6 ms·

If AGI will ever come, then. Currently, AI is only a statistical machines, and solutions like this are purely based on distribution and no logic/actual intellig

If AGI will ever come, then. Currently, AI is only a statistical machines, and solutions like this are purely based on distribution and no logic/actual intelligence.

rustyhancock 7mo ago
I don't even think that's the issue. The issue to my mind is a lack of data at the meeting of QFT/GR. Afterall few humans historically have been capable of the initial true leap between ontologies. But humans are pretty smart so we can't say that is a requirement for AGI.
- worldsavior 7mo ago
  When it comes to revolutionary/unsolved subjects, there will never be enough data. That's why its revolutionary/unsolved.
- cjcole 7mo ago
  Maybe. “The laws of nature should be expressed in beautiful equations.” - Paul Dirac “It is, indeed, an incredible fact that what the human mind, at its deepest and most profound, perceives as beautiful finds its realisation in external nature. What is intelligible is also beautiful. We may well ask: how does it happen that beauty in the exact sciences becomes recognizable even before it is understood in detail and before it can be rationally demonstrated? In what does this power of illumination consist?” - Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar “I often follow Plato’s strategy, proposing objects of mathematical beauty as models for Nature.” “It was beauty and symmetry that guided Maxwell and his followers.” - Frank Wilczek “Beauty, is bound up with symmetry.” - Herman Weyl "Still twice in the history of exact natural science has this shining-up of the great interconnection become the decisive signal for significant progress. I am thinking here of two events in the physics of our century: the rise of the theory of relativity and that of the quantum theory. In both cases, after yearlong unsuccessful striving for understanding, a bewildering abundance of details was almost suddenly ordered. This took place when an interconnection emerged which, thought largely unvisualizable, was finally simple in its substance. It convinced through its compactness and abstract beauty – it convinced all those who can understand and speak such an abstract language." - Werner Heisenberg Maybe (just maybe) these things (whatever you want to call them) will (somehow) gain access to some "compact", beautiful, "largely unvisualizable" "interconnection" which will be the self-evident solution. And if they do, many will be sure to label it a statistical accident from a stochastic parrot. And they'll right, for some definitions of "statistical", "accident", "stochastic", and "parrot".
zarzavat 7mo ago
I swear that AI could independently develop a cure for cancer and people would still say that it's not actually intelligent, just matrix multiplications giving a statistically probable answer! LLMs are at least designed to be intelligent. Our monkey brains have much less reason to be intelligent, since we only evolved to survive nature, not to understand it. We are at this moment extremely deep into what most people would have been considered to be actual artificial intelligence a mere 15 years ago. We're not quite at human levels of intelligence, but it's close.
- worldsavior 7mo ago
  That's wrong. Humans were evolved to have big brains so they can better understand the env and use it to their advantage. I still see AI making stupid silly mistakes. I rather think and not waste time on something that only remembers data, and doesn't even understand it. Reasoning in AI is only about finding contradictions between his "thoughts", not actually understand it.
  - someplaceguy 7mo ago
    > I still see AI making stupid silly mistakes. In contrast with humans, who are famously known for never making stupid silly mistakes...
  - _fizz_buzz_ 7mo ago
    > I still see AI making stupid silly mistakes. Humans also make silly mistakes.
- qsera 7mo ago
  >AI could independently develop a cure for cancer All the answers for all your questions is contained in randomness. If you have a random sentence generator, there is a chance that it will output the answer to this question every time it is invoked. But that does not actually make it intelligent, does it?
  - graemefawcett 7mo ago
bobbylarrybobby 7mo ago
Did you read the linked paper? Claude out-reasoned humans on a challenging (or at least, unsolved) math problem.
- worldsavior 7mo ago
  Merely luck in my opinion. There could be also multiple times where it didn't solve it.
- cjcole 7mo ago
  "humans" Donald Knuth is an extremal outlier human and the problem is squarely in his field of expertise. Claude, guided by Filip Stappers, a friend of Knuth, solved a problem that Knuth and Stappers had been working on for several weeks. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem (from my quick scan) to have been stated how long (or how many tokens or $) it took for Claude + Stappers to complete the proof. In response, Knuth said: "It seems that I’ll have to revise my opinions about “generative AI” one of these days." Seems like good advice. From reading elsewhere in this comment section, the goalposts seem to be approaching the infrared and will soon disappear from the extreme redshift due to rate at which they are receding with each new achievement.
  - emp17344 7mo ago
    What goalposts do you think are being moved? I constantly see AI enthusiasts use this phrase, but it’s not clear what goalposts they have in mind. Specifically, what is it that you want opponents to recognize that you believe they aren’t currently? We now have a tool that can be useful in some narrow domains in some narrow cases. It’s pretty neat that our tools have new capabilities, but it’s also pretty far from AGI.
    - cjcole 7mo ago
      I'm not an enthusiast. I'm a Butlerian. Imagine hearing pre-attention-is-all-you-need that "AI" could do something that Donald Knuth could not (quickly solve the stated problem in collaboration with his friend). The idea that this (Putnam perfect, IMO gold, etc) is all just "statistical parrot" stuff is wearing a little thin.
whimsicalism 7mo ago
It only took 4 years, but it appears that this view is finally dying out on HN. I would advise everyone who found this viewpoint compelling to think about how those same blinders might be affecting how you are imagining the future to look like.

