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Nobody is denying that it's effective. They're denying intelligence A programming contest has a problem where given N < 10000, do something hard like come up w

by moth11 14d ago

Nobody is denying that it's effective. They're denying intelligence A programming contest has a problem where given N < 10000, do something hard like come up with the number of primes less than N You can come up with all sorts of algorithms that do intelligent things. But the most effective solution is to use metaprogramming to make a massive switch statement that contains all the answers

fasterik 14d ago
Are they denying intelligence, or are they redefining it in such a way that only humans can be intelligent? Can you come up with a definition of intelligence that would apply to crows and ant colonies, which are obviously intelligent to some degree, but not the current generation of AI systems?
- mitxela 14d ago
  Nobody knows what intelligence is. We've recently discovered a lot of things that it isn't.
  - fasterik 14d ago
    Intelligence is a word we invent to describe things we see in nature. We don't "discover" intelligence like it's some natural resource. To say we know nothing about it is also a bit strange. Cognitive science has been studying it for decades. Of course it's hard to give a precise definition, but it's related to capabilities like abstraction, reasoning, planning, problem solving, etc.
  - infinite_spin 14d ago
    Why would a set of dictionary definitions not suffice?
    - mitxela 14d ago
      Those are distillations of existing knowledge. They are necessarily behind the status quo. "You can't call this newfangled contraption a computer, because a computer is a person!"
      - infinite_spin 14d ago
        > Those are distillations of existing knowledge. Definitions are "formal statements of the meaning or significance of a word, phrase, idiom, etc" (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/definition https://www.dictionary.com/browse/definition) > They are necessarily behind the status quo. The existing state or condition would be what is written in the dictionary, not whatever personal definitions you've constructed. > "You can't call this newfangled contraption a computer, because a computer is a person!" Seems like a straw man. A computer is not a mammal, no matter how much you twist a set of definitions.
        quicklime 14d ago
        > A computer is not a mammal, no matter how much you twist a set of definitions. I’m not the person you replied to, but I believe they’re referring to the occupation of “computer”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation) So yes, at one time all computers were mammals. The people who write dictionaries generally take a descriptivist approach, that’s why slang terms enter the dictionary after they start to become popular. The state of the art of human knowledge would be another step ahead of the common use of any language.
        infinite_spin 14d ago
        That's an interesting take, and I can see how "computer" could refer to a human a hundred years ago, but they also mentioned "status quo", which should indicate that a reasonable person should use a modern definition.
        quicklime 14d ago
        Again I’m not the person who wrote the comment, but I think they were exaggerating for effect and maybe lost the audience in doing so. While “computer” has meant the same thing for many decades now, the term “intelligence” really does seem like a moving goalpost?
  - 4fddd3 14d ago
    What we know is intelligence is definitely comprised of the trait of adaptability. E.g. humans get exposed to new LLM model - yeah its powerful - 1 week later - eh, that thing? Yeah it's whatever. I'm still employed. The human's ability to adapt so efficiently is mind-boggling - so much so it pi1sses sam altman and dario off.
- ben_w 14d ago
