xpe

45 ms·

541.
by xpe 1y ago
At face value, the letter (from the House Committee on Oversight and Governmental Reform) offers a sensible-sounding top-line explanation: > The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating the efforts of foreign operati
542.
by xpe 1y ago
That would be an unfortunate backup plan to rely on. We want to keep the full value of Wikipedia alive. Wikipedia is (1) an ideal; (2) a community of volunteers; (3) a brand; (4) a habit for many people seeking information; (5) a center (
543.
by xpe 1y ago
How many people are just assuming the study is true or false based on what you already think is the case? Better instead to use our collective brain power for something more productive. Such as digging into the various possible causal facto
544.
by xpe 1y ago
Who knows of a good written critique of this paper written by experts in causal analysis?
545.
by xpe 1y ago
This also reveals a failure mode in conversations that might go as follows. You point to some version of Webster’s dictionary, but I point to Stuart Russell (an expert in AI). If this is all we do, it is nothing more than an appeal to autho
546.
by xpe 1y ago
This misunderstands the stated purpose of a dictionary: to catalog word usage — not to define an ontology that other must follow. Usage precedes cataloging.
547.
by xpe 1y ago
Update: it might have been clearer and more helpful if I wrote this instead… This idea of intelligence stated above seems to combine computation, memory, and self-improvement. These three concepts (as I understand them) are both different a
548.
by xpe 1y ago
A time traveler from the future has recommended we both read or reread “Disputing Definitions” by Yudkowsky (2008). Some favorite quotes of mine from it: > Dictionary editors are historians of usage, not legislators of language. Dictiona
549.
by xpe 1y ago
Ok, let’s work with that definition for this subthread. Even so, one can satisfy that definition without having the ability to: > “advance its capabilities” (your phrase) An example would be a person with damaged short-term memory. And (
550.
by xpe 1y ago
Grain of truth acknowledged, though much exaggerated -- to the point of forgetting history. > No - you just got a glimpse of 2009 Google with autocomplete. Go look at the kinds of "answers" you got in 2009 with Google's au
551.
by xpe 1y ago
> A. Businesses will boom and bust. Hype will come and go. Humanity has an intrinsic drive to advance thinking tools. So AI is backed by huge incentives to continue to grow, no matter how many missteps economic or otherwise. Corrected to
552.
by xpe 1y ago
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
553.
by xpe 1y ago
> Until the thing can learn on its own and advance its capabilities to the same degree that a junior developer can, it is not intelligent enough to do that work. This confuses intelligence with memory (or state) which tends to enable
554.
by xpe 1y ago
Another thing that jumps out to me is just how fluidly people redefine "intelligence" to mean "just beyond what machines today can do". I can't help wonder much your definition has changed. What would happen if we r
555.
by xpe 1y ago
> It is not intelligent. Which of the following would you agree to... ? 1. There is no single bar for intelligence. 2. Intelligence is better measured on a scale than with 1 bit (yes/no). 3. Intelligence is better considered as havi
556.
by xpe 1y ago
Over the top humor duly acknowledged. Disastrous? Quite possibly, but my concerns are based on different concerns. Almost everything changes, so isn’t it better to rephrase these statements as metrics to avoid fixating on one snapshot in an
557.
by xpe 1y ago
To reduce the risk of being a lemming. It is in everyone's interests for some people not to follow the herd / join the plague of locusts.
558.
by xpe 1y ago
> And still getting anybody to do anything about it is nearly impossible. Why exaggerate like this? Significant actions have been taken. > I don't see how you would be able to get anybody to care about that. Why exaggerate like t
559.
by xpe 1y ago
Let’s get specific. If we’re talking about DARPA’s research agenda or the US military’s priorities, I would say they are quite capable at planning for speculative scenarios and long-term effects - for various reasons, including decision mak
560.
by xpe 1y ago
Reread the sentence and you’ll notice the word “if”
561.
by xpe 1y ago
Why do you think I’m making a boogeyman argument?
562.
by xpe 1y ago
I welcome counterarguments, rebuttals, criticisms. I learn very little from downvotes other than guesses like: people don’t like the tone, my comment hit too close to home, people are uninterested in deeper issues of morality or philosophy,
563.
by xpe 1y ago
Utilities. Low cost retail. Fast food. Amazon. Walmart. Efficiency is arguably their key competitive advantage. This matters regarding AI systems because a lot of customers may not want to pay extra for the best models! For a lot of compani
564.
by xpe 1y ago
I am so tired of people acting like planning for an uncertain world is a zero sum game, decided by one central actor in a single pipeline execution model. I’ll unpack this below. The argument above (or some version of it) gets repeated over
565.
by xpe 1y ago
What do you mean about the curve not leading to general intelligence? Even if transformer architectures by themselves don’t get there, there are multifarious other techniques, including hybrids. As long as (1) there are incentives for contr
566.
by xpe 1y ago
I encourage everyone to not claim “X seems unlikely” when it comes to high impact risks. Such a thinking pattern often leads to pruning one’s decision tree way too soon. To do well, we need to plan over an uncertain future that has many wei
567.
by xpe 1y ago
I think you are mixed up here. I quoted from the comment above mine, which was harshly and uncharitably critical of antirez’s blog post. I was pushing back against that comment’s snearing smugness by pointing to an established field that us
568.
by xpe 1y ago
Characterizing government along only one axis, such as “big” versus “small”, can overlook important differences having to do with: legal authority, direct versus indirect programs, tax base, law enforcement, and more. In the future, I could
569.
by xpe 1y ago
>> Markets don’t want to accept that. > What a silly premise. Markets don't care. You read the top sentence way too literally. In context, it has a meaning — which can be explored (and maybe found) with charity and curiosity.
570.
by xpe 1y ago
> All markets do is express the collective opinion; in the short term as a voting machine, in the long term as a weighing machine. I prefer the concepts and rigor from political economy: markets are both preference aggregators and coor

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