If AGI will ever come, then. Currently, AI is only a statistical machines, and solutions like this are purely based on distribution and no logic/actual intelligence.

rustyhancock 7mo ago

I don't even think that's the issue. The issue to my mind is a lack of data at the meeting of QFT/GR. Afterall few humans historically have been capable of the initial true leap between ontologies. But humans are pretty smart so we can't say that is a requirement for AGI.

worldsavior 7mo ago
When it comes to revolutionary/unsolved subjects, there will never be enough data. That's why its revolutionary/unsolved.
cjcole 7mo ago
Maybe. “The laws of nature should be expressed in beautiful equations.” - Paul Dirac “It is, indeed, an incredible fact that what the human mind, at its deepest and most profound, perceives as beautiful finds its realisation in external nature. What is intelligible is also beautiful. We may well ask: how does it happen that beauty in the exact sciences becomes recognizable even before it is understood in detail and before it can be rationally demonstrated? In what does this power of illumination consist?” - Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar “I often follow Plato’s strategy, proposing objects of mathematical beauty as models for Nature.” “It was beauty and symmetry that guided Maxwell and his followers.” - Frank Wilczek “Beauty, is bound up with symmetry.” - Herman Weyl "Still twice in the history of exact natural science has this shining-up of the great interconnection become the decisive signal for significant progress. I am thinking here of two events in the physics of our century: the rise of the theory of relativity and that of the quantum theory. In both cases, after yearlong unsuccessful striving for understanding, a bewildering abundance of details was almost suddenly ordered. This took place when an interconnection emerged which, thought largely unvisualizable, was finally simple in its substance. It convinced through its compactness and abstract beauty – it convinced all those who can understand and speak such an abstract language." - Werner Heisenberg Maybe (just maybe) these things (whatever you want to call them) will (somehow) gain access to some "compact", beautiful, "largely unvisualizable" "interconnection" which will be the self-evident solution. And if they do, many will be sure to label it a statistical accident from a stochastic parrot. And they'll right, for some definitions of "statistical", "accident", "stochastic", and "parrot".

zarzavat 7mo ago

I swear that AI could independently develop a cure for cancer and people would still say that it's not actually intelligent, just matrix multiplications giving a statistically probable answer! LLMs are at least designed to be intelligent. Our monkey brains have much less reason to be intelligent, since we only evolved to survive nature, not to understand it. We are at this moment extremely deep into what most people would have been considered to be actual artificial intelligence a mere 15 years ago. We're not quite at human levels of intelligence, but it's close.

worldsavior 7mo ago
That's wrong. Humans were evolved to have big brains so they can better understand the env and use it to their advantage. I still see AI making stupid silly mistakes. I rather think and not waste time on something that only remembers data, and doesn't even understand it. Reasoning in AI is only about finding contradictions between his "thoughts", not actually understand it.
- someplaceguy 7mo ago
  > I still see AI making stupid silly mistakes. In contrast with humans, who are famously known for never making stupid silly mistakes...
- _fizz_buzz_ 7mo ago
  > I still see AI making stupid silly mistakes. Humans also make silly mistakes.
qsera 7mo ago
>AI could independently develop a cure for cancer All the answers for all your questions is contained in randomness. If you have a random sentence generator, there is a chance that it will output the answer to this question every time it is invoked. But that does not actually make it intelligent, does it?
- graemefawcett 7mo ago

bobbylarrybobby 7mo ago

Did you read the linked paper? Claude out-reasoned humans on a challenging (or at least, unsolved) math problem.

worldsavior 7mo ago
Merely luck in my opinion. There could be also multiple times where it didn't solve it.
cjcole 7mo ago
"humans" Donald Knuth is an extremal outlier human and the problem is squarely in his field of expertise. Claude, guided by Filip Stappers, a friend of Knuth, solved a problem that Knuth and Stappers had been working on for several weeks. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem (from my quick scan) to have been stated how long (or how many tokens or $) it took for Claude + Stappers to complete the proof. In response, Knuth said: "It seems that I’ll have to revise my opinions about “generative AI” one of these days." Seems like good advice. From reading elsewhere in this comment section, the goalposts seem to be approaching the infrared and will soon disappear from the extreme redshift due to rate at which they are receding with each new achievement.
- emp17344 7mo ago
  What goalposts do you think are being moved? I constantly see AI enthusiasts use this phrase, but it’s not clear what goalposts they have in mind. Specifically, what is it that you want opponents to recognize that you believe they aren’t currently? We now have a tool that can be useful in some narrow domains in some narrow cases. It’s pretty neat that our tools have new capabilities, but it’s also pretty far from AGI.
  - cjcole 7mo ago
    I'm not an enthusiast. I'm a Butlerian. Imagine hearing pre-attention-is-all-you-need that "AI" could do something that Donald Knuth could not (quickly solve the stated problem in collaboration with his friend). The idea that this (Putnam perfect, IMO gold, etc) is all just "statistical parrot" stuff is wearing a little thin.

whimsicalism 7mo ago

It only took 4 years, but it appears that this view is finally dying out on HN. I would advise everyone who found this viewpoint compelling to think about how those same blinders might be affecting how you are imagining the future to look like.