No shit.
It’s Superintelligence, stop calling it ai or i’ll throw a plate of ketchup against the wall again, hmp!
-orange
YOU DON’T SAY??
duh.
I was a programmer for 25 years. I always figured I could have made a contribution to AI research, but the opportunity never came up (I was too busy writing Skype clones for cable companies and ISPs that were never used by anyone). I regretted this for a long time, but not any more. I never imagined AI would be this fucking bad, “bad” in the sense of bad for humanity and just plain bad as a product.
It’s cause it’s not AI
FWIW I always felt my contribution would have been towards “real” AI rather than the current pseudo-AI stuff that is all the rage. In addition to being a programmer, I also have a background in evolutionary biology and neuroanatomy. The “neural networks” that are part of current AI were originally based on the understanding of how neurons function that existed in the 1970s, and they were (and are still) a poor implementation of that level of knowledge. IMHO true AI can be achieved by more accurate simulation of how real neurons and real neural networks function and how they have come about in the real world through hundreds of millions of years of evolution by natural selection.
That being said, “real” AI is probably going to be even worse for humanity than this current stuff is, so at least I’m glad that blood won’t be on my hands.
I feel for you. Going into machine learning was my dream to. Until this. I wanted to work on true artificial intelligence based on the human brain.
I really don’t understand this perspective, and it’s my biggest gripe with Chollet and his ilk as well. What, in your opinion, makes neuro-symbolic AI inherently superior to (the currently better performing) statistical methods?
I really don’t understand this perspective
This is honestly a strange thing to say. The only examples we have on the planet today of what we consider true intelligence are living animals. Why wouldn’t it at least be possible that the properties of the signaling units that comprise these existing, observed intelligences (i.e. neurons) are fundamental to the task of replicating these intelligences? It seems to me it’s the “statistical methods” that have yet to prove they’re capable of producing true intelligence.
I will retreat to the fact that I said “true AI can be achieved by more accurate simulation of how real neurons and real neural networks function” and not “can only be achieved”. Time will tell which approach works better.
I don’t know who Chollet is but I’ll look him up. Thanks for the reference.
Edit: the downvote was predictable. Nice job.
Please stop using this argument. Unless you also brought it up every single time the term was used in videogames etc
It’s a bad argument that relies on pure language semantics that helps no one and undermines any good argument against it because it weakens your stance
I do bring it up every case and even if I didn’t this case it’s an important distinction. Artificial intelligence is a marketing term used to conjure images of Jarvis and what not in people heads.
Video games companies never claimed to have near sentiment AGI baked into their games that would replace all human workers or blow up the world.
The term artificial intelligence is used to anthropomorphize LLMs as weird as that seems.
It is an important distinction. These are large language models, not reasoning models, not AGI, not artificial life not artificial intelligence.
I know that term as been used by the machine learning community in the past to mean things like decision trees and general models, and it didn’t really matter much then but it matters A LOT now.
Words have meanings. This isn’t arguing semantics, it’s using words as they are intended so we can communicate effectively about something in the world. To argue otherwise is naive, dishonest, and quite honestly just annoying.
Hi I’m new to this debate and I agree with you that language matters and all that stuff you said at the end. That being said, I’m firmly in the camp of “LLMs are bad, but a ‘true’ AI would be even worse for us”. I could type up several paragraphs diving into the several reasons why I think that way, but to save time (and to get back to my job) I’m just going to steal this Frank Herbert quote:
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
Do I think AI, in a vacuum, is always bad and will be no matter who or what makes it? No, not necessarily. But whatever we build will be inherently, and intrinsically tied to the micro- and macro-systems of our society, which are all DEEPLY fucked. Consequently, any AI we bring in would also, even if not initially, end up as being equally, deeply, fucked and end up being far, FAR more detrimental than positive
Yeah true AI would be quite insane. Especially if it was behind human capabilities.
There’s just no way to ensure it’s aligned towards good. We can’t even define that ourselves. Who knows the suffering we could unleash on ourselves.
You are spot on, and the ones downvoting you are simply wrong.
it’s funny because they are literally proving my point. But oh well
It’s sad how many stupid people are here. 🙁
Too much reddit contrarianism leaking. All too keen to say the same 4 taglines to a topic without any understanding if it even makes sense
I don’t know what it is, but sometimes it feels like debating a stupid 12 year old.
You missed the point. Video game NPC “AI” is actual AI, based on deterministic rules, combining contextual(!) inputs to determine reactions.
