4 ms·

“Over an arbitrarily long timeline, assuming stable geopolitical conditions, technology will continue to improve, at an arbitrary rate”. What a groundbreaking

by xk_id 2y ago

“Over an arbitrarily long timeline, assuming stable geopolitical conditions, technology will continue to improve, at an arbitrary rate”. What a groundbreaking insight, no wonder people are excited.

brigadier132 2y ago
Did you even look at the Wright brothers plane? Why are people excited about it? It's an expensive deathtrap!
- xk_id 2y ago
  So you are basing your outlook on extrapolating from a completely different engineering domain and a completely different socio-historical context?
  - brigadier132 2y ago
    yes and im right
- hervature 2y ago
  The Wright flight was in December 1903 and planes were considered for a ban as weapons at the international level in 1911 [1]. Their capabilities and potential were obvious to everyone before the flight occurred. Imagining traveling through the air like a bird was obviously going to be a game changer to even a simpleton. The "Attention Is All You Need" has now been out for over 7 years and so a directly comparable timeline. What do we have? Better autocomplete? Worse search results? An overall efficiency increase of 5%? For people knowledgeable about the technical details, a path to AGI as a bigger LLM is about as probable to a path to AGI as using a big random forest. Arguing by example is stupid. Plenty of other examples have been proposed elsewhere in this thread. My only contribution is that I think LLMs are not going to yield anything more than incremental efficiency gains. If the only result after 7 years is that NVidia became a new $1T company and no one else then I think it should be becoming more obvious that this is a gold rush situation and not an iPhone situation. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_in_World_War_I#cite_note-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_in_World_War_I#cite_n...
  - ls612 2y ago
    When the AI gets good enough to fly FPV drones with no datalink (which is sooner than you think) that will be the tipping point you are looking for.
  - brigadier132 2y ago
    > The Wright flight was in December 1903 and planes were considered for a ban as weapons at the international level in What a coincidence that we have people trying to ban AI at a domestic and international level > What do we have? Better autocomplete? Worse search results? It's ridiculous to minimize LLMs as better autocomplete. Also I get it, for most people remembering how things were more than a couple of years ago is hard. Can you even remember when you couldn't talk to computers?
  - karmakurtisaani 2y ago
    Tangentially related, I've been rather disappointed with the advances coming from software since communication was solved at some point in the early 2000s. Software mainly seems to enable new business models, of which some tangentially improve our quality of life, others are actively harmful. Contrasting this to advances in technologies like solar panels or electric cars almost makes me wish I had chosen a different career path.
elevatedastalt 2y ago
The slope has changed between 10 years and ago. You are free to disagree, but don't pretend like you don't understand what the AI crowd is saying.
- xk_id 2y ago
  Never in the history of man has the slope of progress been linear. The AI crowd is entirely predicated on a platitude.
  - Davidzheng 2y ago
    AI right now is like covid in March or climate change in the 1980s. It's no longer a real intellectual debate on whether it will arrive (that is basically over by 2022) now it's an emotional battle where people are incapable of accepting that such a possibility can exist vs actually calculating
    - Jensson 2y ago
      > AI right now is like covid in March March 2021 yeah, well known all over the world, everyone talks about it but not much has really changed in a while. Some fear COVID might mutate into something deadlier, and some think generative AI will turn into something completely different. The quick pace was GPT-2 and GPT-3, those happened 2019 and 2020, today it is a crawl in comparison, GPT-3 was like covid in march-2020, at the time most were barely aware of it but today it is mainstream. The revolution you are talking about has already happened, people all over the world interact with their computer using natural language, so your prediction here is a bit late.
      - Davidzheng 2y ago
        Did we experience the same thing? March 2020 saw explosion in nyc and much of mainland US and widespread lockdowns. However many people were convinced the lockdowns would last two weeks at most with covid dropping to near zero (in hindsight completely ridiculous low probability thinking)
tim333 2y ago
That's not the hype you are looking for. It's more that by 2040 AI/robots will be considerably smarter than humans and we can kick back while they build us palaces and yachts. Not that that will definitely happen but it's not a business as usual scenario.