  How many examples you need to get good. Don't misunderstand: I'm happy saying AI models "think" or "have learned a thing", and for in-context learning I'd call them smart even by this definition… …but also, any living creature that needed as many examples as machine learning currently needs, would starve to death before figuring out how to eat. While training, machine learning processes (not just LLMs, also applies to e.g. self driving cars), are really really stupid and only make up for this by being really really stupid really really fast. To what I wrote upthread: the "victories" of humanity over machine keep getting closer, but we have yet to wake up one day in great confusion as we find an entire city is no longer in communication with anyone, nor finding ourselves in a state of utter disbelief when the reports come in that the city stopped communicating because it is entirely gone.
  - fasterik 14d ago
    If we're including the training process and not just the final product, why shouldn't we include the billions of years of natural selection encoded in DNA sequences?
    - ben_w 14d ago
      Because our evolutionary environment doesn't contain cars, poetry, calculus, Star Craft, hamburgers, touch screen computers, or doors, and yet we are able to learn these things with (relative to a computer) very few examples. Most of the effort of evolution was making cells work at all, and even then it's a bit weird, e.g. no plant or animal produces vitamin B12 and we all get this from some bacteria and archaea. And evolution is kinda hard to time right: bacteria can reproduce in minutes, humans in decades, but only mutations that survive reproduction can be passed on. This makes it even starker as a difference: bacteria had order of 1e13 generations to become multicellular, while human DNA had about 40,000 generations to cope with fire, 220 generations for evolution to do anything with the invention of the wheel, and one generation to cope with the invention of Minecraft. The analogy here would be: DNA is to our brains like a VN replicator bootstrapping a computer all the way up to a bare-metal-no-OS untrained model, and perhaps a few crude "hard coded" modules like a smiling-face-detector. It's a lot, but it's also missing a lot. If biology used the models and training processes that are state of the art in ML, it would take around a millennia to talk like a child and still fail the Sally-Anne test, and million years or so to pass a degree.
lambdaone 14d ago
This is classic AI goalposts-moving. OK, they can play chess, but that's not real AI - can they write poems? OK, they can write poems, but that's not real AI - can they compose music? OK, they can compose music, but that's not real AI - can they translate languages? OK, they can translate text, but can they do maths? OK, they can do maths, but can they solve a Millenium Prize? <-- we are here
- janalsncm 14d ago
  Imagine meeting a person who could do all of those things. “I once met a person who could beat any grandmaster in chess, translate any language, and complete international math Olympiad problems. He couldn’t solve any Millenium problems though, so I’d say he was a midwit at best.”
- scun 14d ago
  "I once knocked a bunch of bananas off a tall man's head. His name is Ash and his leg is like teak. Is he a tree?" "What? Don't be silly. For one thing, trees have moss." "OK he's grown moss. He's a tree now right? Right??" "I doubt it, for I see nothing but wishful thinking to suggest that simulating the appearance of tree characteristics is part of a path to becoming a tree. And that's not actually indistinguishable from moss anyway, is it?" "Urgh, classic goalpost shifting!"
janalsncm 14d ago
On your particular point about finding the most “effective” solution, this is something that I expect agents to be very good at. When AI does it we call it “reward hacking” but when humans do it we call them clever.

