25 ms·

the hype will never die. all the smartest people in industry and government believe that there is a very high probability that this technology is near the edge

the hype will never die. all the smartest people in industry and government believe that there is a very high probability that this technology is near the edge of starting the AGI landslide. you dont need AGI to start the AGI landslide, you just need AI tools that are smart enough to automate the process of discovering and building the first AGI models. every conceivable heuristic indicates that we are near the edge. and because of this, AI has now become a matter of national security. the research and investment wont stop, because it cant, because it is now an arms race. this wont just fizzle out. it will be probed and investigated to absolute exhaustion before anyone feels safe enough to stop participating in the race. if you have been keeping up you will know that high level federal bureaucrats are now directly involved in openAI.

umbra07 2y ago
can you share some of these heuristics you referred to?
- AI_beffr 2y ago
  the turing test
jfengel 2y ago
I am not among those smartest, so take my opinion with a mountain of salt. But I'm just not convinced that this is going in the direction of AGI. The recent advances are truly jaw dropping. It absolutely merits being investigated to the hilt. There is a very good chance that it will end up being a net profit. But intuitively they don't feel to me like they're getting more human. If anything I feel like the recent round of "get it to reason aloud" is the opposite of what makes "general intelligence" a thing. The vast majority of human behavior isn't reasoned, aloud or otherwise. It'll be super cool if I'm wrong and we're just one algorithm or extra data set or scale factor of CPUs away from It, whatever It turns out to be. My intuition here isn't worth much. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was right despite that.
- snapcaster 2y ago
  Did you criticize the turing test as being meaningless before it was easily passed by LLMs? if not i don't see how you can avoid updating on "this is getting more human" or at least "this is getting closer to intelligence" to avoid the human-bias
  - jfengel 2y ago
    I never gave much thought to the Turing test one way or the other. It never struck me as especially informative. I've always been more interested in the non-verbal aspects of human intelligence. I believe that "true AGI", whatever that is, is likely to be able to mimic sentient but non-verbal species. I'd like to see an AGI do what a dog or cat does. LLMs are quite astonishing at mimicking something humans specifically do, the most "rational" parts of our brain. But they seem to jump past the basic, non-rational parts of the brain. And I don't think we'll see it as "true AGI" until it does that -- whatever that is. I'm reminded of the early AI researchers who taught AI to play chess because it's what smart people do, but it couldn't do any of the things dumb people do. I think the biggest question right now is whether our present techniques are a misleading local maximum, or if we're on the right slope and just need to keep climbing.
    - snapcaster 2y ago
      What do you think a dog or cat does that can't be replicated by LLMs?
      - jfengel 2y ago
        I don't know. I know that any particular thing I say could be met with an LLM that did that thing. But at the moment an LLM doesn't seem to be capable of coding itself up that way. Yet.
        snapcaster 2y ago
        I guess that was kind of my question when I thought about what you said. I could think of any things that a cat or dog do that _current_ LLMs can't do but nothing that seems fundamentally out of reach
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
AGI is PR. The money is in automating low-level customer service, coding and data science.
- empath75 2y ago
  That's just the low hanging fruit. People are going to be moving further up the "intelligence" stack as systems integrating AI get more sophisticated.
mvdtnz 2y ago
I can't believe I'm reading this kind of stuff about crappy chat bots. The world has lost its mind.
- AI_beffr 2y ago
  if you think the latest models are crappy chatbots then you are truly and idiot

umbra07 2y ago

can you share some of these heuristics you referred to?

AI_beffr 2y ago
the turing test

jfengel 2y ago

I am not among those smartest, so take my opinion with a mountain of salt. But I'm just not convinced that this is going in the direction of AGI. The recent advances are truly jaw dropping. It absolutely merits being investigated to the hilt. There is a very good chance that it will end up being a net profit. But intuitively they don't feel to me like they're getting more human. If anything I feel like the recent round of "get it to reason aloud" is the opposite of what makes "general intelligence" a thing. The vast majority of human behavior isn't reasoned, aloud or otherwise. It'll be super cool if I'm wrong and we're just one algorithm or extra data set or scale factor of CPUs away from It, whatever It turns out to be. My intuition here isn't worth much. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was right despite that.

snapcaster 2y ago
Did you criticize the turing test as being meaningless before it was easily passed by LLMs? if not i don't see how you can avoid updating on "this is getting more human" or at least "this is getting closer to intelligence" to avoid the human-bias
- jfengel 2y ago
  I never gave much thought to the Turing test one way or the other. It never struck me as especially informative. I've always been more interested in the non-verbal aspects of human intelligence. I believe that "true AGI", whatever that is, is likely to be able to mimic sentient but non-verbal species. I'd like to see an AGI do what a dog or cat does. LLMs are quite astonishing at mimicking something humans specifically do, the most "rational" parts of our brain. But they seem to jump past the basic, non-rational parts of the brain. And I don't think we'll see it as "true AGI" until it does that -- whatever that is. I'm reminded of the early AI researchers who taught AI to play chess because it's what smart people do, but it couldn't do any of the things dumb people do. I think the biggest question right now is whether our present techniques are a misleading local maximum, or if we're on the right slope and just need to keep climbing.
  - snapcaster 2y ago
    What do you think a dog or cat does that can't be replicated by LLMs?
    - jfengel 2y ago
      I don't know. I know that any particular thing I say could be met with an LLM that did that thing. But at the moment an LLM doesn't seem to be capable of coding itself up that way. Yet.
      - snapcaster 2y ago
        I guess that was kind of my question when I thought about what you said. I could think of any things that a cat or dog do that _current_ LLMs can't do but nothing that seems fundamentally out of reach

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

AGI is PR. The money is in automating low-level customer service, coding and data science.

empath75 2y ago
That's just the low hanging fruit. People are going to be moving further up the "intelligence" stack as systems integrating AI get more sophisticated.

mvdtnz 2y ago

I can't believe I'm reading this kind of stuff about crappy chat bots. The world has lost its mind.

AI_beffr 2y ago
if you think the latest models are crappy chatbots then you are truly and idiot