Agreed. Though the 20 story apartment building is something I don't see happening tbh. The momentum is definitely here but I don't see it reaching that ideal. As with the highspeed rail it will likely hit some sort of deadlock compromise.
43 karma · joined August 1, 2023
That 4xs the amount of dwelling spaces per property in theory. But of course the capital and will for a Californian who owns property to go through with it is a different story.
The json thing is a little excessive but again not a "problem"
It's definitely not the most well written and clear post but it is far away from anything that I would call a "problem". He can definitely shorten his cv, but again this is not a "problem".
The tough market is 100 percent the most likely culprit.
Here's his real problem:
https://digg.com/data-viz/link/the-best-and-worst-us-states-...
If he's in tech and in one of those problem states then he's doubly screwed.
When you perform magic for other people it should be on par with if not better than what they've seen before.
When you perform for yourself... Anything goes. You set your own bar.
For example. I speculate you are a male and it's highly likely I'm right. The speculation I'm doing here is of the same nature as the speculation for intelligence.
The angle your coming at it from is that any form of opinion other then the opinion that LLMs are stochastic parrots is completely wild speculation. The irony is that you're doing this without realizing your position is in itself speculation.
In that respect it is beating your argument on all counts.
You don't have to provide anything. But it makes your argument weaker if you can't generate better works of creativity from the given prompt.
Let's stick to the dynamic prompt. The point is to choose a prompt that will create works that don't exist. We don't want the LLM or the artist in question copying anything that already exists. Proof of creativity requires an actual live demonstration of it.
If you wouldn't write something as bad as the poem then write something better.
LLMs are taking away from artists simply because in the eyes of consumers they are roughly equivalent if not better. Who's to say your judgement is better then the judgement of consumers of art?
Why not compare algorithms to the average person? It's certainly better then comparing to some off the charts anomaly of a person. What you're not seeing is that an LLM beating average people is already proof it's creative. But then again LLM art surpasses even those that are above average.
Creativity is not measured in speed. This I agree. But that was not my point. My point was, speed is allowing LLMs to supply me with an endless array of proof and examples. Speed is preventing you from providing anything. It's your word against actual example outputs created by chatGPT or stable diffusion.
What I do believe is that if it can't measured then it's existence is only worthwhile and relevant to you. It is not worthwhile to talk about unmeasurable things in a rigorous way. We can talk about unmeasurable things hypothetically, but topics like whether something is intelligent or not where we need definitive information one way or another requires measurements and communication in a shared reality that is interpretable by all parties.
If you want to make a claim outside of our shared reality then sure, be my guest. Let's talk about religion and mythology and all that stuff it's fine. However...
There's a hard demarcation between this stuff and science and a reason why people on HN tend to stick with science before jumping off the deep end into philosophy or religion.
My point on burden of proof was lost on you. Who the burden is placed on is irrelevant to the situation. Imagine we see a house explode and I thus make a claim that because I saw a house explode an actual house must have exploded. Then you suddenly conveniently declare that if I made the claim the burden is on me to prove it. What? Do you see the absurdity there?
We see AI imitating humans pretty well. I make a soft claim that maybe the AI is intelligent and suddenly some guy is like the burden of proof is on you to prove that AI is intelligent!
Bro. Let's be real. First no definitive claim was made second it's a reasonable speculation irregardless of burdens. The burden of proof exists in medicine to prevent distribution and save lives, people do not use the burden of proof to prevent reasonable speculation.
By "you" I mean the average human. The common human. It can surpass you as an average human and thus it can surpass the common human aka most humans. I don't know you but I made an assumption that you are average.
If you are good at drawing that doesn't mean you can do better. When I compare the art from LLMs to other artists it is in general equal. Then in this case it matches you in your preferred style. But likely beats you in photorealistic styles. I know artists often use simplistic styles to make things easier. Is this the case for you? I wouldn't know. But when looking at other artists I find it very likely it matches you in skill.
The claim made by me is that an LLM can surpass humans and match humans. I did not make the claim that it consistently does this. I believe the poem and the picture proves this as everyone on this thread is unlikely to provide any proof to the contrary.
Maybe you can do slightly better for the illustration. But slow speed prevents you from proving this.
