I'm a software engineer, completing 10 years of professional experience this year. I started my career as a web frontend engineer (it was easier for me to de...
Energy efficiency has improved by orders of magnitude - leading to much higher energy use. It’s the Jevons paradox and it’s as old as coal-gas lighting. Last year some guy recreated GPT2 for twenty bucks. Corpus to model in one hour. OpenAI never said how much the original cost, but there was at least one comma.
But yeah, LLMs are fundamentally limited, because ‘what’s the next word’ shouldn’t work. The fact it’s accidentally this flexible and powerful, even with its many infamous fuckups, is a reminder that neural networks in general will permanently alter computing. Models trained on supercomputers can run on any potato. Any problem with good examples can be addressed, without first being solved.
LLMs are fundamentally limited, because ‘what’s the next word’ shouldn’t work.
Yes, you’re right. However, for fear of coming off as an AI sycophant (I’ve yet to sacrifice my brain at the altar of our future AI overlords), LLMs aren’t the whole picture. Plenty of research is dedicated to essentially combining the best of each class of AI algorithms into a composite model of intelligence. For instance, “Neuro-Symbolic AI” is really just the result of giving an LLM (good at translation, search, synthesis, bad at symbolic reasoning) a symbolic inference engine like Prolog (good at symbolic reasoning, no native ability for translation/search/synthesis). I’ve been coding for over 20 years, and I’m impressed at its results for software development.
This all is reminiscent of Moore’s Law; even though we keep running into the physical limits of CPU clock speeds, transistor size, etc. we keep finding clever ways to work around those limits.
Of course I’m not saying we should; these models are, after all, models of intelligence, not wisdom.
Being reasonable about the tech is kind of a pain, here. At least we only got one flavor of campist, so anyone seeing outright “boosters” is jumping at shadows. I just think the chatbot that can code is neat. Maybe we can do stuff with it. Maybe it doesn’t need to spy on everyone forever.
We accidentally invented p-zombies and they’re already more intelligent than script kiddies. Once the grifters move on we can see what that’s good for.
Just because it’s possible does not mean it’s inevitable. It’s incredibly optimistic to think that we can get our shit together enough to pull it off before we destroy all our productive capacity through hubris.
Nothing’s inevitable. And as for “building a mind”, while it depends on precisely what you mean by “mind”, it’s totally possible that only a biological brain can produce minds as we understand the word “mind”. Building AGI doesn’t necessarily mean building a mind. And since thoughts seem to be properties of “matter”, and there seem to be rules about which configurations of matter produce mind, we don’t necessarily know that there are other configurations that can produce minds. We might produce something else equally interesting which still is not a mind.
it’s totally possible that only a biological brain can produce minds as we understand the word “mind”.
Bollocks. Thought is a process, like math. Nothing meat does with signals is impossible in other substrates.
At the utmost extreme: surely we can simulate physics at whatever level is necessary for virtual brains to function. Physical neurons are not gonna rely on quantum chromodynamics. Mere chemistry will probably suffice.
And hand-waving things that are like-minds-but sounds like Chinese Room nonsense.
Energy efficiency has improved by orders of magnitude - leading to much higher energy use. It’s the Jevons paradox and it’s as old as coal-gas lighting. Last year some guy recreated GPT2 for twenty bucks. Corpus to model in one hour. OpenAI never said how much the original cost, but there was at least one comma.
But yeah, LLMs are fundamentally limited, because ‘what’s the next word’ shouldn’t work. The fact it’s accidentally this flexible and powerful, even with its many infamous fuckups, is a reminder that neural networks in general will permanently alter computing. Models trained on supercomputers can run on any potato. Any problem with good examples can be addressed, without first being solved.
Yes, you’re right. However, for fear of coming off as an AI sycophant (I’ve yet to sacrifice my brain at the altar of our future AI overlords), LLMs aren’t the whole picture. Plenty of research is dedicated to essentially combining the best of each class of AI algorithms into a composite model of intelligence. For instance, “Neuro-Symbolic AI” is really just the result of giving an LLM (good at translation, search, synthesis, bad at symbolic reasoning) a symbolic inference engine like Prolog (good at symbolic reasoning, no native ability for translation/search/synthesis). I’ve been coding for over 20 years, and I’m impressed at its results for software development.
This all is reminiscent of Moore’s Law; even though we keep running into the physical limits of CPU clock speeds, transistor size, etc. we keep finding clever ways to work around those limits.
Of course I’m not saying we should; these models are, after all, models of intelligence, not wisdom.
Edit: fix apostrophe splice
Being reasonable about the tech is kind of a pain, here. At least we only got one flavor of campist, so anyone seeing outright “boosters” is jumping at shadows. I just think the chatbot that can code is neat. Maybe we can do stuff with it. Maybe it doesn’t need to spy on everyone forever.
We accidentally invented p-zombies and they’re already more intelligent than script kiddies. Once the grifters move on we can see what that’s good for.
Agreed. The bubble has to pop eventually… Or not, and we really are marching towards our own obsolescence as a species.
I mean, AGI is inevitable, but it’s never gonna come from these dinguses. They can’t even look past LLMs far enough to pursue text diffusion.
To imagine we cannot possibly build a mind, or that it cannot possibly improve that same effort, is baffling. It changes the shape of the universe.
Just because it’s possible does not mean it’s inevitable. It’s incredibly optimistic to think that we can get our shit together enough to pull it off before we destroy all our productive capacity through hubris.
Nothing’s inevitable. And as for “building a mind”, while it depends on precisely what you mean by “mind”, it’s totally possible that only a biological brain can produce minds as we understand the word “mind”. Building AGI doesn’t necessarily mean building a mind. And since thoughts seem to be properties of “matter”, and there seem to be rules about which configurations of matter produce mind, we don’t necessarily know that there are other configurations that can produce minds. We might produce something else equally interesting which still is not a mind.
Bollocks. Thought is a process, like math. Nothing meat does with signals is impossible in other substrates.
At the utmost extreme: surely we can simulate physics at whatever level is necessary for virtual brains to function. Physical neurons are not gonna rely on quantum chromodynamics. Mere chemistry will probably suffice.
And hand-waving things that are like-minds-but sounds like Chinese Room nonsense.