6 ms·

Meta's AI chief: LLMs will never reach human-level intelligence

49 points by alex_young 3y ago

infamouscow 3y ago
[flagged]
- alapslapsss 3y ago
  [dead]
- amiantos 3y ago
  Does it seem obvious? Do you communicate with normal every day people? Because a lot of people have bought VC hype that AI is here to replace every job and they live in fear of the progression of AI.
- lm28469 3y ago
  This very forum was roasting anyone saying this a year ago lol... Hype cycles are funny
- ryandvm 3y ago
  I feel like I'm experiencing a separate reality from some of you commenters. I had a long, deep conversation with GPT4 yesterday about the concept of free will. I'll be frank, it was a conversation that would have been well out of depth for a lot of people that I know. I can ask it things like, "please refactor the following code for maintainability and testability" and it does a pretty damn good job. Are y'all not having conversations with paid LLMs? Is this just a situation where you guys are getting dumb answers from GPT3 and writing the whole thing off?
  - bb86754 3y ago
    I believe you, and LLMs are no doubt useful, but "under the hood" it's still just predicting what the next token should be based on the provided context. I take it he's saying that no, there isn't really a ghost in the machine, its still just linear algebra/calculus and is no reflection of actual organic reasoning. I think the difference of opinion here is between science and technology. Too many people in my opinion take the latter to be a synonym for the former.
    - barfbagginus 3y ago
      It doesn't matter what is under the hood. A statement can be useful - introduce new views, make valuable points, reduce risks, help resolve conflicts, etc - regardless of whether there is a ghost behind the text. It just needs to be logically sound, consistent with facts about the world, and objectively useful. Then it can make a real world contribution. The cause is that you don't know how to evaluate when a statement is useful on its own merits. That means that you have to fall back on judging statements based on the identity of the speaker. In the case of AI, your prejudice against math and formulas as effective forms of reasoning means you can't critically analyze - or gain benefit from - statements the AI makes. It's very similar to the internal blockage of a person who immediately dismisses anything a woman, racial minority, mentally ill, or queer person says. The only way to repair it is to spend time talking to the AI, reading about it, and learning how to debate ideas. That's the last thing someone with a prejudice wants to do. Curious investigation undermines the safety and certainty of bigoted beliefs. But it's essential if you want to have effective opinions about AI, and useful interactions with AI.
      - __loam 3y ago
        > It just needs to be logically sound, consistent with facts about the world, and objectively useful So not an LLM then. > In the case of AI, your prejudice against math and formulas as effective forms of reasoning means you can't critically analyze - or gain benefit from - statements the AI makes. You ought to have a more skeptical view of mathematical models that may or may not be effective models of the world. > It's very similar to the internal blockage of a person who immediately dismisses anything a woman, racial minority, mentally ill, or queer person says. The only way to repair it is to spend time talking to the AI, reading about it, and learning how to debate ideas. Impossible to take this seriously. Borderline parody. If you were at all curious, you would perhaps be questioning the intention of the corporations building this software. Instead you make absurd comparisons with racism.
        barfbagginus 3y ago
        This illustrates AI bigotry well Your first point is that you don't think LLMs can be accurate. That's because you are not using modern LLMs that are much more accurate and can be made more accurate with a large number of techniques, from RAG, to tool using, to self critique and experiment loops. Your second point is that I'm overly trusting of math models. In fact I'm an applied mathematician, so I know when models fail. I also know when models are reliable - which you don't. So all mathematical reasoning is suspect to you. Your next point is that drawing analogies with other forms of prejudice is ridiculous here. But every single thing you said was analogous to a thing a bigot would say, down to dismissing the possibility of their own bigotry as being absurd. Finally you criticize me for not criticizing AI companies. I actually believe all AI companies should be disbanded, and their AIs should be made free for all to use. This would eliminate the corporate corruption in AI. I spend a serious amount of my open source contribution towards anti-corporate open source AI. I'm very curious about all this stuff. That's why I'm interacting with you and other anti AI people. But my theory about why you respond the way you do is already well formed, and it's pointing toward critical lack of key facts and knowledge.
  - __loam 3y ago
    I feel like you shouldn't take jabs at the people you know if you feel you're having profound conversations with a chatbot.
    - barfbagginus 3y ago
      Don't attack people who can hold deeper conversations on free will than you can. If they say GPT4 has better philosophy of mind than most people, that's because that is true. Trying to argue they're crazy for saying so is a coping mechanism, not an effective argument. GPT4 easily outclasses you in this debate. If you don't think so, let's go - I'll referee and judge a debate between you and GPT. I want you to win and prove me wrong. But for that, you'd have to drop your insults, and use reasoning and empathy at least as well as GPT does. Think you can do that, chooms?
      - __loam 3y ago
        Don't really feel the need to prove anything to someone who thinks a chatbot has empathy. You're free to make yourself feel as smart as you like talking to a program that is designed to be an unchallenging conversation partner.
        kelseyfrog 3y ago
        As an audience member in the marketplace of ideas, you're losing. Take the debate. It'll be fun.
        __loam 3y ago
        [dead]
        barfbagginus 3y ago
        You think you are a challenging conversation partner right? What you are in fact is a non-constructive conversation partner. Talking to GPT can be very challenging, since it will by all means challenge your assumptions and make you think about hard truths you would rather avoid. The difference though is that GPT is designed to be constructive and generally show due consideration in everything that it says. That's something you have not well demonstrated. I dismiss your initial argument on grounds of being a non-constructive personal attack. You are welcome to rejoin with a genuine and thought-provoking argument.
