5 ms·

The AI boom is based on a fundamental mistake

26 points by Anon84 11mo ago

pedalpete 11mo ago
https://archive.is/yttjq https://archive.is/yttjq
miladyincontrol 11mo ago
Wordceling over semantics of LLMs seems such a fool's errand ripe with an innate smugness that the output of our brains is somehow special, and that no matter how advanced these AI get they will never be suffice to their definition of knowledge. It feels like a sort of smug escapism that ignores for many tasks LLM output regardless of how you want to define it is enough. It may not replace humans or our thought entirely, but many otherwise human tasks simply do not require such. Instead of facing the reality of such authors like this article's rejoice under the idea that our thought is special, our output unique and unmatched, those AI marketing fools are for naught as we cannot be replaced because of how they tried sticking LLM's output into a very human shaped box... if only it were that simple.
pedalpete 11mo ago
I keep getting the feeling that the tech media is it's own worst enemy, or it shows how little tech media like the verge understands about technology. Though I agree that language is not intelligence, suggesting that the AI boom is only about LLMs, or that LLMs do not create value is incredibly misleading. I disagree with the base concept that to justify the current investment, we must arrive at AGI. Estimates put total AI investement at $1.5T. Is it a lot? Sure. But what is going to come out of it. Faster and likely improved results from medical imaging. Lower cost and widespread ability to create images and videos, denting the multi-trillion dollar marketing industry. Self-driving and advanced driver assistance, lives saves, costs reduced. Improvements in education and low-cost tutoring available to more people. Let's say these investements just break even with spend. Isn't that better for society? I know people are going to say "but what about the radiologists"? We have a shortage of GPs and doctors to care for an aging population. These highly trained doctors can do more in the medical community. What about the actors/directors/sound engineers, etc in the media industry. This will likely shrink, but we can't ignore their expertise entirely. This industry won't go away. A friend is a voice actor. He isn't being replaced, however, he is getting less work, not because of the final production, but because in the pre-production phases, they don't need his expertise because they can use AI as 'good enough". The lens I look at this through is my grandfather, who developed film for a living. That job disappeared. Nobody cried out for the film developers when we made the shift to digital. We create more imagery now than ever before, more people are employed in the imaging business than ever before. As a (former) software engineer myself, do I believe AI will replace engineers? I think this is true as much as packages replaces engineers. When I started programming, there weren't a ton of open-source packages and there weren't a ton of tools like NPM, Cargo, for managing packages. I saw the transition from "write most of the code yourself" to "lego-brick" style programming. It didn't reduce the amount of programmers, it increased what we could do, and allowed us to do more interesting work than boilerplate.
- techblueberry 11mo ago
  “ The lens I look at this through is my grandfather, who developed film for a living. That job disappeared. Nobody cried out for the film developers when we made the shift to digital.” This is how progress has created so much human suffering, by impacting people in a way just sparse enough that you can believably imply “no one cried out for x”. Yes they did, it impacted thousands if not multiples of that; many in ways that they never recovered from. Some of them probably committed suicide, or ended up homeless, or in some other way had their life destroyed. And that impact reverberated onto their friends, families and communities. And maybe the New York Times even wrote an article about it, but we collectively as a society ignored that suffering.
  - jorl17 11mo ago
    Utilitarianism is a bitch, huh? (I make this remark merely as a gag. I think you pinpoint an issue which has been unresolved for ages and is knee-deep into ethics. One could argue that many of our disagreements about AI and progress (in a broader sense) stem from different positions on ethics, including utilitarianism).
    - techblueberry 11mo ago
      I’m a utilitarian, but a transparent one. I think most people are uncomfortable saying “I acknowledge the pain and suffering it took to make my iPhone, and the tradeoff is worth it.”
      - jorl17 11mo ago
        I very unironically think everyone should watch The Good Place to get an initial feel for ethics.
- turtlesdown11 11mo ago
  None of these "what's going to come out of it" are likely to occur.
austhrow743 11mo ago
Article makes the claim that LLMs are not the path to AGI and provides some information on the topic. I can’t find where they try to determine how much investment, purchasing, or use is fuelled by claims that AGI is coming though. Absent that, the title seems unrelated to the article content.
- add-sub-mul-div 11mo ago
  Right, the investment is a bet on replacing a vast amount of labor, period. They don't care whether that replacement is AGI or not. They'll be happy if it's just lesser/enshittified but passable output.
manofmanysmiles 11mo ago
I would love to ask the author: are you sure that large language models are only modeling language?
- DrierCycle 11mo ago
  Whatever gets predicted by tokens gets summarized by symbols, which are artifacts of language. This gets to the illusory aspects of binary as well, the rabbit hole goes deep.
hshdhdhj4444 11mo ago
I don’t necessarily disagree with the first couple of claims. But I think the author pulls a sleight of hand to make their case (to be fair, I suspect they themselves didn’t realize they’re doing this). - The first claim is that language is not intelligence. I think this is true, but am not sure. However, for the sake of argument, let’s accept this as true. However, this leads to the obvious objection stated by the author. General intelligence doesn’t need to work the same way as human intelligence does. The author counters this with their second claim. - We have no evidence that a language based model can lead to intelligence. For the sake of argument, let’s even accept this as true. But here’s where the sleight of hand comes in. Lack of evidence in X being true is not the same as evidence that X is false. Just because we don’t have evidence that language can evolve into something like intelligence, doesn’t mean language cannot evolve into something like evidence. And so far our experience in language evolving into something like intelligencr has been surprisingly positive.
- DrierCycle 11mo ago
  Intelligence is wordless. Basic fact. And words are used in the aftermath of thought/intelligence, not prior. They are aftereffects, not effects. Words have no prior. That's a big problem.
- vrighter 11mo ago
  Tfa ddn't imply lack of evidence is evidence of impossibility. What he is referring to is that this whole bubble is predicated on promises that it actually is possible. And very soon, at that. When they said there is no evidence they meant that the bubble is expanding due to these promises being made without the evidence. Meaning everyone should be warier about a much bigger risk then they are led to believe. But if that were true, the actual insane amounts of money moving around wouldn't be so insane. So "graph go down"

