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If you listen to the people who believe real AI is right around the corner then any software can be recreated from a detailed enough specification b/c whatever

If you listen to the people who believe real AI is right around the corner then any software can be recreated from a detailed enough specification b/c whatever special sauce is hidden in the black box can be inferred from its outward behavior. Real AI is more brilliant than whatever algorithm you could ever think of so if the real AI can interact w/ your software then it can recreate a much better version of it w/o looking at the source code b/c it has access to whatever knowledge you had while writing the code & then some. I don't think real AI is around the corner but plenty of people believe it is & they also think they only need a few more data centers to make the fiction into a reality.

HappyPanacea 7mo ago
> b/c whatever special sauce is hidden in the black box can be inferred from its outward behavior. This is not always true, for an extreme example see Indistinguishability obfuscation.
GaggiX 7mo ago
>Real AI is more brilliant than whatever algorithm you could ever think of So with "Real AI" you actually mean artificial superintelligence.
- measurablefunc 7mo ago
  I wrote what I meant & meant what I wrote. You can take up your argument w/ the people who think they're working on AI by adding more data centers & more matrix multiplications to function graphs if you want to argue about marketing terms.
  - GaggiX 7mo ago
    I was just thinking that calling artificial superintelligence "Real AI" was funny.
    - measurablefunc 7mo ago
      Corporate marketing is very effective. I don't have as many dollars to spend on convincing people that AI is when they give me as much data as possible & the more data they give me the more "super" it gets.
    - catoc 7mo ago
      They’re looking for AI that’s só good it’s unreal
pixl97 7mo ago
Real AI will never be invented, because as AI systems become more capable we'll figure out humans weren't intelligent in the first place, therefore intelligence never existed.
- measurablefunc 7mo ago
  Don't worry, just 10 more data centers & a few more gigawatts will get you there even if the people building the data centers & powerplants are unintelligent & mindless drones. But in any event, I have no interest in religious arguments & beliefs so your time will be better spent convincing people who are looking for another religion to fill whatever void was left by secular education since such people are much more amenable to religious indoctrination & will very likely find many of your arguments much more persuasive & convincing.
  - pixl97 7mo ago
    I mean, it sounds kinda like you're the one making religious arguments. My response is one mocking how poorly egotistical people deal with the AI effect. Evolution built man that has intelligence based on components that do not have intelligence themselves, it is an emergent property of the system. It is therefore scientific to think we could build machines on similar principles that exhibit intelligence as an emergent property of the system. No woo woo needed.
    - measurablefunc 7mo ago
      Me & a few friends are constructing a long ladder to get to the moon. Our mission is based on sound scientific & engineering principles we have observed on the surface of the planet which allows regular people to scale heights they could not by jumping or climbing. We only need a few trillions of dollars & a sufficiently large wall to support it while we climb up to the moon. There are lots of other analogies but the moon ladder is simple enough to be understood even by children when explaining how nothing can emerge from inert building blocks like transistors that is not reducible to their constituent parts. As I said previously, your time will be much better spent convincing people who are looking for another religion b/c they will be much more susceptible to your beliefs in emergent properties of transistors & data centers of sufficient scale & magnitude.
luma 7mo ago
What you describe is essentially what happened, the AI result working from specs and tests was more performant than the original. The real AI you describe just rewrote chardet without looking at the source, only better.
- duskdozer 7mo ago
  It was instructed to look at the source...
  - simonw 7mo ago
    It was instructed NOT to look at the source, with the one exception that it was told to look at this single file full of charset definitions: https://github.com/chardet/chardet/blob/f0676c0d6a4263827924b78a62957547fca40052/chardet/metadata/charsets.py https://github.com/chardet/chardet/blob/f0676c0d6a4263827924...
    - glkindlmann 7mo ago
      Is there any visibility or accountability to record exactly what it did and not look at? I doubt it. So we're left with a kind of Rorschach test: some people think LLMs follow rules like law-abiding citizens, and some people distrust commercial LLMs because they understand that commercial LLMs were never designed for visibility and accountability.
      - simonw 7mo ago
        There should exist a .jsonl file somewhere with exactly that information in it - might be worth Dan preserving that, it should be in a ~/.claude/projects folder.
- JambalayaJimbo 7mo ago
  How do you know it didn’t look at the source?