by moth11 14d ago

fasterik 14d ago

Are they denying intelligence, or are they redefining it in such a way that only humans can be intelligent? Can you come up with a definition of intelligence that would apply to crows and ant colonies, which are obviously intelligent to some degree, but not the current generation of AI systems?

mitxela 14d ago
Nobody knows what intelligence is. We've recently discovered a lot of things that it isn't.
- fasterik 14d ago
  Intelligence is a word we invent to describe things we see in nature. We don't "discover" intelligence like it's some natural resource. To say we know nothing about it is also a bit strange. Cognitive science has been studying it for decades. Of course it's hard to give a precise definition, but it's related to capabilities like abstraction, reasoning, planning, problem solving, etc.
- infinite_spin 14d ago
  Why would a set of dictionary definitions not suffice?
  - mitxela 14d ago
    Those are distillations of existing knowledge. They are necessarily behind the status quo. "You can't call this newfangled contraption a computer, because a computer is a person!"
    - infinite_spin 14d ago
      > Those are distillations of existing knowledge. Definitions are "formal statements of the meaning or significance of a word, phrase, idiom, etc" (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/definition https://www.dictionary.com/browse/definition) > They are necessarily behind the status quo. The existing state or condition would be what is written in the dictionary, not whatever personal definitions you've constructed. > "You can't call this newfangled contraption a computer, because a computer is a person!" Seems like a straw man. A computer is not a mammal, no matter how much you twist a set of definitions.
      - quicklime 14d ago
        > A computer is not a mammal, no matter how much you twist a set of definitions. I’m not the person you replied to, but I believe they’re referring to the occupation of “computer”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation) So yes, at one time all computers were mammals. The people who write dictionaries generally take a descriptivist approach, that’s why slang terms enter the dictionary after they start to become popular. The state of the art of human knowledge would be another step ahead of the common use of any language.
        infinite_spin 14d ago
        That's an interesting take, and I can see how "computer" could refer to a human a hundred years ago, but they also mentioned "status quo", which should indicate that a reasonable person should use a modern definition.
        quicklime 14d ago
        Again I’m not the person who wrote the comment, but I think they were exaggerating for effect and maybe lost the audience in doing so. While “computer” has meant the same thing for many decades now, the term “intelligence” really does seem like a moving goalpost?
- 4fddd3 14d ago
  What we know is intelligence is definitely comprised of the trait of adaptability. E.g. humans get exposed to new LLM model - yeah its powerful - 1 week later - eh, that thing? Yeah it's whatever. I'm still employed. The human's ability to adapt so efficiently is mind-boggling - so much so it pi1sses sam altman and dario off.
ben_w 14d ago
How many examples you need to get good. Don't misunderstand: I'm happy saying AI models "think" or "have learned a thing", and for in-context learning I'd call them smart even by this definition… …but also, any living creature that needed as many examples as machine learning currently needs, would starve to death before figuring out how to eat. While training, machine learning processes (not just LLMs, also applies to e.g. self driving cars), are really really stupid and only make up for this by being really really stupid really really fast. To what I wrote upthread: the "victories" of humanity over machine keep getting closer, but we have yet to wake up one day in great confusion as we find an entire city is no longer in communication with anyone, nor finding ourselves in a state of utter disbelief when the reports come in that the city stopped communicating because it is entirely gone.
- fasterik 14d ago
  If we're including the training process and not just the final product, why shouldn't we include the billions of years of natural selection encoded in DNA sequences?
  - ben_w 14d ago
    Because our evolutionary environment doesn't contain cars, poetry, calculus, Star Craft, hamburgers, touch screen computers, or doors, and yet we are able to learn these things with (relative to a computer) very few examples. Most of the effort of evolution was making cells work at all, and even then it's a bit weird, e.g. no plant or animal produces vitamin B12 and we all get this from some bacteria and archaea. And evolution is kinda hard to time right: bacteria can reproduce in minutes, humans in decades, but only mutations that survive reproduction can be passed on. This makes it even starker as a difference: bacteria had order of 1e13 generations to become multicellular, while human DNA had about 40,000 generations to cope with fire, 220 generations for evolution to do anything with the invention of the wheel, and one generation to cope with the invention of Minecraft. The analogy here would be: DNA is to our brains like a VN replicator bootstrapping a computer all the way up to a bare-metal-no-OS untrained model, and perhaps a few crude "hard coded" modules like a smiling-face-detector. It's a lot, but it's also missing a lot. If biology used the models and training processes that are state of the art in ML, it would take around a millennia to talk like a child and still fail the Sally-Anne test, and million years or so to pass a degree.

lambdaone 14d ago

This is classic AI goalposts-moving. OK, they can play chess, but that's not real AI - can they write poems? OK, they can write poems, but that's not real AI - can they compose music? OK, they can compose music, but that's not real AI - can they translate languages? OK, they can translate text, but can they do maths? OK, they can do maths, but can they solve a Millenium Prize? <-- we are here

janalsncm 14d ago
Imagine meeting a person who could do all of those things. “I once met a person who could beat any grandmaster in chess, translate any language, and complete international math Olympiad problems. He couldn’t solve any Millenium problems though, so I’d say he was a midwit at best.”
scun 14d ago
"I once knocked a bunch of bananas off a tall man's head. His name is Ash and his leg is like teak. Is he a tree?" "What? Don't be silly. For one thing, trees have moss." "OK he's grown moss. He's a tree now right? Right??" "I doubt it, for I see nothing but wishful thinking to suggest that simulating the appearance of tree characteristics is part of a path to becoming a tree. And that's not actually indistinguishable from moss anyway, is it?" "Urgh, classic goalpost shifting!"

janalsncm 14d ago

On your particular point about finding the most “effective” solution, this is something that I expect agents to be very good at. When AI does it we call it “reward hacking” but when humans do it we call them clever.