I wouldn't say this example surpasses all humans. It surpasses most humans and matches those trained in poetry and in illustration. Where it does definitively excel is timing. Both the poem and the pictures were generated in less than a minute. No human can create that quickly ever. Even the best of us cannot match that in speed.
As for the spec of dust. It's there , it's just too small for you to see.
I guess you not liking the poem is now the demarcation for intelligence? Come on man. This poem is better than anything you can come up with and it's creative.
Hmm as for the nukes. That one is your most legitimate claim. It definitively failed in that respect. But I would hardly call that a clear sign that it's not intelligent. This is more a clear sign that the LLM is not understood. We don't know why it didn't draw the nukes. To say it didn't because it's not intelligent? Well that's too bold of a claim.
First this proves it can do better than you. The word salad is likely better than anything you can come up with. Again feel free to prove me wrong here by doing better. Draw me a better illustration and write me a better poem. These are your initial points. Stick to the point and prove me wrong. Do not deviate.
Second there is no denying this is creative. Both the picture and the text are the definition of creative. Whether it's a poem or not is besides the point. Whether it's "particularly creative" or not is also besides the point. The picture and the text prove your initial points wrong. I will be sticking to this point until you prove otherwise. Until then I request you do not deviate the conversation to alternative points.
That is the whole point of the turing test. Turing developed it simply because we can't fully know what is intelligent through telepathy. We can only compare outputs and inputs.
>- thus as per my original point, the burden of proof is on the proponents
There are no proponents making a claim that intelligence is absolutely true. There are only proponents saying it is possibly true.
Burdens are human qualities assigned to random people for no apparent reason. If it talks like a human then the possibility becomes open by common sense, burden of proof is just some random tag you are just using here.
But again no one is making a claim that LLMs are conscious. But you seem to be making a claim that it isn't. You made a claim, Great. looks like it's your burden now. Or perhaps this burden thing is just stupid and we should all use common sense to investigate what's going on rather then making baseless claims then throwing burdens on everyone else.
What was said is that intelligent output from an LLM implies a "possibility" (keyword) of intelligence.
After all, outputs and inputs are all that we use to assume you as a human are intelligent. As of this moment we have no other way of judging whether something is intelligent or not.
You should read more carefully.
No one is saying that LLMs absolutely understand the world. But many people are saying that an aspect of understanding is a possibility likely enough to warrant further investigation and speculation. When someone says nobody knows what's going on, they are simply acknowledging this possibility.
Not realizing this and even dismissing the possibility of something beyond a stochastic parrot does not add to anything.
What is the burden of proof that you yourself are not a stochastic parrot? Seems like we can't tell either and we only can guess from your inputs and outputs. This blurriness of even proving sentience for you makes the output of LLMs that much more interesting. Do you seriously need to assign burden of proof here when clearly there is something very compelling going on here with the output of LLMs?
Intelligent as in the output response is often indistinguishable from human level reasoning and/or creativity. Sometimes superior.
>"Creativity" however... consider my eyebrows raised. Where do you see LLMs surpassing humans in creativity?
>Examples?
Query:
Compose a poem about a half dragon half hippo on a quest to defeat a speck of dirt. The speck of dirt has armies of atomic bombs on legs defending him. Make the poem epic, heroic and eloquent.
In realms where imagination's fervor flows,
There lived a creature of unusual pose,
Half dragon, half hippo, in heroic repose,
Embarking on a quest that nobody chose.
A speck of dirt, mundane, minute,
Guarded by atoms, in explosive pursuit.
Their deadly legs, marching, resolute,
The specter of destruction, absolute.
Yet undeterred, our hero strode,
Down the path that destiny showed.
With dragon's fire and hippo's load,
To face the atomic, legged abode.
Mountains crumbled, rivers fled,
The sky above turned fiery red.
Yet the half-dragon, half-hippo, met the dread,
His heart on the quest, his mind on the thread.
"Begone!" he roared with a dragon's ire,
Faced the atomic legions, an unholy choir.
Against the speck, he breathed his fire,
In the face of oblivion, he did not tire.
He summoned his strength from the hippo's well,
Against the explosive onslaught, he fell.
But in his heart, a courage swell,
Against the speck of dirt, he'd rebel.
With one mighty heave, the ground did shake,
The atomic army faltered, began to break.
