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This is why driverless cars are still just demos, and why LLMs will never be reliable. It hard to build something that is yet to be even logically defined. Ho

This is why driverless cars are still just demos, and why LLMs will never be reliable. It hard to build something that is yet to be even logically defined. Hoping that AGI will somehow just "emerge" from an inert box of silicone switches (aka a "computer" as we currently know it) is the stuff of movie fantasy ... or perhaps religion.

tivert 3y ago
> ...is the stuff of movie fantasy ... or perhaps religion. IMHO, something like "movie fantasy" constitutes the core belief of a great many software engineers and other so-called rational people in the tech space.
- galangalalgol 3y ago
  Driverless cars are here, without liability issues they would already be widespread. But scaling isn't what got them there. It was tons of labeled data, both from rules based implementations and shadowing human drivers. The ability to generalize completely outside training data isn't that common among humans IME. That is a high bar. How many of us have done so without at least drawing an analogy to some other experience we have had? Truly unique thinkers aren't that commonplace. I myself could have probably just asked an LLM what I would say in this post and gotten pretty close...
  - rchaud 3y ago
    > Driverless cars are here, without liability issues they would already be widespread In other words, they're in a lab somewhere undergoing perpetual test runs so they don't kill people, so not generally available. It is like saying that email was available in the '80s, you just couldn't message anybody outside of the university network.
    - naasking 3y ago
      You can order driverless taxis right now in some cities: https://www.axios.com/2023/08/29/cities-testing-self-driving-driverless-taxis-robotaxi-waymo https://www.axios.com/2023/08/29/cities-testing-self-driving...
      - MatthiasPortzel 3y ago
        That article is discussing Cruise. Since it was published, a Cruise car dragged a pedestrian 20 ft, it came out that they need remote intervention every few miles, the CEO resigned, and they stopped doing rides anywhere. Waymo remains available to my knowledge.
      - loire280 3y ago
        However, they require constant human monitoring and interventions from those humans every few miles to work properly - and it's not clear that the need for those interventions will be solved with more training data. https://www.theverge.com/23948708/cruise-robotaxi-suspension-trust-remote-assist https://www.theverge.com/23948708/cruise-robotaxi-suspension...
        tivert 3y ago
        > However, they require constant human monitoring and interventions from those humans every few miles to work properly It's a little-known fact that AI means "Actually, Indians." https://boingboing.net/2024/04/03/amazons-ai-powered-just-walk-outcheckout-option-turns-out-to-be-1000-workers-watching-you-shop.html https://boingboing.net/2024/04/03/amazons-ai-powered-just-wa...
    - minitoar 3y ago
      No, I think he meant they are literally here. I see one everyday.
  - parpfish 3y ago
    > But scaling isn't what got them there. It was tons of labeled data, both from rules based implementations and shadowing human drivers. Isn't the second half of that saying that scaling up the dataset was what got them where they are? When I hear about "scaling up" models, I think there are two parts of it: 1) use the same architecture, but bigger 2) make the training data bigger to make use of all those new parameters. So when I hear about something that's not scaling, it would require some sort of fundamental change to architecture or algorithms.
  - staticman2 3y ago
    > Driverless cars are here, without liability issues they would already be widespread. In the sense that if you were allowed to run over anyone without legal consequences lots of tech enthusiasts would sign up for this experience?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
iwsk 3y ago
General intelligence somehow just emerged from dirt and water + @.
- jqpabc123 3y ago
  And the Sun just somehow emerged from a cloud of hydrogen gas. The obvious flaw in this line of thinking (as related to AGI) is that we/humans can create/engineer the same or similar without any real understanding of the underlying mechanisms involved.
the8472 3y ago
Evolution is an incredibly dumb, very parallel search over long timescales and that managed to turn blobs of carbon soup into brains because that's a useful (but not necessary) tool for its primary optimization goal. But that doesn't make carbon soup magical. There's no fundamental physics that privileges information-processing on carbon atoms. We don't have the time-scales of evolution, but we can optimize so much harder on a single goal than it can. So I don't see how it's a movie fantasy any more than bottling up stars is (well, ICBMs do deliver bottled sunshine... uh, the analogy is going too far here). Anyway, the point is that while brains and intelligence are complicated systems there isn't anything at all known that says it's fundamentally impossible to replicate their functionality or something in the general category. And scaling will be a necessary but perhaps not sufficient component of that, just because they're going to be complex systems.
- Anotheroneagain 3y ago
  The question is if other animals even do have the kind of intelligence that most people call AGI. It seems that this kind of adaptive intelligence may be unique to mammals (and perhaps a few other outliers, like the octopus), with the vast majority of life being limited to inborn reflexes, immitating their conspecifics, and trial and error.
- RohMin 3y ago
  This is actually a great perspective to have. The idea that there is no fundamental law of physics that should prevent us from replicating or exceeding the functionality of the human brain through artificial means makes this a question of when, not if.
  - jqpabc123 3y ago
    The idea that there is no fundamental law of physics that should prevent us ... Maybe ... someday. But right now, we don't even fully understand the physics that makes a human brain work. Every time someone starts investigating, they uncover surprising new complexity. https://theness.com/neurologicablog/is-the-brain-analog-or-digital/ https://theness.com/neurologicablog/is-the-brain-analog-or-d...
myrmidon 3y ago
Do you agree that AGI can emerge from a bunch of haphazardly connected Neurons, using about 700MiB of procedurally generated initialization data (human DNA) and employing 1-2 decades of low-bandwidth, low-power (~25W) training? You might even agree that not a single directed thought went into the design of that whole system. Having established that, it seems laughable to me that it would be an "impossible fantasy" to replicate this with purpose-built silicon. Sure, our current whole-system understanding could still be drastically improved, and the sheer scale of the reference implementation (human connectome) is still intimidating even compared to our most advanced chips, but I have absolutely zero doubt that AGI is just a matter of time (and continuous gradual progress). If a lack of understanding did not stop nature, why should it stop us? :P To me, all the arguments against AGI appear unconvincing, motivated by religion/faith, or based on definitional sophistry. But I'm very open to have that view changed...
- spangry 3y ago
  Well put. I’ve wonder if some of those on the other side of the argument are actually, perhaps on some subconscious level, proponents of mind-body dualism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism
- jqpabc123 3y ago
  To me, all the arguments against AGI appear unconvincing, motivated by religion/faith, or based on definitional sophistry. Religion is belief in the unknown without reason or logic. Do you know of any inanimate object that is truly "intelligent"? Without ever knowing or seeing a single, real working example, you "believe" and have "faith" that it is possible. By so doing, you are practicing religion --- not science.
  - the8472 3y ago
    That's like complaining about artificial, non-organic flight being a fantasy before the wright brothers. Which would not have been entirely wrong, but hardly a knockout argument as we now know with certainty. There is a vast difference between "engineering challenges have not yet been proven moot by a working prototype" and "precluded by physics or mathematics". The (in)animate distinction is more akin to net-positive fusion in a man-made vessel vs. in a gravity well rather than obeys the 2nd law of thermodynamics vs. perpetuum mobile.
bionhoward 3y ago
It’s not a hope to expect machines to match or exceed the human level of intelligence, because we demonstrate human level intelligent machines by virtue of existence, and the physical limits of computation far exceed those of our specific biology. AKA, we know it’s possible for atomic systems to be as intelligent as we are, because we are. We suspect the limit is far beyond us because computers have dramatically faster processing, essentially perfect memory systems, etc

