3 ms·

> given the strides AI has made over the last few decades This is where I lost the plot. The techno-futurists always seem to try to co-opt Moore's law or simil

> given the strides AI has made over the last few decades This is where I lost the plot. The techno-futurists always seem to try to co-opt Moore's law or similar scaling laws and claim it'll somehow take care of whatever scifi bugaboo du jour they're peddling, without acknowledging that Moore's law is specifically about transistor density and has nothing to do with "strides" in "AI". > whatever super-intelligence is can't be far away. How do you figure? Or is it just an article of your faith? It's been the same old, tired argument for seven decades--"These darned computers can count real real fast so therefore any day now they'll be able to think for themselves!" But so far nobody's shown it to be true, and all the people claiming it's right around the corner have been wrong. What makes this time different?

roenxi 2y ago
> How do you figure? https://epochai.org/blog/training-compute-of-frontier-ai-models-grows-by-4-5x-per-year https://epochai.org/blog/training-compute-of-frontier-ai-mod... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/test-scores-ai-capabilities-relative-human-performance https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/test-scores-ai-capabiliti... We're still seeing exponential upswing in compute and we appear to already be probing around human capacity in the models. Past experience suggests that once AIs are within spitting distance of human ability they will exceed what a human mind can do in short order. These are not subtle trends.
- jcgrillo 2y ago
  I'm not sure what the amount of computer time spent on training the models has to do with anything, the article states it "is the best predictor of broad AI capabilities we have" without attempting to defend the claim. The "humies" (to use a dated term) benchmarks are interesting but clearly not super indicative of real world performance--one merely has to interact with one of these LLMs to find their (often severe) limitations, and it's not clear at all that more computer time spent on training will actually make them better. EDIT: re: the computer time metric, by the same token shouldn't block chains have changed the world by now if computer time is the predictor of success? It makes sense for the industry proponents of LLMs to focus on this metric, because ultimately that's what they sell. Microsoft, NVidia, Google, Amazon, etc all benefit astronomically from computationally intensive fads, be it chatbot parlor tricks or NFTs. And the industry at large does as well--a rising tide lifts all boats. It's not at all obvious any of this is worth something directly, though.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    > I'm not sure what the amount of computer time spent on training the models has to do with anything Fair enough. What do you think is driving the uptick of AI performance and why don't you think it will be correlated with the amount of compute invested? The limitations business looks like a red herring. Being flawed and limited doesn't even disqualify an AI from being super-intelligent (whatever that might mean). Humans are remarkably flawed and limited, it takes a lot of setup to get them to a point where they can behave intelligently. > EDIT: re: the computer time metric, by the same token shouldn't block chains have changed the world by now if computer time is the predictor of success? That seems like it would be a defensible claim if you wanted to make it. One of the trends I keep an eye on is that log(price) is similar to the trend in log(hash rate) for Bitcoin. I don't think it is relevant though because Bitcoin isn't an AI system.

roenxi 2y ago

> How do you figure? https://epochai.org/blog/training-compute-of-frontier-ai-models-grows-by-4-5x-per-year https://epochai.org/blog/training-compute-of-frontier-ai-mod... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/test-scores-ai-capabilities-relative-human-performance https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/test-scores-ai-capabiliti... We're still seeing exponential upswing in compute and we appear to already be probing around human capacity in the models. Past experience suggests that once AIs are within spitting distance of human ability they will exceed what a human mind can do in short order. These are not subtle trends.

jcgrillo 2y ago
I'm not sure what the amount of computer time spent on training the models has to do with anything, the article states it "is the best predictor of broad AI capabilities we have" without attempting to defend the claim. The "humies" (to use a dated term) benchmarks are interesting but clearly not super indicative of real world performance--one merely has to interact with one of these LLMs to find their (often severe) limitations, and it's not clear at all that more computer time spent on training will actually make them better. EDIT: re: the computer time metric, by the same token shouldn't block chains have changed the world by now if computer time is the predictor of success? It makes sense for the industry proponents of LLMs to focus on this metric, because ultimately that's what they sell. Microsoft, NVidia, Google, Amazon, etc all benefit astronomically from computationally intensive fads, be it chatbot parlor tricks or NFTs. And the industry at large does as well--a rising tide lifts all boats. It's not at all obvious any of this is worth something directly, though.
- roenxi 2y ago
  > I'm not sure what the amount of computer time spent on training the models has to do with anything Fair enough. What do you think is driving the uptick of AI performance and why don't you think it will be correlated with the amount of compute invested? The limitations business looks like a red herring. Being flawed and limited doesn't even disqualify an AI from being super-intelligent (whatever that might mean). Humans are remarkably flawed and limited, it takes a lot of setup to get them to a point where they can behave intelligently. > EDIT: re: the computer time metric, by the same token shouldn't block chains have changed the world by now if computer time is the predictor of success? That seems like it would be a defensible claim if you wanted to make it. One of the trends I keep an eye on is that log(price) is similar to the trend in log(hash rate) for Bitcoin. I don't think it is relevant though because Bitcoin isn't an AI system.