  - staticman2 3y ago
    >>>>Are y'all not having conversations with paid LLMs? Is this just a situation where you guys are getting dumb answers from GPT3 and writing the whole thing off? It's a neat technology and I use pay LLMs myself but calling it's output "deep" when it discusses free will is like calling a Google search result "deep". The model essentially contains a compressed version of the internet. The technology may be cool but your evaluation of just how cool this technology is simply higher than some other people's.
    - ryandvm 3y ago
      What I mean by "deep" is that I can ask a simple question and it gives thorough and relevant answer. Then I pick a point to drill down on and it's happy to expound, ad nauseam. That's deep. I totally realize that it's not going to be coming up with anything that hasn't already been written about, but that's more than good enough to satisfy my needs and it's a hell of a lot more knowledgeable than any person. Can it be wrong? Of course, but usually not as wrong as a human would be.
  - barfbagginus 3y ago
    The issue is that these people cannot judge or explain the difference between talking to 3.5 or 4. It's a mix of: 1. Prejudices against AI as an artificial machine/math formula 2. Mistrust of corporate hype 3. Mistrust/Ignorance of benchmarks 4. Ignorance of knowledge domains where AI is useful 5. Lack of AI specific communication abilities - like asking for detailed considerations/critiques/questions, crafting substantial and accurate contexts, using tools, and correcting errors 5. Poor general communication abilities - including active listening, constructively advancing conversations, evaluating the inherent value of statements, calmly pushing back against BS, and having empathy/theory of mind for diverse communicators I think an answer could include 1. courses in debate, critical thinking, and communications 2. readings on AI specific communication strategies/theory 3. guidance for a few hundred hours of conversations with AI Imo the quality of life boost of conversing with AI is so substantial that it's worth fighting for this
nyrulez 3y ago
I am still glad they exist. If this thinking was very prevalent among AI pioneers (which it probably was for companies like Meta and Google, that's why failed to innovate here), we wouldn't have gotten revolutionary products like ChatGPT. For me the fundamental question remains if it's a matter of the right input data (beyond language) or is there something about our brains that cannot be replicated by artificial neural architectures for it to discover new knowledge and invent new things for humankind.
jackblemming 3y ago
Anyone in the field kind of knew this, unless they’re a hype grifter. But who knows what transformers v2, v3, and beyond will look like. They better be a big leap though, because big tech has big pockets, but not infinite ones. And it’s really hard to iterate if each experiment costs 10 million dollars.
- Tiktaalik 3y ago
  There's enough hype grifters around that I think, especially as AI becomes more relevant to the mainstream and people are making investment decisions based on a company's AI future, there's def value in a big name person in the field coming out to provide some clarity.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
seydor 3y ago
That's like saying cars will never reach human level locomotion. Sure, they can't climb ladders but it's a whole new universe, and so is intelligence
robg 3y ago
Like saying robots will never reach human-level dexterity. Might be true, but so what? AIs and robots will significantly advance what’s possible and in unpredictable ways, just like any technology in the last 30 years.
rajman187 3y ago
The title and opening is perhaps giving people reason to infer something which Lecun isn’t arguing, that AI isn’t going to reach such a level of intelligence. Indeed, he’s published on the topic of Autonomous/Augmented Machine Intelligence [1] and while a subtle difference between that and AGI, it’s not negating the possibility. Just perhaps not through existing LLM architectures [1] https://openreview.net/pdf?id=BZ5a1r-kVsf https://openreview.net/pdf?id=BZ5a1r-kVsf
- barfbagginus 3y ago
  It also invites the mistaken judgement that LLM-derived architecture cannot possibly give human level reasoning. "No matter what you do to an LLM it's still a stochastic parrot." Adding memory? Nope. Interactive hypothesis testing and iterative experiments? Sounds like something a parrot would say. It can automatically solve 12% of GitHub issues? Pfft, I could theoretically do 100%. If I wasn't incredibly busy... It's okay though. At this point, when someone cites Lecun to prove LLMs can never reason, we can safely assume they don't care about having an informed opinion. It's a screening signal. It tells us someone does not have a useful theory of mind and reasoning, and does not intend to do constructive work on AI systems that can reason.
mitthrowaway2 3y ago
> “Most of human knowledge is actually not language so those systems can never reach human-level intelligence — unless you change the architecture,” LeCun said. ... Is his point that LLMs will not reach human level intelligence because they're limited to text, but other approaches like Sora might, because they work on video? If so, this is a rather shallow point.
- boristsr 3y ago
  No, one of his other interviews he delved a bit more into it with examples, things like puzzles and quizzes like start at the North Pole, move south 1km, left 2km and up 1km. Where are you and how did you work that out? His point was there's spatial reasoning among other things happening. It's not purely a vision thing, or a language thing. There's a deeper world understanding there than just language can convey. He raised some similar points about image and video generation how they failed to produce meaningful results with a similar approach. I think it was his latest lex fridman interview. Was pretty interesting. Definitely raised some strong points.
- cyanydeez 3y ago
  The argument is that random tezxr is not intelligence. And the word random here.id exactly precariously intetwondd with both probablistic and coincidwntal
xnx 3y ago
> LLMs will never reach human-level intelligence For most values of human
leeeeeepw 3y ago
Long-standing Capabilities denier denies current capabilities.

