6 ms·

not long ago these people would have you believe that a next word predictor trained on reddit posts would somehow lead to artificial general superintelligence

leosanchez 2y ago
If you look around, People still believe that a next word predictor trained on reddit posts would somehow lead to artificial general superintelligence
- esafak 2y ago
  Because the most powerful solution to that is to have intelligence; a model that can reason. People should not get hung up on the task; it's the model(s) that generates the prediction that matters.
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  People believed ELIZA was sentient too. I bet you could still get 10% or more people, today, to believe it is.
  - 77pt77 2y ago
    ELIZA was probably more effective than most therapists. Definitely cheaper.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
I don't understand why you'd be so dismissive about this. It's looking less likely that it'll end up happening, but is it any less believable than getting general intelligence by training a blob of meat?
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  > is it any less believable than getting general intelligence by training a blob of meat? Yes, because we understand the rough biological processes that cause this, and they are not remotely similar to this technology. We can also observe it. There is no evidence that current approaches can make LLM's achieve AGI, nor do we even know what processes would cause that.
  - kenjackson 2y ago
    > because we understand the rough biological processes that cause this We don't have a rough understanding of the biological processes that cause this, unless you literally mean just the biological process and not how it actual impacts learning/intelligence. There's no evidence that we (brains) have achieved AGI, unless you tautologically define AGI as our brains.
    - JohnMakin 2y ago
      > We don't have a rough understanding of the biological processes that cause this, Yes we do. We know how neurons communicate, we know how they are formed, we have great evidence and clues as to how this evolved and how our various neurological symptoms are able to interact with the world. Is it a fully solved problem? no. > unless you literally mean just the biological process and not how it actual impacts learning/intelligence. Of course we have some understanding of this as well. There's tremendous bodies of study around this. We know which regions of the brain correlate to reasoning, fear, planning, etc. We know when these regions are damaged or removed what happens, enough to point to a region of the brain and say "HERE." That's far, far beyond what we know about the innards of LLM's. > here's no evidence that we (brains) have achieved AGI, unless you tautologically define AGI as our brains. This is extremely circular because the current definition(s) of AGI always define it in terms of human intelligence. Unless you're saying that intelligence comes from somewhere other than our brains. Anyway, the brain is not like a LLM, in function or form, so this debate is extremely silly to me.
      - kenjackson 2y ago
in_a_society 2y ago
Expecting AGI from Reddit training data is peak "pray Mr Babbage".
- kreyenborgi 2y ago
  If you are one of today's ten thousand, this is a reference to the original garbage-in, garbage-out quote: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage#Passages_from_the_Life_of_a_Philosopher_(1864) https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage#Passages_from_...

leosanchez 2y ago

If you look around, People still believe that a next word predictor trained on reddit posts would somehow lead to artificial general superintelligence

esafak 2y ago
Because the most powerful solution to that is to have intelligence; a model that can reason. People should not get hung up on the task; it's the model(s) that generates the prediction that matters.
mrguyorama 2y ago
People believed ELIZA was sentient too. I bet you could still get 10% or more people, today, to believe it is.
- 77pt77 2y ago
  ELIZA was probably more effective than most therapists. Definitely cheaper.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

SpicyLemonZest 2y ago

I don't understand why you'd be so dismissive about this. It's looking less likely that it'll end up happening, but is it any less believable than getting general intelligence by training a blob of meat?

JohnMakin 2y ago
> is it any less believable than getting general intelligence by training a blob of meat? Yes, because we understand the rough biological processes that cause this, and they are not remotely similar to this technology. We can also observe it. There is no evidence that current approaches can make LLM's achieve AGI, nor do we even know what processes would cause that.
- kenjackson 2y ago
  > because we understand the rough biological processes that cause this We don't have a rough understanding of the biological processes that cause this, unless you literally mean just the biological process and not how it actual impacts learning/intelligence. There's no evidence that we (brains) have achieved AGI, unless you tautologically define AGI as our brains.
  - JohnMakin 2y ago
    > We don't have a rough understanding of the biological processes that cause this, Yes we do. We know how neurons communicate, we know how they are formed, we have great evidence and clues as to how this evolved and how our various neurological symptoms are able to interact with the world. Is it a fully solved problem? no. > unless you literally mean just the biological process and not how it actual impacts learning/intelligence. Of course we have some understanding of this as well. There's tremendous bodies of study around this. We know which regions of the brain correlate to reasoning, fear, planning, etc. We know when these regions are damaged or removed what happens, enough to point to a region of the brain and say "HERE." That's far, far beyond what we know about the innards of LLM's. > here's no evidence that we (brains) have achieved AGI, unless you tautologically define AGI as our brains. This is extremely circular because the current definition(s) of AGI always define it in terms of human intelligence. Unless you're saying that intelligence comes from somewhere other than our brains. Anyway, the brain is not like a LLM, in function or form, so this debate is extremely silly to me.
    - kenjackson 2y ago

in_a_society 2y ago

Expecting AGI from Reddit training data is peak "pray Mr Babbage".

kreyenborgi 2y ago
If you are one of today's ten thousand, this is a reference to the original garbage-in, garbage-out quote: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage#Passages_from_the_Life_of_a_Philosopher_(1864) https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage#Passages_from_...