26 points by Anon84 11mo ago

https://archive.is/yttjq https://archive.is/yttjq

Wordceling over semantics of LLMs seems such a fool's errand ripe with an innate smugness that the output of our brains is somehow special, and that no matter how advanced these AI get they will never be suffice to their definition of knowledge. It feels like a sort of smug escapism that ignores for many tasks LLM output regardless of how you want to define it is enough. It may not replace humans or our thought entirely, but many otherwise human tasks simply do not require such. Instead of facing the reality of such authors like this article's rejoice under the idea that our thought is special, our output unique and unmatched, those AI marketing fools are for naught as we cannot be replaced because of how they tried sticking LLM's output into a very human shaped box... if only it were that simple.

pedalpete 11mo ago

I keep getting the feeling that the tech media is it's own worst enemy, or it shows how little tech media like the verge understands about technology. Though I agree that language is not intelligence, suggesting that the AI boom is only about LLMs, or that LLMs do not create value is incredibly misleading. I disagree with the base concept that to justify the current investment, we must arrive at AGI. Estimates put total AI investement at $1.5T. Is it a lot? Sure. But what is going to come out of it. Faster and likely improved results from medical imaging. Lower cost and widespread ability to create images and videos, denting the multi-trillion dollar marketing industry. Self-driving and advanced driver assistance, lives saves, costs reduced. Improvements in education and low-cost tutoring available to more people. Let's say these investements just break even with spend. Isn't that better for society? I know people are going to say "but what about the radiologists"? We have a shortage of GPs and doctors to care for an aging population. These highly trained doctors can do more in the medical community. What about the actors/directors/sound engineers, etc in the media industry. This will likely shrink, but we can't ignore their expertise entirely. This industry won't go away. A friend is a voice actor. He isn't being replaced, however, he is getting less work, not because of the final production, but because in the pre-production phases, they don't need his expertise because they can use AI as 'good enough". The lens I look at this through is my grandfather, who developed film for a living. That job disappeared. Nobody cried out for the film developers when we made the shift to digital. We create more imagery now than ever before, more people are employed in the imaging business than ever before. As a (former) software engineer myself, do I believe AI will replace engineers? I think this is true as much as packages replaces engineers. When I started programming, there weren't a ton of open-source packages and there weren't a ton of tools like NPM, Cargo, for managing packages. I saw the transition from "write most of the code yourself" to "lego-brick" style programming. It didn't reduce the amount of programmers, it increased what we could do, and allowed us to do more interesting work than boilerplate.

