3 ms·

Because the bet is that LLMs won't lead to AGI? We need to learn the lessons now, not later

talldayo 2y ago
LLMs don't even lead to sub-human intelligence. It produces text that qualifies for a number of truth-based benchmarks which we use as a statistical plinko-board to see which model's random-number-generator is tuned better. It cannot "think" because it is a bunch of text tokens being drawn from a heuristic hat. You can map a Markov Chain or a cat on a typewriter to these tests; they're not a measure of human intelligence at all. There aren't lessons to learn, besides the fact that we're wasting our time. The only risk around AGI is that people will trust it as much as they trust current AI, and then risk their own annihilation when they casually accept a blatantly hallucinated answer. It's like if HAL-9000 came preinstalled with Alzheimer's, and we're still adamant that we can trust him to operate the airlock. It's time to get real and admit that any risk imposed by AGI (or regular AI, for that matter) is a failure in implementation. The concept of alignment is a bald-faced marketing ploy intent on selling "AI safety" to people that don't know what AI even is.
- datameta 2y ago
  I think there are two things being discussed here: 1) alignment as portrayed by OpenAI along with the perception of intelligence from the current SoTA LLMs 2) alignment as a field of study to prevent catastrophe I'm speaking about the latter and I don't think labeling alignment as a total facade is conducive to starting well on the path of developing guiderails for AGI. Thank the universe that it seems LLMs cannot scale to emergent intellect, because that lets us do a dry run. In my opinion, we're currently tanking the current go-around as legislation is ever farther behind while we watch an absolute arms race between nations and corporations.
analognoise 2y ago
Obviously LLMs won’t lead to AGI, but in the nooks and crannies of ridiculously pointless academic thought, you can fit multiple lifetimes worth of careers, while never achieving anything of note (unless that’s the goal - and that’s valid!). Splash a dash of paint on the same moral and ethical questions debated ad-nauseam for very little money, sprinkle lies about how dangerous and advanced a de rigueur technique (LLM) which masquerades as a whole field (artificial intelligence) is, and by golly some silly Silicon Valley pump and dump will give you an office to pontificate in.

LLMs don't even lead to sub-human intelligence. It produces text that qualifies for a number of truth-based benchmarks which we use as a statistical plinko-board to see which model's random-number-generator is tuned better. It cannot "think" because it is a bunch of text tokens being drawn from a heuristic hat. You can map a Markov Chain or a cat on a typewriter to these tests; they're not a measure of human intelligence at all. There aren't lessons to learn, besides the fact that we're wasting our time. The only risk around AGI is that people will trust it as much as they trust current AI, and then risk their own annihilation when they casually accept a blatantly hallucinated answer. It's like if HAL-9000 came preinstalled with Alzheimer's, and we're still adamant that we can trust him to operate the airlock. It's time to get real and admit that any risk imposed by AGI (or regular AI, for that matter) is a failure in implementation. The concept of alignment is a bald-faced marketing ploy intent on selling "AI safety" to people that don't know what AI even is.

datameta 2y ago
I think there are two things being discussed here: 1) alignment as portrayed by OpenAI along with the perception of intelligence from the current SoTA LLMs 2) alignment as a field of study to prevent catastrophe I'm speaking about the latter and I don't think labeling alignment as a total facade is conducive to starting well on the path of developing guiderails for AGI. Thank the universe that it seems LLMs cannot scale to emergent intellect, because that lets us do a dry run. In my opinion, we're currently tanking the current go-around as legislation is ever farther behind while we watch an absolute arms race between nations and corporations.

analognoise 2y ago

Obviously LLMs won’t lead to AGI, but in the nooks and crannies of ridiculously pointless academic thought, you can fit multiple lifetimes worth of careers, while never achieving anything of note (unless that’s the goal - and that’s valid!). Splash a dash of paint on the same moral and ethical questions debated ad-nauseam for very little money, sprinkle lies about how dangerous and advanced a de rigueur technique (LLM) which masquerades as a whole field (artificial intelligence) is, and by golly some silly Silicon Valley pump and dump will give you an office to pontificate in.