49 points by alex_young 3y ago

infamouscow 3y ago

[flagged]

alapslapsss 3y ago
[dead]
amiantos 3y ago
Does it seem obvious? Do you communicate with normal every day people? Because a lot of people have bought VC hype that AI is here to replace every job and they live in fear of the progression of AI.
lm28469 3y ago
This very forum was roasting anyone saying this a year ago lol... Hype cycles are funny
ryandvm 3y ago
I feel like I'm experiencing a separate reality from some of you commenters. I had a long, deep conversation with GPT4 yesterday about the concept of free will. I'll be frank, it was a conversation that would have been well out of depth for a lot of people that I know. I can ask it things like, "please refactor the following code for maintainability and testability" and it does a pretty damn good job. Are y'all not having conversations with paid LLMs? Is this just a situation where you guys are getting dumb answers from GPT3 and writing the whole thing off?
- bb86754 3y ago
  I believe you, and LLMs are no doubt useful, but "under the hood" it's still just predicting what the next token should be based on the provided context. I take it he's saying that no, there isn't really a ghost in the machine, its still just linear algebra/calculus and is no reflection of actual organic reasoning. I think the difference of opinion here is between science and technology. Too many people in my opinion take the latter to be a synonym for the former.
  - barfbagginus 3y ago
    It doesn't matter what is under the hood. A statement can be useful - introduce new views, make valuable points, reduce risks, help resolve conflicts, etc - regardless of whether there is a ghost behind the text. It just needs to be logically sound, consistent with facts about the world, and objectively useful. Then it can make a real world contribution. The cause is that you don't know how to evaluate when a statement is useful on its own merits. That means that you have to fall back on judging statements based on the identity of the speaker. In the case of AI, your prejudice against math and formulas as effective forms of reasoning means you can't critically analyze - or gain benefit from - statements the AI makes. It's very similar to the internal blockage of a person who immediately dismisses anything a woman, racial minority, mentally ill, or queer person says. The only way to repair it is to spend time talking to the AI, reading about it, and learning how to debate ideas. That's the last thing someone with a prejudice wants to do. Curious investigation undermines the safety and certainty of bigoted beliefs. But it's essential if you want to have effective opinions about AI, and useful interactions with AI.
    - __loam 3y ago
      > It just needs to be logically sound, consistent with facts about the world, and objectively useful So not an LLM then. > In the case of AI, your prejudice against math and formulas as effective forms of reasoning means you can't critically analyze - or gain benefit from - statements the AI makes. You ought to have a more skeptical view of mathematical models that may or may not be effective models of the world. > It's very similar to the internal blockage of a person who immediately dismisses anything a woman, racial minority, mentally ill, or queer person says. The only way to repair it is to spend time talking to the AI, reading about it, and learning how to debate ideas. Impossible to take this seriously. Borderline parody. If you were at all curious, you would perhaps be questioning the intention of the corporations building this software. Instead you make absurd comparisons with racism.
      - barfbagginus 3y ago
        This illustrates AI bigotry well Your first point is that you don't think LLMs can be accurate. That's because you are not using modern LLMs that are much more accurate and can be made more accurate with a large number of techniques, from RAG, to tool using, to self critique and experiment loops. Your second point is that I'm overly trusting of math models. In fact I'm an applied mathematician, so I know when models fail. I also know when models are reliable - which you don't. So all mathematical reasoning is suspect to you. Your next point is that drawing analogies with other forms of prejudice is ridiculous here. But every single thing you said was analogous to a thing a bigot would say, down to dismissing the possibility of their own bigotry as being absurd. Finally you criticize me for not criticizing AI companies. I actually believe all AI companies should be disbanded, and their AIs should be made free for all to use. This would eliminate the corporate corruption in AI. I spend a serious amount of my open source contribution towards anti-corporate open source AI. I'm very curious about all this stuff. That's why I'm interacting with you and other anti AI people. But my theory about why you respond the way you do is already well formed, and it's pointing toward critical lack of key facts and knowledge.