techblueberry 11mo ago
“ The lens I look at this through is my grandfather, who developed film for a living. That job disappeared. Nobody cried out for the film developers when we made the shift to digital.” This is how progress has created so much human suffering, by impacting people in a way just sparse enough that you can believably imply “no one cried out for x”. Yes they did, it impacted thousands if not multiples of that; many in ways that they never recovered from. Some of them probably committed suicide, or ended up homeless, or in some other way had their life destroyed. And that impact reverberated onto their friends, families and communities. And maybe the New York Times even wrote an article about it, but we collectively as a society ignored that suffering.
- jorl17 11mo ago
  Utilitarianism is a bitch, huh? (I make this remark merely as a gag. I think you pinpoint an issue which has been unresolved for ages and is knee-deep into ethics. One could argue that many of our disagreements about AI and progress (in a broader sense) stem from different positions on ethics, including utilitarianism).
  - techblueberry 11mo ago
    I’m a utilitarian, but a transparent one. I think most people are uncomfortable saying “I acknowledge the pain and suffering it took to make my iPhone, and the tradeoff is worth it.”
    - jorl17 11mo ago
      I very unironically think everyone should watch The Good Place to get an initial feel for ethics.
turtlesdown11 11mo ago
None of these "what's going to come out of it" are likely to occur.

austhrow743 11mo ago

Article makes the claim that LLMs are not the path to AGI and provides some information on the topic. I can’t find where they try to determine how much investment, purchasing, or use is fuelled by claims that AGI is coming though. Absent that, the title seems unrelated to the article content.

add-sub-mul-div 11mo ago
Right, the investment is a bet on replacing a vast amount of labor, period. They don't care whether that replacement is AGI or not. They'll be happy if it's just lesser/enshittified but passable output.

manofmanysmiles 11mo ago

I would love to ask the author: are you sure that large language models are only modeling language?

DrierCycle 11mo ago
Whatever gets predicted by tokens gets summarized by symbols, which are artifacts of language. This gets to the illusory aspects of binary as well, the rabbit hole goes deep.

hshdhdhj4444 11mo ago

I don’t necessarily disagree with the first couple of claims. But I think the author pulls a sleight of hand to make their case (to be fair, I suspect they themselves didn’t realize they’re doing this). - The first claim is that language is not intelligence. I think this is true, but am not sure. However, for the sake of argument, let’s accept this as true. However, this leads to the obvious objection stated by the author. General intelligence doesn’t need to work the same way as human intelligence does. The author counters this with their second claim. - We have no evidence that a language based model can lead to intelligence. For the sake of argument, let’s even accept this as true. But here’s where the sleight of hand comes in. Lack of evidence in X being true is not the same as evidence that X is false. Just because we don’t have evidence that language can evolve into something like intelligence, doesn’t mean language cannot evolve into something like evidence. And so far our experience in language evolving into something like intelligencr has been surprisingly positive.

DrierCycle 11mo ago
Intelligence is wordless. Basic fact. And words are used in the aftermath of thought/intelligence, not prior. They are aftereffects, not effects. Words have no prior. That's a big problem.
vrighter 11mo ago
Tfa ddn't imply lack of evidence is evidence of impossibility. What he is referring to is that this whole bubble is predicated on promises that it actually is possible. And very soon, at that. When they said there is no evidence they meant that the bubble is expanding due to these promises being made without the evidence. Meaning everyone should be warier about a much bigger risk then they are led to believe. But if that were true, the actual insane amounts of money moving around wouldn't be so insane. So "graph go down"