8 ms·
Interview with Geoffrey Hinton
- bigyabai 1y agoCan we get a second opinion from someone that actually specializes in LLMs?
- pajamasam 1y agoOh, you mean like one of the "Godfathers of Deep Learning"[1]? [1]: https://www.techtimes.com/articles/240511/20190329/godfathers-of-ai-win-this-years-turing-award-and-1-million.htm https://www.techtimes.com/articles/240511/20190329/godfather...
- bigyabai 1y agoNo, I mean like an expert on LLMs. Hinton has said in his own words that he doesn't understand how LLMs or the transformer architecture work, I don't want his 2 cents. I'd prefer a second opinion from someone with credentials that aren't cosmetically related to the source material.
- cs702 1y agoMaybe. At the end of the OP, Hinton qualifies his guesses with: > "We don’t know what is going to happen, we have no idea, and people who tell you what is going to happen are just being silly," he adds. "We are at a point in history where something amazing is happening, and it may be amazingly good, and it may be amazingly bad. We can make guesses, but things aren’t going to stay like they are." I agree with Hinton: We only know that things will change, not how they will change. We can only make guesses. Anyone claiming to know with certainty is full of baloney.
- nradov 1y agoThis is the same clown who said years ago that we should stop training radiologists because AI would automate their jobs away. And now demand for radiologists is higher than ever. Don't waste time with his predictions.
- dang 1y agoPlease make your substantive points without swipes or name-calling. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Your comment would be fine without that first bit.
- pseudolus 1y agohttps://archive.ph/gzBV7 https://archive.ph/gzBV7
- ggm 1y agoI am surprised by the direct quotes where Hinton says "by any measure AI is intelligent" because I think these words will come back to haunt him, much as prognostications from Chomsky dogged his heels. By narrow measures of outcome, AI synthesises answers which meet needs in questioners. I think intelligence includes aspects of behaviour (such a word) of a system which go beyond simply providing answers. I don't think AI can do this, yet if ever.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Uehreka 1y ago> I think intelligence That very phrasing belies the problem with the word: There is no consensus on what intelligence is, what a clear test for it would be or whether such a test could even exist. There are only people on the internet with personal theories and opinions. So when people say AI is not intelligent, my next questions are whether rocks, trees, flies, dogs, dolphins, humans and “all humans” are intelligent. The person will answer yes/no immediately in a tone that makes it sound like what they’re saying must be obvious, and yet their answers frequently do not agree with each other. We do not have a consensus definition of intelligence that can be used to include some things and exclude others.
- ggm 1y agoExemplifies why I think Hinton was on dangerous ground. He is normally far more cautious in his use of language.
- peterashford 1y agoWe have a model for what intelligence is - what humans do. If we produce a human-like AI I think we'll agree it's intelligent. The fact that there are degrees of intelligence (dogs > flies) isn't that big of an issue, imo. It's the logically night is day argument - just because we can't point to a clear cut off point between these concepts, doesn't mean they aren't distinct concepts. So it follows with intelligence. It doesn't require consensus, just the same way that "is it night now?" doesn't require consensus
- loughnane 1y agoI think this is true for most capital equipment, at least until governments step in to take the edge off. Whether AI has a more powerful effect than it's predecessors remains to be seen. It could.
- laweijfmvo 1y agoI have zero faith in the US stepping in at this point
- SonOfKyuss 1y agoOh they are stepping in. It’s just that they are stepping in to prevent any regulations
- nextworddev 1y agoReverse regulation
- morkalork 1y agoAnd not just in the US either, they've been threatening Europe with tariffs and sanctions over attempting to regulate American tech companies in Europe.
- loughnane 1y agoAgreed. I think when the history of this time is written the failure of the government to spread around the gains of capitalism and free trade will be seen as what led to the end of a political era.
- bdangubic 1y agoyes, the governments (especially of the united states) love nothing more than to take shit from rich and give it to the poor
- roflulz 1y agoname a country that is better that isn't a petrostate?
- more_corn 1y agoObvs
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- htrp 1y agoHinton is definitely making a full turn towards luddite.
- ks2048 1y agoI view him as a scientist - which is orthogonal to the benefits of technology.
- jpalawaga 1y agoIt's certainly possible. It helps remove leverage from people trying to make a living. If your labour isn't needed, then what? An alternative view could be, this is just the same as every other technological innovation.
- gobdovan 1y agoHinton is too speculative and inconsistent for me. A reporter outside the AI field even called him out for saying with confidence that only blue collar work will survive AI by pointing out a few years back he said with the same confidence that only creative work will survive. I can't but compare his takes with Stuart Russell takes, which are so well grounded, coherent and easily presented. I often revisit Stuart Russell discussion with Steven Pinker on AI for the clarity he brings to the topic.