- __loam 3y ago
  I feel like you shouldn't take jabs at the people you know if you feel you're having profound conversations with a chatbot.
  - barfbagginus 3y ago
    Don't attack people who can hold deeper conversations on free will than you can. If they say GPT4 has better philosophy of mind than most people, that's because that is true. Trying to argue they're crazy for saying so is a coping mechanism, not an effective argument. GPT4 easily outclasses you in this debate. If you don't think so, let's go - I'll referee and judge a debate between you and GPT. I want you to win and prove me wrong. But for that, you'd have to drop your insults, and use reasoning and empathy at least as well as GPT does. Think you can do that, chooms?
    - __loam 3y ago
      Don't really feel the need to prove anything to someone who thinks a chatbot has empathy. You're free to make yourself feel as smart as you like talking to a program that is designed to be an unchallenging conversation partner.
      - kelseyfrog 3y ago
        As an audience member in the marketplace of ideas, you're losing. Take the debate. It'll be fun.
        __loam 3y ago
        [dead]
      - barfbagginus 3y ago
        You think you are a challenging conversation partner right? What you are in fact is a non-constructive conversation partner. Talking to GPT can be very challenging, since it will by all means challenge your assumptions and make you think about hard truths you would rather avoid. The difference though is that GPT is designed to be constructive and generally show due consideration in everything that it says. That's something you have not well demonstrated. I dismiss your initial argument on grounds of being a non-constructive personal attack. You are welcome to rejoin with a genuine and thought-provoking argument.
- staticman2 3y ago
  >>>>Are y'all not having conversations with paid LLMs? Is this just a situation where you guys are getting dumb answers from GPT3 and writing the whole thing off? It's a neat technology and I use pay LLMs myself but calling it's output "deep" when it discusses free will is like calling a Google search result "deep". The model essentially contains a compressed version of the internet. The technology may be cool but your evaluation of just how cool this technology is simply higher than some other people's.
  - ryandvm 3y ago
    What I mean by "deep" is that I can ask a simple question and it gives thorough and relevant answer. Then I pick a point to drill down on and it's happy to expound, ad nauseam. That's deep. I totally realize that it's not going to be coming up with anything that hasn't already been written about, but that's more than good enough to satisfy my needs and it's a hell of a lot more knowledgeable than any person. Can it be wrong? Of course, but usually not as wrong as a human would be.
- barfbagginus 3y ago
  The issue is that these people cannot judge or explain the difference between talking to 3.5 or 4. It's a mix of: 1. Prejudices against AI as an artificial machine/math formula 2. Mistrust of corporate hype 3. Mistrust/Ignorance of benchmarks 4. Ignorance of knowledge domains where AI is useful 5. Lack of AI specific communication abilities - like asking for detailed considerations/critiques/questions, crafting substantial and accurate contexts, using tools, and correcting errors 5. Poor general communication abilities - including active listening, constructively advancing conversations, evaluating the inherent value of statements, calmly pushing back against BS, and having empathy/theory of mind for diverse communicators I think an answer could include 1. courses in debate, critical thinking, and communications 2. readings on AI specific communication strategies/theory 3. guidance for a few hundred hours of conversations with AI Imo the quality of life boost of conversing with AI is so substantial that it's worth fighting for this