tivert 3y ago

> ...is the stuff of movie fantasy ... or perhaps religion. IMHO, something like "movie fantasy" constitutes the core belief of a great many software engineers and other so-called rational people in the tech space.

galangalalgol 3y ago
Driverless cars are here, without liability issues they would already be widespread. But scaling isn't what got them there. It was tons of labeled data, both from rules based implementations and shadowing human drivers. The ability to generalize completely outside training data isn't that common among humans IME. That is a high bar. How many of us have done so without at least drawing an analogy to some other experience we have had? Truly unique thinkers aren't that commonplace. I myself could have probably just asked an LLM what I would say in this post and gotten pretty close...
- rchaud 3y ago
  > Driverless cars are here, without liability issues they would already be widespread In other words, they're in a lab somewhere undergoing perpetual test runs so they don't kill people, so not generally available. It is like saying that email was available in the '80s, you just couldn't message anybody outside of the university network.
  - naasking 3y ago
    You can order driverless taxis right now in some cities: https://www.axios.com/2023/08/29/cities-testing-self-driving-driverless-taxis-robotaxi-waymo https://www.axios.com/2023/08/29/cities-testing-self-driving...
    - MatthiasPortzel 3y ago
      That article is discussing Cruise. Since it was published, a Cruise car dragged a pedestrian 20 ft, it came out that they need remote intervention every few miles, the CEO resigned, and they stopped doing rides anywhere. Waymo remains available to my knowledge.
    - loire280 3y ago
      However, they require constant human monitoring and interventions from those humans every few miles to work properly - and it's not clear that the need for those interventions will be solved with more training data. https://www.theverge.com/23948708/cruise-robotaxi-suspension-trust-remote-assist https://www.theverge.com/23948708/cruise-robotaxi-suspension...
      - tivert 3y ago
        > However, they require constant human monitoring and interventions from those humans every few miles to work properly It's a little-known fact that AI means "Actually, Indians." https://boingboing.net/2024/04/03/amazons-ai-powered-just-walk-outcheckout-option-turns-out-to-be-1000-workers-watching-you-shop.html https://boingboing.net/2024/04/03/amazons-ai-powered-just-wa...
  - minitoar 3y ago
    No, I think he meant they are literally here. I see one everyday.
- parpfish 3y ago
  > But scaling isn't what got them there. It was tons of labeled data, both from rules based implementations and shadowing human drivers. Isn't the second half of that saying that scaling up the dataset was what got them where they are? When I hear about "scaling up" models, I think there are two parts of it: 1) use the same architecture, but bigger 2) make the training data bigger to make use of all those new parameters. So when I hear about something that's not scaling, it would require some sort of fundamental change to architecture or algorithms.
- staticman2 3y ago
  > Driverless cars are here, without liability issues they would already be widespread. In the sense that if you were allowed to run over anyone without legal consequences lots of tech enthusiasts would sign up for this experience?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

