5 ms·
Absolute definitions are weak. They won't settle anything. We know what we need right now, the next step. That step is a machine that, when it fails, it fails
by alganet 1y ago
Absolute definitions are weak. They won't settle anything.
We know what we need right now, the next step. That step is a machine that, when it fails, it fails in a human way.
Humans also make mistakes, and hallucinate. But we do it as humans. When a human fails, you think "damn, that's a mistake perhaps me or my friend could have done".
LLMs on the other hand, fail in a weird way. When they hallucinate, they demonstrate how non-human they are.
It has nothing to do with some special kind of interrogator. We must assume the best human interrogator possible. This next step I described work even with the most skeptic human interrogator possible. It also synergizes with the idea of alignment in ways other tests don't.
When that step is reached, humans will or will not figure out another characteristic that makes it evident that "subject X" is a machine and not a human, and a way to test it.
Moving the goalpost is the only way forward. Not all goalpost moves are valid, but the valid next move is a goalpost move. It's kind of obvious.
- AstroBen 1y agoThis makes sense if we're trying to recreate a human mind artifically, but I don't think that's the goal? There's no reason an equivalent or superior general intelligence needs to be similar to us at all
- card_zero 1y agoThere's no reason to the idea "superior intelligence". Nobody can say what that means, except by assuming that animal intelligence is the same category as the kind we want and differs from human intelligence in degree rather than qualitatively, and then extrapolating forward from this idea of measuring intelligence on the intelligence meter that we don't have one of. Besides which we already defined "artificial intelligence" to mean non-intelligence: are we now going to attain "artificial general intelligence" by the same process? Should we add another letter to the acronym, like move on to "genuine artificial general intelligence"?
- AstroBen 1y agoIs there really no agreement to what intelligence refers to? I've seen it defined as the ability to reach a goal, which was clear to me. Eg. a chess AI with 1500 ELO is more intelligent than one at 1000
- ben_w 1y agoThat's capability, intelligence can also be how quickly it learned to get to that capability. Consider the difference in intelligence between a kid who skipped five years of school vs one who was held back a year: if both got the same grade in the end, the one who skipped five years was smarter.
- AstroBen 1y agomakes sense. Maybe a combination of both would be most accurate - how fast you can learn + what's your peak capability Looking at it solely on rate of learning has LLMs way smarter than humans already which doesn't seem right to say
- ben_w 1y ago> Looking at it solely on rate of learning has LLMs way smarter than humans already which doesn't seem right to say Sure, but "rate" also has two meanings, both useful, but importantly different: per unit of wall-clock time, and per example. Transistors are just so much faster than synapses, that computers can (somewhat) compensate for being absolutely terrible by the latter meaning — at least, in cases where there's enough examples for them to learn from. In cases where the supply of examples is too small (and cannot be enhanced with synthetic data, simulations and so on), state of the art AI models still suck. In cases where there is sufficient data, for example self-play in games of chess and go, the AI can be super-human by a substantial margin.
- alganet 1y agoLLMs are trained on human data, and aimed at perform tasks in human roles. That's the goal. It is supposed to be super, but superhuman. Able to interact with us. Which leads us to the Turing Test (also, not a test... "the imitation game" is more of a philosophical exploration on thinking machines). My comment assumes this is already understood as Turing explained. If the thing is not human, then there's absolutely no way we can evaluate it. There's no way we can measure it. It becomes an impossible task.
- AstroBen 1y agoWhat's wrong with measuring and evaluating its outputs directly? If it can accurately file taxes better than us does it matter if it does it in a human manner? Birds and planes both fly and all
- alganet 1y agoIf your definition of AGI is filing taxes, then it's fine. Once we step into any other problem, then you need to measure that other problem as well. Lots of problems are concerned with how an intelligent being could fail. Our society is built on lots of those assumptions.
- xyzzy123 1y agoFor _investment_ purposes the definition of AGI is very simple. It is: "to what extent can it replace human workers?". From this perspective, "100% AGI" is achieved when AI can do any job that happens primarily on a computer. This can be extended to humanoid robots in the obvious way.
- alganet 1y agoI don't see how that changes anything. Failing like a human would is not a cute add-on. It's a fundamental requirement for creating AIs that can replace humans.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- laterium 1y agoIndustrial machines don't fail like humans yet they replaced human workers. Cars don't fail like horses yet they replaced them. ATMs don't fail like bank tellers... Why is this such a big requirement?