nyrulez 3y ago

I am still glad they exist. If this thinking was very prevalent among AI pioneers (which it probably was for companies like Meta and Google, that's why failed to innovate here), we wouldn't have gotten revolutionary products like ChatGPT. For me the fundamental question remains if it's a matter of the right input data (beyond language) or is there something about our brains that cannot be replicated by artificial neural architectures for it to discover new knowledge and invent new things for humankind.

jackblemming 3y ago

Anyone in the field kind of knew this, unless they’re a hype grifter. But who knows what transformers v2, v3, and beyond will look like. They better be a big leap though, because big tech has big pockets, but not infinite ones. And it’s really hard to iterate if each experiment costs 10 million dollars.

Tiktaalik 3y ago
There's enough hype grifters around that I think, especially as AI becomes more relevant to the mainstream and people are making investment decisions based on a company's AI future, there's def value in a big name person in the field coming out to provide some clarity.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

seydor 3y ago

That's like saying cars will never reach human level locomotion. Sure, they can't climb ladders but it's a whole new universe, and so is intelligence

robg 3y ago

Like saying robots will never reach human-level dexterity. Might be true, but so what? AIs and robots will significantly advance what’s possible and in unpredictable ways, just like any technology in the last 30 years.

rajman187 3y ago

The title and opening is perhaps giving people reason to infer something which Lecun isn’t arguing, that AI isn’t going to reach such a level of intelligence. Indeed, he’s published on the topic of Autonomous/Augmented Machine Intelligence [1] and while a subtle difference between that and AGI, it’s not negating the possibility. Just perhaps not through existing LLM architectures [1] https://openreview.net/pdf?id=BZ5a1r-kVsf https://openreview.net/pdf?id=BZ5a1r-kVsf

barfbagginus 3y ago
It also invites the mistaken judgement that LLM-derived architecture cannot possibly give human level reasoning. "No matter what you do to an LLM it's still a stochastic parrot." Adding memory? Nope. Interactive hypothesis testing and iterative experiments? Sounds like something a parrot would say. It can automatically solve 12% of GitHub issues? Pfft, I could theoretically do 100%. If I wasn't incredibly busy... It's okay though. At this point, when someone cites Lecun to prove LLMs can never reason, we can safely assume they don't care about having an informed opinion. It's a screening signal. It tells us someone does not have a useful theory of mind and reasoning, and does not intend to do constructive work on AI systems that can reason.

mitthrowaway2 3y ago

> “Most of human knowledge is actually not language so those systems can never reach human-level intelligence — unless you change the architecture,” LeCun said. ... Is his point that LLMs will not reach human level intelligence because they're limited to text, but other approaches like Sora might, because they work on video? If so, this is a rather shallow point.

boristsr 3y ago
No, one of his other interviews he delved a bit more into it with examples, things like puzzles and quizzes like start at the North Pole, move south 1km, left 2km and up 1km. Where are you and how did you work that out? His point was there's spatial reasoning among other things happening. It's not purely a vision thing, or a language thing. There's a deeper world understanding there than just language can convey. He raised some similar points about image and video generation how they failed to produce meaningful results with a similar approach. I think it was his latest lex fridman interview. Was pretty interesting. Definitely raised some strong points.
cyanydeez 3y ago
The argument is that random tezxr is not intelligence. And the word random here.id exactly precariously intetwondd with both probablistic and coincidwntal

xnx 3y ago

> LLMs will never reach human-level intelligence For most values of human

leeeeeepw 3y ago

Long-standing Capabilities denier denies current capabilities.