HappyPanacea 7mo ago

> b/c whatever special sauce is hidden in the black box can be inferred from its outward behavior. This is not always true, for an extreme example see Indistinguishability obfuscation.

GaggiX 7mo ago

>Real AI is more brilliant than whatever algorithm you could ever think of So with "Real AI" you actually mean artificial superintelligence.

measurablefunc 7mo ago
I wrote what I meant & meant what I wrote. You can take up your argument w/ the people who think they're working on AI by adding more data centers & more matrix multiplications to function graphs if you want to argue about marketing terms.
- GaggiX 7mo ago
  I was just thinking that calling artificial superintelligence "Real AI" was funny.
  - measurablefunc 7mo ago
    Corporate marketing is very effective. I don't have as many dollars to spend on convincing people that AI is when they give me as much data as possible & the more data they give me the more "super" it gets.
  - catoc 7mo ago
    They’re looking for AI that’s só good it’s unreal

pixl97 7mo ago

Real AI will never be invented, because as AI systems become more capable we'll figure out humans weren't intelligent in the first place, therefore intelligence never existed.

measurablefunc 7mo ago
Don't worry, just 10 more data centers & a few more gigawatts will get you there even if the people building the data centers & powerplants are unintelligent & mindless drones. But in any event, I have no interest in religious arguments & beliefs so your time will be better spent convincing people who are looking for another religion to fill whatever void was left by secular education since such people are much more amenable to religious indoctrination & will very likely find many of your arguments much more persuasive & convincing.
- pixl97 7mo ago
  I mean, it sounds kinda like you're the one making religious arguments. My response is one mocking how poorly egotistical people deal with the AI effect. Evolution built man that has intelligence based on components that do not have intelligence themselves, it is an emergent property of the system. It is therefore scientific to think we could build machines on similar principles that exhibit intelligence as an emergent property of the system. No woo woo needed.
  - measurablefunc 7mo ago
    Me & a few friends are constructing a long ladder to get to the moon. Our mission is based on sound scientific & engineering principles we have observed on the surface of the planet which allows regular people to scale heights they could not by jumping or climbing. We only need a few trillions of dollars & a sufficiently large wall to support it while we climb up to the moon. There are lots of other analogies but the moon ladder is simple enough to be understood even by children when explaining how nothing can emerge from inert building blocks like transistors that is not reducible to their constituent parts. As I said previously, your time will be much better spent convincing people who are looking for another religion b/c they will be much more susceptible to your beliefs in emergent properties of transistors & data centers of sufficient scale & magnitude.

luma 7mo ago

What you describe is essentially what happened, the AI result working from specs and tests was more performant than the original. The real AI you describe just rewrote chardet without looking at the source, only better.

duskdozer 7mo ago
It was instructed to look at the source...
- simonw 7mo ago
  It was instructed NOT to look at the source, with the one exception that it was told to look at this single file full of charset definitions: https://github.com/chardet/chardet/blob/f0676c0d6a4263827924b78a62957547fca40052/chardet/metadata/charsets.py https://github.com/chardet/chardet/blob/f0676c0d6a4263827924...
  - glkindlmann 7mo ago
    Is there any visibility or accountability to record exactly what it did and not look at? I doubt it. So we're left with a kind of Rorschach test: some people think LLMs follow rules like law-abiding citizens, and some people distrust commercial LLMs because they understand that commercial LLMs were never designed for visibility and accountability.
    - simonw 7mo ago
      There should exist a .jsonl file somewhere with exactly that information in it - might be worth Dan preserving that, it should be in a ~/.claude/projects folder.
JambalayaJimbo 7mo ago
How do you know it didn’t look at the source?