligence is similar; the work of yesteryear pointed towards the possibilities of "flight", LLM's provided the same sort of boost as the space race of the 50's and 60's. I am not sure where the analogy ends and if a "moonshot" will happen - or if things will stall at some point. At the moment I am thinking that a stall might happen. Auto regressive techniques have given us a very very clever hans, reinforcement learning seems to have disappeared from sight, graph networks are giving us fantastic tools (weather, biology) but nothing that appears or claims to have cognition.

bondarchuk 3y ago
>nothing that appears or claims to have cognition Keep in mind LLMs are explicitly trained to avoid claiming they have cognition.
- sgt101 3y ago
  Someone forgot to tell Anthropic about that...
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
But we could have. If the US had kept funding Nasa at the same pace as during the space race, we probably could have moon colonies and ships heading to Saturn. It isn't a technology problem, it is a funding problem.
bakuninsbart 3y ago
There are plenty examples of self-awareness and reasoning, and even some that are arguably emotive, like laziness, annoyance or playfulness. I'm not sure what cognition means in this context, but I suspect it has some kind of metaphysical component to it?
- alpaca128 3y ago
  Examples of apparent self-awareness. With the cases I've seen so far the simplest explanation is that it used a phrase from an internet discussion and it's near impossible to prove otherwise. I do believe artificial self-awareness is possible but I doubt we're at that point already. And until it reaches a certain level it will remain indistinguishable from patterns in training data.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > There are plenty examples of self-awareness and reasoning There aren't even objective, empirical definitions of “self-awareness” or “reasoning” that would support claims of examples. Those things are subjective internal experiences, not verifiable phenomena.

forgetfreeman 3y ago

Really? I don't find it obvious that the current crop of AI is superior in any way to it's predecessors. If anything it's significantly worse if measured by the consequences accruing to it's growing use. Art market down the drain, check. Gig writing gone, check. Programming literally eating itself...in progress. Massive terrorist attack missed by intel agencies because AI said no, check. Grid electricity demands prepped to skyrocket (wtf is global warming?), check. But hey, I guess it's neat that you can get ChatGPT to rewrite your resume in the style of Warhammer 40k...

joegibbs 3y ago
Really, do you really think that it’s no more advanced, or do you just not like it? The fact that it’s causing programming to eat itself and getting rid of gig writing means it’s more powerful. ELIZA couldn’t do that. Say what you want about nuclear bombs but they were undoubtedly a technological advancement, you couldn’t blow up an entire city with black powder.
- forgetfreeman 3y ago
  The phrase used was "superior", not "advanced". Words mean things. This shit is breaking important things for no reason other than shareholder value. This is not superior.
  - joegibbs 3y ago
    The nuclear bomb is superior to TNT, the gun on the A10 Warthog is superior to a flintlock pistol. Like it or not, modern AI is superior because it is more fit for purpose than something that can’t do anything at all.
    - forgetfreeman 3y ago
      You find yourself in a position where you're forced to make an analogy with weapons of mass destruction and the lightbulb still won't go on? Some people's kids...

oldpersonintx 3y ago

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