- treyfitty 1y agoEh, idk who Hinton is, but I’d cut him some slack for making both statements- I could imagine a case where “creatives” can semantically be understood as “new blue collar.” Musicians, dancers, photographers… are not blue color manufacturing employees, but they are fiscally more similar than their white collar counterparts. It’s possible he used inconsistent terms because he really means “low-wage employees who are far away from the monetary benefit creation decisions,” but that’s a mouthful
- glitchc 1y agoIf you don't know who Geoffrey Hinton is, I suggest you make a trip to Wikipedia post haste. Our modern LLM renaissance wouldn't exist without him.
- nurettin 1y agoEhhh it sounds like he's a poster boy who rode on the success of others (LeCun, Deepmind) and says whatever the current popular opinion is until proven wrong and shows no hint of predictive capability.
- glitchc 1y agoSay what? Show some respect, son! Hinton published the seminal paper on backpropagation. He also invented Boltzmann machines, unsupervised learning and mixture of ecperts models. He championed machine learning for 20 years even though there was zero funding for it through the 80s and 90s. He was Yann LeCun's PhD adviser. That means Yann LeCun didn't know ass from tea kettle until Hinton introduced him to machine learning. Know perchance a fellow by the name of Ilya Sutskever? ChatGPT ring any bells? Also a student of Hinton's. The list is very long.
- xnx 1y agoThank you for your contributions Geoffrey. Enjoy your retirement. You do not need to be a "thought leader".
- arduanika 1y agoBut wait, what if he says a thing that agrees with all my pre-existing assumptions? Can't he be a "thought leader" then?
- deadbabe 1y agoMore of a thought shepherd. A thought leader is a person who comes up with radical new ideas that start trending as other people subscribe to it.
- p1dda 1y agoExactly, his contributions lies in the past.
- protocolture 1y agoConsidering that the general trend has been that a few people get rich and everyone else gets poorer, this is a nothing statement.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- arduanika 1y agoFake news, based on confounding intra-country data with international data.
- pizza 1y agoIsn't the difference between "capital -> labor -> capital" and "capital -> AI -> capital" (which is basically just "capital -> capital -> capital") that it's about the elimination of labor through its financialization? Not just that the poor get poorer, but from the POV of the rich that they don't even exist. (Conditional of course upon AI actually really being that much more productive than people and not dependent on them.)
- SubiculumCode 1y agoWell, when AI replaces us as consumers, the economy will truly leave us behind
- js8 1y agoCapitalism already replaces many citizens with consumers, leaving some behind. Citizens have a say in how money are spent, not just how much money they get. Consumers might get nominal choice in how much money they get, but the choice of how to spend is either forced (e.g. rent or healthcare) or is meaningless (e.g. which brand of car to drive instead of having public transport).
- eloisant 1y agoDon't worry, capitalism knows how to make a business out of poor people. Just look at Walmart, and credit cards.
- bgwalter 1y agoA surprising number of people are in favor of (or pay lip service to) some kind of VAT on robots and "AI": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_tax Make it 50% of the sales price like with cigarettes, since "AI" makes people dumber.
- pseudocomposer 1y agoThis is true of everything anyone invents who happens to be unlucky enough to live under capitalism. Rich, greedy people ruin everything.
- briandw 1y agoThe average person in the capitalist west is so ridiculously wealthy compared people that lived pre Industrial Revolution, or in any communist or socialist country.
- pseudocomposer 1y agoThe US is the only capitalist country in the west, and our life expectancy is decreasing. Is paper wealth worth a short, miserable life where you work all the time? Moreover, most of the rest of the world’s poverty exists so that a few greedy pigs here can be even more wealthy. We have the CIA and the one-party system that controls it to thank for that.
- johnrob 1y agoBusinesses fall into 2 categories: B2C (sell to people) B2B (sell to B2C companies) If the “C” is broke, it seems like there won’t by any rich people. In other words, if the masses are poor and jobless, who is sending money to the rich?
- Genego 1y agoThere will always be plenty of money to go around no matter what situation we end up with. It will end up being much more centralized than things are today. But there won't ever be a situation where everyone is going to be poor, even if the masses are.
- deadfoxygrandpa 1y agowhat about fat government contracts
- xhrpost 1y agoThe rich class will have to shrink. Think about poor countries like North Korea, there's still a rich/powerful class, it's just a lot smaller.
- seanmcdirmid 1y agoNorth Korea is actually not that poor, well, many African countries are poorer. For the relatively high education level of their population, they are severely underdeveloped, but they would catch up quickly if the Kim’s disappeared somehow.
- 9rx 1y ago> if the masses are poor and jobless, who is sending money to the rich? What would they need it for? Remember, money is just the accounting of debt. Under the old world model, workers offer a loan to the rich — meaning that they do work for the rich and at some point in the future the rich have to pay that work back with something of equal value [e.g. food, gadgets, etc.]. But if in the new world the rich have AI to do the work they want done, the jobless masses can simply be cut out of the picture. No need to be indebted to them in the first place.
- deadbabe 1y agoJust because you fail to get rich with AI does not mean you cannot get rich by some other means
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Kapura 1y agoyeah man this is just capitalism. everybody should read piketty.