by xk_id 2y ago

brigadier132 2y ago

Did you even look at the Wright brothers plane? Why are people excited about it? It's an expensive deathtrap!

xk_id 2y ago
So you are basing your outlook on extrapolating from a completely different engineering domain and a completely different socio-historical context?
- brigadier132 2y ago
  yes and im right
hervature 2y ago
The Wright flight was in December 1903 and planes were considered for a ban as weapons at the international level in 1911 [1]. Their capabilities and potential were obvious to everyone before the flight occurred. Imagining traveling through the air like a bird was obviously going to be a game changer to even a simpleton. The "Attention Is All You Need" has now been out for over 7 years and so a directly comparable timeline. What do we have? Better autocomplete? Worse search results? An overall efficiency increase of 5%? For people knowledgeable about the technical details, a path to AGI as a bigger LLM is about as probable to a path to AGI as using a big random forest. Arguing by example is stupid. Plenty of other examples have been proposed elsewhere in this thread. My only contribution is that I think LLMs are not going to yield anything more than incremental efficiency gains. If the only result after 7 years is that NVidia became a new $1T company and no one else then I think it should be becoming more obvious that this is a gold rush situation and not an iPhone situation. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_in_World_War_I#cite_note-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_in_World_War_I#cite_n...
- ls612 2y ago
  When the AI gets good enough to fly FPV drones with no datalink (which is sooner than you think) that will be the tipping point you are looking for.
- brigadier132 2y ago
  > The Wright flight was in December 1903 and planes were considered for a ban as weapons at the international level in What a coincidence that we have people trying to ban AI at a domestic and international level > What do we have? Better autocomplete? Worse search results? It's ridiculous to minimize LLMs as better autocomplete. Also I get it, for most people remembering how things were more than a couple of years ago is hard. Can you even remember when you couldn't talk to computers?
- karmakurtisaani 2y ago
  Tangentially related, I've been rather disappointed with the advances coming from software since communication was solved at some point in the early 2000s. Software mainly seems to enable new business models, of which some tangentially improve our quality of life, others are actively harmful. Contrasting this to advances in technologies like solar panels or electric cars almost makes me wish I had chosen a different career path.

elevatedastalt 2y ago

The slope has changed between 10 years and ago. You are free to disagree, but don't pretend like you don't understand what the AI crowd is saying.

xk_id 2y ago
Never in the history of man has the slope of progress been linear. The AI crowd is entirely predicated on a platitude.
- Davidzheng 2y ago
  AI right now is like covid in March or climate change in the 1980s. It's no longer a real intellectual debate on whether it will arrive (that is basically over by 2022) now it's an emotional battle where people are incapable of accepting that such a possibility can exist vs actually calculating
  - Jensson 2y ago
    > AI right now is like covid in March March 2021 yeah, well known all over the world, everyone talks about it but not much has really changed in a while. Some fear COVID might mutate into something deadlier, and some think generative AI will turn into something completely different. The quick pace was GPT-2 and GPT-3, those happened 2019 and 2020, today it is a crawl in comparison, GPT-3 was like covid in march-2020, at the time most were barely aware of it but today it is mainstream. The revolution you are talking about has already happened, people all over the world interact with their computer using natural language, so your prediction here is a bit late.
    - Davidzheng 2y ago
      Did we experience the same thing? March 2020 saw explosion in nyc and much of mainland US and widespread lockdowns. However many people were convinced the lockdowns would last two weeks at most with covid dropping to near zero (in hindsight completely ridiculous low probability thinking)

tim333 2y ago

That's not the hype you are looking for. It's more that by 2040 AI/robots will be considerably smarter than humans and we can kick back while they build us palaces and yachts. Not that that will definitely happen but it's not a business as usual scenario.