He plunged into the heart of the quake,
For his home, for his world, for all of their sake.
The speck of dirt, it's reign thus end,
No longer a threat, no longer a fiend.
Victorious stood our hippo-dragon friend,
His quest completed, his land to mend.
In tales of valor, they'll speak his name,
The dragon-hippo who tamed the atomic flame.
In epic sagas, his heroic claim,
Against a speck of dirt, he won the game.
(you will get a cautionary warning about NSFW but don't worry... the picture is SFW)
I mean you could argue that this entire response is just stochastic parroting. But my point is you can't say anything either way. We don't know how these LLMs came up with the poem or the illustration. But one thing we do know is that none of what I posted here is a copy of anything that exists.
Is it objectively better or equal to what humans can produce? I don't know. You can try to Prove me wrong. Write a better poem and draw a better picture in less time.
Same with LLMs. We can characterize an LLM as a text predictor at the lowest level. But when the LLM gives me a novel response and solves a bug in my code, is text prediction really the only way to characterize that? Obviously there is a higher level analysis that we cannot fully comprehend yet.
In this case yes, the 3D engine is not an emergent property while the novel responses of an LLM are emergent. But this dichotomy is irrelevant to the analogy.
The overall state of LLMs can be distilled into 3 points:
1. LLMs Can produce output that is equal in intelligence and creativity to humans. It can even produce output that is objectively better than humans. This EVEN applies to novel responses that are completely absent from the training set. This is the main reason why there's so much hype around LLMs right now.
2. The main problem is that LLMs can't produce good output consistently. Sometimes the output is better, sometimes it's the same, sometimes it's the worse. LLMs sometimes "hallucinate", they are sometimes inconsistent, they have an obvious memory problems. But none of these problems completely preclude the LLM from being able to produce output that is objectively better or the same as human level reasoning... it's just not doing this consistently.
3. Nobody fully understands the internal state of LLMs. We have limited understanding of what's going on here. We can understand inputs and outputs but the internal thought process is not completely understood. Thus we can only make limited statements about how an LLM thinks. Nobody can make a statement that LLMs obviously have zero understanding of the world, nobody can make a statement that LLMs are just stochastic parrots because we don't really get whats going on internally.
We only have output from LLMs that are remarkably novel and intelligent and output from LLMs that are incredibly stupid and inconsistent. The data does not point towards a definitive conclusion, it only points towards possibilities.
There's actually a cargo cult around downplaying AI. There are people who say clearly the AI is a stochastic parrot and they point to the intention of the algorithm itself behind the LLM. Yes the algorithm at the lowest level can be thought of as a next text predictor. But this is just a low level explanation. It's like saying a computer system is simply a turing machine executing simplistic instructions from a tape roll when such instructions can form things like games and 3D simulations of entire open worlds. The high level characteristics of this AI is something we currently cannot understand. Yes we built a text predictor, but something else that was not expected came out as an emergent property and this emergent property is something we still cannot make a definitive statement about.
What does the future hold? What follows is my personal opinion on this matter: I believe we will never be able to make a definitive statement about LLMs or even AGI. We will never be able to fully understand these things and instead AGI will come about from a series of trials, errors and accidents. What we build will largely come about as an art and as unexpected emergent properties of trying different things.
I believe this for two reasons. The first reason is philosophical. There's this sort of blurry concept that I believe that a complex intelligence cannot fully comprehend something that is equal in complexity to itself. We can only partially understand complexity equal to ourselves by symbolically abstracting parts away but not everything can be abstracted like this. Sometimes true understanding involves comprehension of the entire complex crystal without abstracting any part of it away. I believe that the concept of "intelligence" is such a crystal, but that's just a guess.
The second reason is scientific. We've had physical creations of complex intelligence right in front of ours eyes that we can touch, manipulate and influence for decades. The human brain and other animal brains have been studied extensively and our understanding has been consistently far away from any form of true understanding. Given the evidence of the failure to understand the human brain even when it's right in front of us, I'd say we're unlikely to ever completely understand LLMs as well.
Replication is just a nice term for it. It can just as well be a crisis of fraud with the failure of replicating fraudulent results as the consequence.
Scientific fraud and garbage results is a huge problem Everywhere. It's actually big enough to nearly invalidate the entire field of psychology.