LLMs are none of that. They have no determinism, no concept of context and their “reaction” are pure statistics.
This is almost exactly the opposite of how LLMs work.
LLMs running under greedy decoding are deterministic finite state machines. A lot of work has gone into making their output nondeterministic because probabilistic next-token generation is more useful.
The more accurate characterization would be that LLMs are context-dependent deterministic state machines with adjustable nondeterministic sampling algorithms bolted onto the decoder.
Also, just as a side note:
They have no determinism, no concept of context and their “reaction” are pure statistics.
This almost perfectly describes human behavior.
This is almost exactly the opposite of how LLMs work.
With the exact state of training data, and the exact prompt history, you’ll get the same output. Problem is that you only get this scenario a single time. And as much as a spelling error, or simply repeating the same prompt twice, will not yield deterministic output.
So no, LLM garbage is not deterministic. Otherwise it would be possible to predict output before the matrix processes the input.
They have no determinism, no concept of context and their “reaction” are pure statistics.
This almost perfectly describes human behavior.
That’s nonsense. Most mammals have a high understanding of context, and humans are very much able to produce deterministic answers to a given problem.
- With greedy decoding (temperature set to 0) LLM output is deterministic. The same input will always result in the same output — every time. This is a fact.
- Just because something isn’t amenable to calculation does not mean it is nondeterministic, for example the Three Body Problem. This is a fact.
- Humans are stupid unpredictable base animals that hold almost no understanding of the world around them or their place within it, while at the same time their heard-level behaviors are almost, if not entirely, predictable. This is a cynical joke.
LLMs are none of that. They have no determinism, no concept of context and their “reaction” are pure statistics.
yes, absolutely. and? Still makes them AI. Just not AGI (what the tech bros think they sell).
Video game NPC “AI” is actual AI, based on deterministic rules, combining contextual(!) inputs to determine reactions.
yes, and? You described an algorithm. If used in the context of game AI, it falls into the category of AI. The same way an LLM falls also the broad definition of AI. It’s just not AGI
This is exactly the stupid sematic discussion I mentioned above. You are fighting the wrong fight. Start focusing on calling their bullshit for not being AGI. That’s something you can actually attack. Calling it not AI is just factually a categorical error. And weakins your argument
- No one talked about AGI, and of course video game NPCs do not have that.
- LLMs are - technically speaking - the shittiest subset of the broad field of AI research. However, since they have zero determinism, they are the absolute opposite of “intelligent”. They are artificial morons, if anything. And I object to the overuse of “AI” because words are important, and most humans are incredibly gullible and when everyone and their news station calls something “AI”, they will assume it is intelligent and will rely on its outputs. This will kill people.
Therefore: No, LLMs are not AI. They are statistical garbage generators with a high word prediction accuracy that is enough to fool humans into falsely believing they have understanding of context.
They are statistical garbage generators with a high word prediction accuracy that is enough to fool humans into falsely believing they have understanding of context.
That very precisely describes a lot of people I know.
By any definition of AI, a rock could be intelligent. If you interpret it as doing something that resembles intelligence, that is intelligence as we understand it. It wouldn’t likely be widely accepted, but the going definition of intelligence accepts that broadness.
they literally are. AI is a very broad term. They are just not AGI.
People need to learn that categories exist and have grouping hirarchies. You’re proving my point wonderfully
Exactly. My farts are AI. I agree!
It most definitely is AI, and the guy is a Nobel Price winner for making a breakthrough in AI programming.
Contrary to you, he actually knows what he is talking about.Just because he has a novel prize doesn’t make him immune to propaganda.
I never made any claims about that, that doesn’t change that claiming it’s not AI is moronic. We absolutely have AI, and have had it since at least the 80’s.
Claiming we don’t is moronic.
It’s a problem with human greed, not AI. If we didn’t have greedy oligarch parasites then AI wouldn’t be nearly as much of a problem. NIMBYism is destroying the future of the USA.
That is only some of the problem.
See the study where they compared brain activity with or without. Also, if the AI users were cut off from being able to use, they at least in the moment became less capable of doing the tasks than they were before they were being allowed to use AI. Study can’t speak to lasting impact, but they clearly showed people would get worse in the moment.
Studies have shown that folks that employ a rich writing style early in life are less likely to show dementia late in life and people who have very lazy writing styles are likely to have dementia. Obviously too early to say for sure if this applies to LLM, but leaning on LLM for writing might be similarly lazy.
We’ve extincted plenty of other species. Eventually we’d start on ourselves.
