8 ms·

LLMs cannot think, they just guess with some magic with the help of things like softmax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmax_function https://en.wikipedia.org

LLMs cannot think, they just guess with some magic with the help of things like softmax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmax_function https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmax_function), that makes it seem intelligent. We aren't enslaved or at any risk just yet with this form of "thinking machine", but we do need to culutrally and emotionally come to terms with them. Let's not have any other "jihad" just yet, there's plenty of other jihads going on right now.

thih9 5mo ago
Note that the article doesn’t say that AI itself would do the enslavement; on the contrary: > With the rise of AI came the rise of a technocratic class that created and controlled these machines, leading to oppressive structures over knowledge and the economy. It also quotes Dune, where it is said more directly: > Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.
- willis936 5mo ago
  I really despise when the term technocrat is misused. It has a very specific meaning in politics and is nowhere near "broligarch", "plutocrat from the tech industry", or any of the thousand different, legitimate ways to describe what people sometimes mean when they mistakenly say "technocrat". How can a political opinion be taken seriously when this extremely basic level of literacy on the topic is missing?
  - thih9 5mo ago
    Not to "well ackchyually" your "well ackchyually", but language evolves. I guess in a few years we'll consider it just another instance of semantic shift, perhaps with a splash of folk etymology[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology
    - maleldil 5mo ago
      > but language evolves Totally, but we can try to resist it. Technocrat is a perfectly fine word, and I'd hate to see it go away permanently from its current meaning.
      - deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
    - willis936 5mo ago
      Yes but I am throwing this one out because technocrat has a very specific meaning that has never experienced a period of irrelevance while it has been in use. Plutocracy has its own word and displacing the concept of technocracy with a worse concept is something I will call out every single time.
  - drivingmenuts 5mo ago
    It is difficult to seriously consider the opinion of someone who clearly fails to understand the difference between denotative and connotative meaning.
keiferski 5mo ago
Man it annoys me to no end that this basic fact is so under discussed. It’s as if calling something AI is all that’s needed to justify it being the same thing as Skynet, Dune automation, Terminators, Neuromancer, and every other cultural trope using the label of AI. The ultimate fact is that LLMs are a pretty powerful technology that has little to nothing to do with most fictional depictions of intelligent machines. Sloppy thinking all the way down.
- netsharc 5mo ago
  Yesterday's plane making a turnaround because of a Bluetooth speaker with the name "bomb" (media says "a 4 letter word") makes me think the Skynet-level destruction is a risk, because humans are already too chicken-shit to take responsibility for decisions. They'd rather feel safe by just following the procedure, however stupid it is. And in the the future the procudre might be "Do whatever the AI says". My thought about the turnaround: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48343390 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48343390
  - keiferski 5mo ago
    Absolutely. The real danger is that people treat LLMs like actually intelligent entities and stop making decisions themselves. Not that the LLMs will be conscious and evil in the way Sci-fi portrays.
- sph 5mo ago
  We don't have "Skynet, Dune automation, Terminators, Neuromancer, and every other cultural trope using the label of AI" today simply because LLM technology doesn't seem to directly lead to those, but the end goal of AI research is the creation of those. It annoys me to no end that people keep looking at the finger while pointing at the moon. No, we don't have Skynet today, but you can believe Sam Altman would have loved to see Skynet appear out of ChatGPT. That is the end goal, and it's worth discussing now, not when it's too late.
  - keiferski 5mo ago
khafra 5mo ago
When "guess with some magic" can solve long-standing problems in mathematics that no human had been able to, it seems fair to ask whether it's approaching risky levels of intelligence.
- endymion-light 5mo ago
  I mean we've been using technology to solve long-standing problems in mathematics that no human had been able to do for years. Is Deep Blue sentient because it can beat any human at chess?
  - ainch 5mo ago
    Deep Blue's strength was leveraging massive compute to execute a task-specific, human-written algorithm. The problems which LLMs are tackling don't elude mathematicians because they require too much number-crunching, but because they demand creative problem solving. The latter seems more profound, even if it doesn't imply sentience.
    - endymion-light 5mo ago
      Not to get too reductive - but LLMs are essentially performing massive number-crunching at a textual representation level. If you've ever played around with early NLP models, they can give you some astounding results for aspects like sentiment analysis that would seem like creative problem solving to someone in 1950. You could say the same for using a neural network to perform things like object recognition. That's not removing the amazing ability of LLMs and the scale of this accomplishment, don't get me wrong - it's incredibly impressive that specialised models are now able to walk down pathways for creative problem solving - but I don't think that suggests a sentience or profoundness - rather it's just number-crunching at a astronomically larger scale.
- fxj 5mo ago
  [dead]
sph 5mo ago
> We aren't enslaved The people complaining about becoming stupider because of their AI usage might have something to say. Those that wish they didn't have to use AI but are coerced by their workplace might disagree. What of the day something negative happens to you based on the wrong, unreviewed decision without appeal by an AI agent? Do you truly believe this day will never come? You don't need literal chains to be a slave.

