3 ms·

"It's powerful, and it's amazing, but it's not magic" But since its creators and as of my knowledge everyone else totally did not see it coming, that you can n

by lukan 3mo ago

"It's powerful, and it's amazing, but it's not magic" But since its creators and as of my knowledge everyone else totally did not see it coming, that you can now give a vague prompt full of spelling errors - and get returned a working program - I would say it is pretty close to magic (as in we don't really understand why it works so good). I also don't see how you cannot call it AI. Especially since simple chess engines and alike were called AI long ago. So it is not general strong AI and has no consciousness and no mind and is pretty dumb too often - but the general concept - getting from a some vague text to a working program has some connection to intelligence to me.

jacobgold 3mo ago
Yes, LLM agents are "magic" in the sense that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"[1] But it's not actually magic. Technical people understand that it's just software running on computers. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws
- lukan 3mo ago
  Sure, nothing is magic. You can go look how a simple LLM works and build your understanding from there. But calling it "just software" is trivializing it in my opinion. I can write software, but I cannot write software that writes software.
  - jacobgold 3mo ago
    > But calling it "just software" is trivializing it in my opinion The bigger mistake would be trivializing the rest of the technology involved just because LLMs are the newest piece. LLMs are only "magic" because they're built on a stack that was already "magic" without them. LLMs are impossible without: - operating systems - programming languages - compilers - data centers / power grids / air conditioning - servers / switches / routers - CPUs / RAM / GPUs / SSDs - fiber networks - etc
    - int_19h 3mo ago
      I would argue that LLMs are still magic, because, unlike the rest of this list, we still don't actually know how exactly they do what they do. We know how to build and train them, and we have general ideas about why e.g. attention is important, but if we actually knew how they tick we could do the same thing in a much smaller package (by handcoding everything).

by lukan 3mo ago

jacobgold 3mo ago

Yes, LLM agents are "magic" in the sense that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"[1] But it's not actually magic. Technical people understand that it's just software running on computers. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws

lukan 3mo ago
Sure, nothing is magic. You can go look how a simple LLM works and build your understanding from there. But calling it "just software" is trivializing it in my opinion. I can write software, but I cannot write software that writes software.
- jacobgold 3mo ago
  > But calling it "just software" is trivializing it in my opinion The bigger mistake would be trivializing the rest of the technology involved just because LLMs are the newest piece. LLMs are only "magic" because they're built on a stack that was already "magic" without them. LLMs are impossible without: - operating systems - programming languages - compilers - data centers / power grids / air conditioning - servers / switches / routers - CPUs / RAM / GPUs / SSDs - fiber networks - etc
  - int_19h 3mo ago
    I would argue that LLMs are still magic, because, unlike the rest of this list, we still don't actually know how exactly they do what they do. We know how to build and train them, and we have general ideas about why e.g. attention is important, but if we actually knew how they tick we could do the same thing in a much smaller package (by handcoding everything).