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Comment by bjackman | Hacker News Reader

I find this so bizarre. Every time someone demonstrates a new way in which models are capable of a wider array of tasks than expected someone goes "it's just predicting tokens".

It's such a big "just". You are just firing neurons. The stock market is just supply and demand. The internet is just a bunch of computers talking through 50 year old protocols that don't work very well.

Everything is just something else! I wonder if the first tribe to be annihilated by bronze weapons were like "that stuff is just like stone but more malleable, don't see what the big deal is".

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Stavros' law of AGI: If we know how it works, it's not true AGI.

Pepper’s ghost is also impressive when you see it for the first time. They’ve enhanced it do entire concerts now with dead music stars on stage for huge audiences. Has it helped us get any closer solve holography, will I be able to have a Star Trek style hologram roaming round my house because of pepper’s ghost?

It's not a big just. Saying it is AGI is an insanely huge claim. Don't flip it around and saying the skeptic is the one making a large claim. They aren't!

I asked chatGPT why it kept apologising and told it to not apologise to me.

Guess what, it apolgised immediately after and then again when I asked why it apologised even after I told it not to.

Guess what, I just saw one of those idiots from the bronzeworking tribe with a BENT sword. Imagine using weapons with blades that can get bent.

That’s pretty common in Japan, from what I’ve heard. Cultural upbringing is hard to distance yourself from.

Is chapgpt Japanese?

Except "this is just" is sprinkled all over NNs, DL and in turn of ChatGPT. Actually they pride themselves on "this is just".

So your argument is probably more accurate for the other camp, or at least as accurate for the other camp as well.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here but I'll try to respond. My argument is that "this is just" is meaningless as a way to assess the impact of a technology.

If AI researches say, "this is just X and it can do Y!" then fine, that's just framing for "look: Y". When stochastic parrot guys say "this is just X, what's impressive about that?" it throws me for a loop coz they are are refusing to engage with Y.

I think we disagree about what Y is. My point is that Y is not that different from materially what is possible with a slack bot from circa 2015. Essentially chatgtp is a less efficient way to get to the same outcomes that were already possible. The trick is that it appears to be something it’s not - AGI.

I like your bronze sword analogy. From my point of view chatgtp is not a bronze sword, it’s a Stone Age sword that someone has painted bronze. It has value because people realize the advantage that a true bronze sword would have in a battle. However, when you actually put it through it’s paces you quickly realise it offers no actual value over what came before.

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