- alganet 1y agoMicrowaves didn't replace ovens. The Segway didn't replaced bikes. 3D movies didn't replace IMAX. I can go on and on... Some things fail, or fail to meet their initial overblown expectations. The microwave oven was indeed a commercial success. And that's fine, but it sucks at being an oven. Everyone knows it. Now, this post is more about the scientific part of it, not the commercial one. What makes an oven better than a microwave oven? Why is pizza from an oven delicious and microwave pizza sucks? Maybe there's a reason, some Maillard reaction that requires hot air convection and can't be replicated by shaking up water molecules. We are talking about those kinds of things. What makes it tick, how does it work, etc. Not if it makes money or not. Damn, the thing doesn't even make money yet. Why talk about a plus that the technology still doesn't have?
- 1y ago
- hackinthebochs 1y agoWhy are human failure modes so special?
- alganet 1y agoBecause we have 300 thousand years of collective experience on dealing with humans.
- ben_w 1y agoIronically, one of the ways that humans are worse than AI, is that any given human learns from an even smaller fraction of that collective experience than AI already does.
- alganet 1y agoI don't understand your point. How does that observation help in setting up a test or definition?
- ben_w 1y agoThat's because it's not trying to do so. The observation is that humans are broadly unable to prepare for the failure modes of other humans, even when those failure modes have been studied and the results of those studies widely published. This means that while the failure modes of humans are indeed different from the failure modes of LLMs (and AI more broadly), these differences are not what I anticipate to be the most important next step in AI research.
- akoboldfrying 1y ago> This next step I described work even with the most skeptic human interrogator possible. To be a valid test, it still has to be passed by ~every adult human. The harder you make the test (in any direction), the more it fails on this important axis.
- alganet 1y agoYou are wrong. Please read the Turing paper: https://courses.cs.umbc.edu/471/papers/turing.pdf https://courses.cs.umbc.edu/471/papers/turing.pdf > A number of interrogators could be used, and statistics compiled to show how often the right identification was given Turing determines that we need enough competent-interrogator passes just to estabilish a statistical certainty, not ~everyone. I tend to agree with him on this.
- akoboldfrying 1y agoPlease reread that section. You'll discover it has nothing to do with whether humans can pass the test. If you can find a part of the paper in which Turing really does claim that it is unnecessary for most adult humans to be able to pass the test, by all means quote it. But this would be a surprising thing for him to claim, because it would undermine the entire foundation of his Imitation Game.
- alganet 1y agoDo you understand how using statistics to determine degrees of certainty works? That is a must-have to understand academic work. I think that if you did, you wouldn't be answering like you did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-value
- akoboldfrying 1y agoYour quote does not back up your claim. My original claim was that the Turing test needs to be passable by ~every adult human. You counterclaimed that Turing himself didn't think so, and provided that quote from the IG paper as evidence. But that quote is in a section about testing digital computers, not humans. Thus it is unconnected to your counterclaim. I don't know how much simpler I can make it. Find a quote that actually backs up your claim, or accept that you've learned something about the paper you told me to read.
- latentsea 1y ago> We know what we need right now, the next step. That step is a machine that, when it fails, it fails in a human way. I don't know if machines that become insecure and lash out are a good idea.
- alganet 1y agoThe issue is if they lash out in some incomprehensible way, or lash out as a alien superingelligence. If they lash out as a human, that's fine.
- latentsea 1y agoDepends on how much power the human has.
- alganet 1y agoThe super-AI is going to have power. Deployed everywhere, used by millions, etc. You have two choices: - It can potentially lash out in an alien-like way. - It can potentially lash out in a human-like way. Do you understand why this has no effect on the argument whatsoever? You are just introducing an irrelevant observation. I want the AI to behave like human always, no exceptions. "What if it's a bad human" Jesus. If people make an evil AI, then it doesn't matter anyway how it behaves, it's just bad even before we get to the discussion about how it fails. Even when it accomplishes tasks succesfully, it's bad.
- latentsea 1y ago> Do you understand why this has no effect on the argument whatsoever? You are just introducing an irrelevant observation. I want the AI to behave like human always, no exceptions. Do you like how humans behave? Also, how DO humans behave? What kind of childhood should we give the AI? Daddy issues? Abused as a child? Neglected by a drug addicted mother? Ruthlessly bullied in school?
- 1y ago