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Comment by willy_k | Hacker News Reader

This dichotomy is counter-productive. The valuations floating around are insane, and the claim that some software can replace every single laborer is one step removed from fiction. At the same time, this stuff is clearly going to change how to world works in countless, deep ways. But the idea that some fancy autocomplete can replace humans ignores the reality of humanity and the fancy autocomplete.

It’s another dot com bubble, not a crypto bubble. Trillion dollar valuations burst once you leave lesswrong.

Edit: very fancy autocomplete. I know what these things are capable of. It’s still not “intelligence”, for X definition of intelligence. And it certainly benefits from having obscene amounts of compete thrown at it. It is awesomely impressive synthesis of data, yet it’s clearly still that.

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i dont think humans are going to be replaced either, but calling the thing that solves millennium problems and is currently changing multiple industries entirely a "fancy autocomplete" makes it harder to take any point you are making seriously.

> currently changing multiple industries entirely

Four years in, I'm still waiting for a single example of this oft-repeated claim stated as fact.

The only industry I have first-hand experience in is software development, and LLMs are certainly not changing that "entirely". The implementation of quick, throwaway PoCs, maybe, but that ain't an industry.

The "auto-complete" thing is a false framing.

Complete this sentence: "You can solve world hunger by..."

Intelligence is required to finish sentences. It's not just a Markov chain.

Leaving aside the fact we have solutions for things like climate change and will not implement them, regardless of who or what recommends them... My keyboard offers "You can solve world hunger by using a Ted Bungie algorithm." Which sounds reasonable on its face until I research Ted Bungie and the algorithms he developed.

Granted, my phone keyboard lacks a substantial dictionary, offers words instead of tokens, has a very small context window, and doesn't randomize outputs (Ted Bungie is its primary recommendation every time), but those are basically parameters to the existing autocomplete.

> Leaving aside the fact we have solutions for things like climate change and will not implement them...

Right. Exactly. Which means there's something wrong with the solutions. Be it evil humans or apathy or whatnot. A real solution would actually fix the problem.

Fair point. In that case, it’s imperative you share this* with your local representative: https://chatgpt.com/share/6ab29440-6944-83ea-853f-8060dc58da...

*This un actionable summary of existing discourse. The real world doesn’t produce traces or take HTTP requests.

You're straw manning me.

Obviously there is no solution to world hunger right now. Nevertheless - finishing sentences is not pattern matching - and it's extremely obvious that whatever is going on inside LLMs is not pattern matching.

Language is absolutely pattern matching, and the whole thing is that the more patterns you put in, the more the transformer can pull out what’s useful. Agents are this effective because people figured out that training on tasks being completed gets the models to complete tasks - that’s pattern matching.

And it can only go so far, where those patterns are feasibly captured, eg internet discussions and coding and mathematics. It won’t measure up to the scaling laws of the physical world.

> Language is absolutely pattern matching

OK - so long as you also agree that language is thought.

Until the advent of LLMs - language was considered the pinnacle of human intelligence. But humans have some need for mysticism at the root of their beliefs - so they chase the gaps in our knowledge. Like "God of the gaps."

Sure, world models will help navigate physical space; they are effectively the animal mind. Will they help unwind the laws of the universe? Probably not at all. Language is sufficient. Because it is thought.

Language reflects thought. LLMs are a search function over text, text that reflects previous thought; they cannot create.

> they cannot create

Every single day we have new and wondrous examples of the things LLMs have created.

Clearly we are using very different definitions of the word.

Synthesize != create. A new combination of existing things is different from a new thing

Music is combined notes. Stories are combined words. Newton combined existing mathematics to produce calculus.

I'm wondering if you can name anything that counts as a "creation" under your definition?

Stories and music, their character, comes from combined motifs and themes. These are what gives them meaning. Creation is tied to meaning; one can’t separate human meaning out of the conversation. Without human meaning - new perspectives gained, beauty found - all things are equivalently pointless, and all an LLM is doing is shifting (very high-order, having gone through the steps to end up in training data) entropy around.

No - I mean my question genuinely. I'd like you to name one specific creation that isn't a combination of what has come before it.

I'd rather get specific than talk about hypotheticals.

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