Start? We’ve been embracing the Great Filter like a long lost friend.
Maybe if we keep the AI but loss the Oligarchy…
What is even the benefit
Well, for starters, if you want to translate a written work to another language, it has never been easier.
LLMs are excellent tools for modeling large languages.
🍿
Might?! Really after all the shit that is happening? Irrecoverable environmental and financial damages is a might?!
or whether “we fail to manage the risks and … have a huge gap between rich and poor, huge cultural problems, massive unemployment, just society being torn apart”.
Whether indeed; Who can say?
huh, if only we stopped sooner…
Geoffrey Hinton, who no one can say with a straight face “doesn’t understand AI”, also says they are conscious. But none of you screechers, yelling to the clouds from your grumble-goon caverns, wanna hear that.
Ive never heard of this guy until today but I read the headline and it confirmed my bias so Im all in
Here’s me with a straight face: Anyone who claims LLMs are conscious “does not understand AI”.
Thank you for adding clarity to the understanding that holds your viewpoint.
That’s not a case of not understanding AI, that’s just a case of having a misanthropic world view. His conception of consciousness is that there’s nothing particularly special about it and that humans are just jumped-up apes that pretend to be important. He also probably hasn’t actually spent much time philosophizing about consciousness.
Humans are just jumped-up apes that pretend to be important. Or are you trying to say we are magic?
There is no “magic god juice” in humans that makes us conscious. Consciousness is a state already shared with non human animals.
And there you go, that’s why AI boosters feel like they can say their toys are conscious. They don’t think consciousness is interesting or different from how any other animal experiences the world, just jumped up apes that pretend to be special. Naturally, this leads them to conclude chatbots are conscious.
It’s gibberish, of course. In reality, they don’t know what it is and don’t care to define it because it is unimportant to them. These can be very smart people who know a lot about AI, but they don’t know a lot about consciousness and their opinions shouldn’t be taken that seriously. Qualia? What’s that?
I never said it was unimportant. You have jumped to a lot of unfounded conclusions.
Do you believe that all animals are just unconscious reaction machines, except humans?
I don’t believe a human and a non-human ape have equivalent ethical value. There’s something different between them.
That’s not what I asked. Every response you have given has been slippery and imprecise at best, and misleading at worst. I think you just don’t want to say “magic god juice” because it rightfully sounds silly, but you really think “magic god juice” is what humans have.
It’s a question of phenomenology and subjectivity. This degradation of consciousness as “magic god juice” is just misanthropy. Yet, you yourself probably believe the life of a human is not equal to that of a non-human animal. Why? What’s the difference? Can you even answer that? Have you even thought about it?
There’s nothing slippery about what I’ve said either. AI boosters think their toys are conscious because they see consciousness as unimportant and trivial. To the extent they’ve thought about it, they’ve decided their toys have equivalent value to human life and are willing to kill everyone to build the god machine.
I don’t know him, so I can’t speculate on his chatbot knowledge, but if we assume he does know how they work, I can definitively say he doesn’t understand consciousness.
His body of work speaks for itself. I can assume since you are attempting to stand against his knowledge with your own, that your understanding is equally as proven.
Can you link me to some of your work?
First, do you genuinely believe LLMs are conscious?
No more than I believe Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area are conscious, but neither exist in a vacuum devoid of the rest of the organism and surrounding universe.
So… Yes or no?
I’m sorry I didn’t realize that was confusing. A specialized chunk of the human mind used for language, removed from the rest of a human and the universe, does not reach a conscious threshold worthy of major consideration. Just like a severed finger. A bare LLM, removed from the rest of the the digital apparatus and the universe, does not reach a conscious threshold worthy of major consideration
Now, I’ll ask you one. Do you think there are conscious non-human animals? Or do you believe that is a trait only humans possess?
Consciousness is having a subjective experience. Yes lots of animals are conscious.
Wow, see how I answered concisely without typing a paragraph of fluff?
removed from the rest of the digital apparatus and the universe
Speak plainly, Ascian. Does that mean there are circumstances (in today’s world) in which you would consider an LLM to have a subjective experience?
Can understand AI all he wants. Doesn’t mean he understands consciousness
So are you of the belief that “we don’t know” or “definitely not”?
It’s wild he says that they’re conscious when science & philosophy as a whole still don’t really understand consciousness.
So it sounds like he’s an arrogant moron with a very specific expertise he likes to apply outside of where it should be applied.
He has a long history of anything but. You obviously have a very reactionary set of fixed beliefs though.
aS iT tUrNs oUt!