- starchild3001 1y ago"I guess it’s nice that he’s become more optimistic here. He usually just talks about how it’ll probably kill us all." (From Reddit)
- eloisant 1y agoThis time I can understand his point, and agree with most of it. I was really surprised to hear a scientist like him, who knows how the tech works, to go full scare of a Skynet AI.
- starchild3001 1y agoHe's a very smart and imaginative guy. The most imaginative people sometimes aren't the best at predicting the future (top 1), but rather good at predicting possibilities (top N).
- nick49488171 1y agoIsn't that the result of every innovation ever, except for complete revolution?
- kristoffer 1y agoNo. Poverty has significantly declined during the 20th century ..
- umeshunni 1y agoIt's the opposite. Most revolutions (bolsheviks, cuba, iran, arab spring etc) have made people significantly poorer, while most innovations have made people significantly richer (railroads, electricity, first and second agricultural revolutions, manufacturing)
- ks2048 1y agoI would be interested in some quantitative answer to this - although I imagine it would be hard to define. You skipped lots of revolutions (American, French) and of course there are non economic “costs” (the Terror of France, etc) as well as the problem of short-vs-long term effects.
- mallowdram 1y agoHinton never notices that information isn't psychological, his generation failed at resolving the conduit metaphor, ie making the arbitrary in any ways specific (unless it's about diagnostic targets). Of course Hinton is a doomer, he's bullish on his own tech's explosive growth, which, as semantic dilution and/or delusion, is really just a huge bust, generally. Hinton will be seen as another version of Tucker, not Tesla.
- js8 1y agoWhen Hinton was asked, what's the solution, he simply said, "socialism". I am a socialist too. But if you believe his thesis (that AI will concentrate power in the hands of few), I think there is hope. Let me outline a positive vision of AI. I assume it will be technologically possible to run "medium LLM" (for the lac of a better name) on your phone. A medium LLM is something that knows a limited vocabulary (say slightly larger than simple English), and perhaps doesn't remember the capital of France; but it can reason well with the limited vocabulary. So it can answer what's the capital of France by reading Wikipedia, and likewise, it can work with complicated words using their definitions in terms of simpler words. Now, everybody would run an AI like that on their phone. It would help people solve real world problems of navigating the world and talking to others. Most importantly, it would help people unite by surpassing the Dunbar number. If you (with help of your phone AI) can keep track of 15 million contacts rather than 150, it is life changing and increases trust-building by orders of magnitude. And soon, machines will be able to do that for us. Socialists have always emphasized education and communication, for everyone, because these are the true constituents of sovereignty and emancipation. We have, I believe, technological means (widely available universal computation and telecommunication) to provide a kind of mind extension for the mind that will surpass our neocortex and will allow everyone to engage with much larger number of people. Lot more human cooperation will result. I think activists should look into building and embracing such app - a decentralized communication frontend agent, which would let you build trust with large number of people, without much effort, and help you by coordinating with them (really, learning from them their skills and their struggles). We don't need social media giants to do this for us in a centralized way. So I posit this techno-anarchism as an antidote against techno-feudalism.
- tamimio 1y agohttp://archive.is/bxNly http://archive.is/bxNly
- nirui 1y agoNot sure if I'm allowed to quote from the protected article, but the full talk point was: > “What’s actually going to happen is rich people are going to use AI to replace workers,” he says. “It’s going to create massive unemployment and a huge rise in profits. It will make a few people much richer and most people poorer. That’s not AI’s fault, that is the capitalist system.” It's kind curious how that would happen. In the old days, if you want to maintain a monopoly, you can try drain out the talent pool so no one else can hire the best people to do the work that you're doing, and you can also try patent wall to delay your competitors from launching their product. But if a worker can be replaced by an AI, it could also mean that the competitiveness of the work is significantly reduced, to the point that theoretically everybody can do it. The only way (i guess) to remain the monopoly is then tightening control on the AI while optimize the process to kill off all potential competitors etc. It's all Red Ocean policies (https://www.wallstreetprep.com/knowledge/red-ocean-strategy/ https://www.wallstreetprep.com/knowledge/red-ocean-strategy/). "Massive unemployment" maybe, but I don't think "huge rise in profits" is guaranteed.
- fragmede 1y agoAt a high level, if profits are revenue minus costs, and cost goes down, and revenue stays the same, then profit goes up. If you fire all your employees and pay a tenth of that to an AI company instead, if we handwave that it's possible (it's not, currently), then there's your huge rise in profit.
- nirui 1y agoIt might work for a short while. But my point is, what if other companies also wants to join the fun? What could stop those companies from replicating the successor and eventually drive them out of the market? Back then, you have people, which is hard to duplicate and thus can act as a barrier of entry. But AI is just a program, which can be copied with ease, and runs on maybe expensive but standardized hardware.
- staticman2 1y agoHinton said on X “I left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google," Now he is claiming he left to watch Netflix?
- Dave_Wishengrad 1y ago[dead]