iwsk 3y ago

General intelligence somehow just emerged from dirt and water + @.

jqpabc123 3y ago
And the Sun just somehow emerged from a cloud of hydrogen gas. The obvious flaw in this line of thinking (as related to AGI) is that we/humans can create/engineer the same or similar without any real understanding of the underlying mechanisms involved.

the8472 3y ago

Evolution is an incredibly dumb, very parallel search over long timescales and that managed to turn blobs of carbon soup into brains because that's a useful (but not necessary) tool for its primary optimization goal. But that doesn't make carbon soup magical. There's no fundamental physics that privileges information-processing on carbon atoms. We don't have the time-scales of evolution, but we can optimize so much harder on a single goal than it can. So I don't see how it's a movie fantasy any more than bottling up stars is (well, ICBMs do deliver bottled sunshine... uh, the analogy is going too far here). Anyway, the point is that while brains and intelligence are complicated systems there isn't anything at all known that says it's fundamentally impossible to replicate their functionality or something in the general category. And scaling will be a necessary but perhaps not sufficient component of that, just because they're going to be complex systems.

Anotheroneagain 3y ago
The question is if other animals even do have the kind of intelligence that most people call AGI. It seems that this kind of adaptive intelligence may be unique to mammals (and perhaps a few other outliers, like the octopus), with the vast majority of life being limited to inborn reflexes, immitating their conspecifics, and trial and error.
RohMin 3y ago
This is actually a great perspective to have. The idea that there is no fundamental law of physics that should prevent us from replicating or exceeding the functionality of the human brain through artificial means makes this a question of when, not if.
- jqpabc123 3y ago
  The idea that there is no fundamental law of physics that should prevent us ... Maybe ... someday. But right now, we don't even fully understand the physics that makes a human brain work. Every time someone starts investigating, they uncover surprising new complexity. https://theness.com/neurologicablog/is-the-brain-analog-or-digital/ https://theness.com/neurologicablog/is-the-brain-analog-or-d...

myrmidon 3y ago

Do you agree that AGI can emerge from a bunch of haphazardly connected Neurons, using about 700MiB of procedurally generated initialization data (human DNA) and employing 1-2 decades of low-bandwidth, low-power (~25W) training? You might even agree that not a single directed thought went into the design of that whole system. Having established that, it seems laughable to me that it would be an "impossible fantasy" to replicate this with purpose-built silicon. Sure, our current whole-system understanding could still be drastically improved, and the sheer scale of the reference implementation (human connectome) is still intimidating even compared to our most advanced chips, but I have absolutely zero doubt that AGI is just a matter of time (and continuous gradual progress). If a lack of understanding did not stop nature, why should it stop us? :P To me, all the arguments against AGI appear unconvincing, motivated by religion/faith, or based on definitional sophistry. But I'm very open to have that view changed...

spangry 3y ago
Well put. I’ve wonder if some of those on the other side of the argument are actually, perhaps on some subconscious level, proponents of mind-body dualism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism
jqpabc123 3y ago
To me, all the arguments against AGI appear unconvincing, motivated by religion/faith, or based on definitional sophistry. Religion is belief in the unknown without reason or logic. Do you know of any inanimate object that is truly "intelligent"? Without ever knowing or seeing a single, real working example, you "believe" and have "faith" that it is possible. By so doing, you are practicing religion --- not science.
- the8472 3y ago
  That's like complaining about artificial, non-organic flight being a fantasy before the wright brothers. Which would not have been entirely wrong, but hardly a knockout argument as we now know with certainty. There is a vast difference between "engineering challenges have not yet been proven moot by a working prototype" and "precluded by physics or mathematics". The (in)animate distinction is more akin to net-positive fusion in a man-made vessel vs. in a gravity well rather than obeys the 2nd law of thermodynamics vs. perpetuum mobile.

bionhoward 3y ago

It’s not a hope to expect machines to match or exceed the human level of intelligence, because we demonstrate human level intelligent machines by virtue of existence, and the physical limits of computation far exceed those of our specific biology. AKA, we know it’s possible for atomic systems to be as intelligent as we are, because we are. We suspect the limit is far beyond us because computers have dramatically faster processing, essentially perfect memory systems, etc