thih9 5mo ago

Note that the article doesn’t say that AI itself would do the enslavement; on the contrary: > With the rise of AI came the rise of a technocratic class that created and controlled these machines, leading to oppressive structures over knowledge and the economy. It also quotes Dune, where it is said more directly: > Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

willis936 5mo ago
I really despise when the term technocrat is misused. It has a very specific meaning in politics and is nowhere near "broligarch", "plutocrat from the tech industry", or any of the thousand different, legitimate ways to describe what people sometimes mean when they mistakenly say "technocrat". How can a political opinion be taken seriously when this extremely basic level of literacy on the topic is missing?
- thih9 5mo ago
  Not to "well ackchyually" your "well ackchyually", but language evolves. I guess in a few years we'll consider it just another instance of semantic shift, perhaps with a splash of folk etymology[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology
  - maleldil 5mo ago
    > but language evolves Totally, but we can try to resist it. Technocrat is a perfectly fine word, and I'd hate to see it go away permanently from its current meaning.
    - deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
  - willis936 5mo ago
    Yes but I am throwing this one out because technocrat has a very specific meaning that has never experienced a period of irrelevance while it has been in use. Plutocracy has its own word and displacing the concept of technocracy with a worse concept is something I will call out every single time.
- drivingmenuts 5mo ago
  It is difficult to seriously consider the opinion of someone who clearly fails to understand the difference between denotative and connotative meaning.

keiferski 5mo ago

Man it annoys me to no end that this basic fact is so under discussed. It’s as if calling something AI is all that’s needed to justify it being the same thing as Skynet, Dune automation, Terminators, Neuromancer, and every other cultural trope using the label of AI. The ultimate fact is that LLMs are a pretty powerful technology that has little to nothing to do with most fictional depictions of intelligent machines. Sloppy thinking all the way down.

netsharc 5mo ago
Yesterday's plane making a turnaround because of a Bluetooth speaker with the name "bomb" (media says "a 4 letter word") makes me think the Skynet-level destruction is a risk, because humans are already too chicken-shit to take responsibility for decisions. They'd rather feel safe by just following the procedure, however stupid it is. And in the the future the procudre might be "Do whatever the AI says". My thought about the turnaround: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48343390 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48343390
- keiferski 5mo ago
  Absolutely. The real danger is that people treat LLMs like actually intelligent entities and stop making decisions themselves. Not that the LLMs will be conscious and evil in the way Sci-fi portrays.
sph 5mo ago
We don't have "Skynet, Dune automation, Terminators, Neuromancer, and every other cultural trope using the label of AI" today simply because LLM technology doesn't seem to directly lead to those, but the end goal of AI research is the creation of those. It annoys me to no end that people keep looking at the finger while pointing at the moon. No, we don't have Skynet today, but you can believe Sam Altman would have loved to see Skynet appear out of ChatGPT. That is the end goal, and it's worth discussing now, not when it's too late.
- keiferski 5mo ago

khafra 5mo ago

When "guess with some magic" can solve long-standing problems in mathematics that no human had been able to, it seems fair to ask whether it's approaching risky levels of intelligence.

endymion-light 5mo ago
I mean we've been using technology to solve long-standing problems in mathematics that no human had been able to do for years. Is Deep Blue sentient because it can beat any human at chess?
- ainch 5mo ago
  Deep Blue's strength was leveraging massive compute to execute a task-specific, human-written algorithm. The problems which LLMs are tackling don't elude mathematicians because they require too much number-crunching, but because they demand creative problem solving. The latter seems more profound, even if it doesn't imply sentience.
  - endymion-light 5mo ago
    Not to get too reductive - but LLMs are essentially performing massive number-crunching at a textual representation level. If you've ever played around with early NLP models, they can give you some astounding results for aspects like sentiment analysis that would seem like creative problem solving to someone in 1950. You could say the same for using a neural network to perform things like object recognition. That's not removing the amazing ability of LLMs and the scale of this accomplishment, don't get me wrong - it's incredibly impressive that specialised models are now able to walk down pathways for creative problem solving - but I don't think that suggests a sentience or profoundness - rather it's just number-crunching at a astronomically larger scale.
fxj 5mo ago
[dead]

sph 5mo ago

> We aren't enslaved The people complaining about becoming stupider because of their AI usage might have something to say. Those that wish they didn't have to use AI but are coerced by their workplace might disagree. What of the day something negative happens to you based on the wrong, unreviewed decision without appeal by an AI agent? Do you truly believe this day will never come? You don't need literal chains to be a slave.