https://futurism.com/the-byte/government-ai-worse-summarizing
The upshot: these AI summaries were so bad that the assessors agreed that using them could require more work down the line, because of the amount of fact-checking they require. If that's the case, then the purported upsides of using the technology — cost-cutting and time-saving — are seriously called into question.
That's too bad, because "AI" as it stands, and what is branded as "AI," is not what it claims to be on the label. There are certainly scientific efforts underway to make rudimentary versions of that, but large language models and related technology simply isn't it, and to believe otherwise is marketing, whether you accept it or not.
Again, you're believing in the marketing.
https://bigthink.com/the-future/artificial-general-intelligence-true-ai/
https://time.com/collection/time100-voices/6980134/ai-llm-not-sentient/
You're not sorry, this isn't /r/Futurology or /r/Singularity, and the
closer to your post only makes it worse.
You seem to have a kind of "head in the sand" approach to this (I get it, we have to protect our egos). Maybe educate yourself on what some of the research in this field looks like.
Here's a list of a lot of the common benchmarks that are used by researchers all over the world, and have nothing to do with Sam Altman trying to hype OpenAI's stock price or whatever the latest late stage capitalist shenanigans are in the business world.
I know some people are, but I'm not saying these things are sentient (nice Time link tho lmao). This is a massive leap in logic that you are making. I'm saying, these models are way better at taking standardized tests and shit than they were even months ago and that has implications for labor.
Honestly you sound scared about this stuff.
Even more
and there's so much more text to read. Here we go.
Maybe stop ignoring entire fields of research that, to this date, are still figuring out what biological brains are doing and how they are doing them instead of just nodding along to what you already want to believe from people that have blinders for anything outside of their field (computers, in this case). It's a case of someone with a hammer seeing everything as a nail, and you buying into that.
More like tired. If you weren't so religiously defensive about the apparent advent of whatever you're hoping for, you'd know that I have on many occasions stated that artificial intelligence is possible and may even be achieved within current lifetimes, but reiterating and refining the currently hyped "AI" product simply isn't it.
It's like if people were trying to develop rocketry to achieve space travel, but you and yours were smugly stating that this particularly sharp knife will cut the heavens open, just you wait.
I respect you, but I think you have a hard time separating the players (silicon valley, redditor incels, marketers, hype men) from the game (real science that is getting done that is interesting and miles beyond where were were last year).
I'm not talking about biology or anything else. Just pointing out that if this train keeps moving at it's current pace, we're in for a massive upheaval. I'm not hoping for anything or pushing an agenda. Honestly the best case probably would be if a lot of the detractors are right, and this tech stagnates or plateaus in some way to give society time to adjust a bit. Or to imagine a world where you don't die if you don't have a job. I personally don't have reason to believe it will stagnate, and am preparing for it not to.
What do your preparations look like?
Preparing my life to change from unemployment mostly. Paying off debts, figuring out how to best allocate the cash flow I currently have into some kind of durable savings. Making connections in my community and continuing to learn to grow my own food. General materialist / "prepper" fare honestly. Useful for any existential collapse, automation being just one of many scenarios.
I've been thinking about this comment a lot over the last couple of days. I do my research in agriculture and food systems so I've had a lot of exposure to the "future is rural" philosophy, but it's mainly in the context of climate change. It seems like anyone talking sense about the trajectory our society is on is quietly buying small plots of land for smallholder agriculture or posting about how farms are probably going to stop supplying food systems and start focusing on meeting their own needs as conditions get less hospitable. It's interesting to consider that there's a convergent response emerging as a result of automation.
Meanwhile I'm sitting here on my small expensive urban plot that couldn't sustain more than some summer vegetables because I thought I'd get bored doing actual agriculture
I'm not as worried about the food production stuff as some others. It hasn't been profitable to make market gardening or small scale farming a viable career for a long time for most people. Because of that we haven't seen as much focus on local farming as we need. Yet. We all know that's going to start changing rapidly soon.
A single person can grow loads of potatoes in a pretty small area. My only issue, especially for other leftists is that the skills to do so might take you a few seasons to acquire. So get out there and start growing. If you haven't yet, it's kind of a bad time in North America, but read up on it this winter and try to grow some taters starting next spring. Use containers or whatever you can get your hands on for your context.
I don't know that we'll start starving anytime soon, but I think the cost of everything will make life unbearable, and when it does, people will suddenly discover their green thumbs like in the old days.
You've already "respectfully" insulted me many times over because I'm not convinced that a sufficiently large language model is a 1:1 analogue to a biological brain no matter how much data (and energy, and water) goes in and how much carbon waste comes out of it.
That's already happened, and a lot of its unmitigated momentum (and the damage it's already causing) is because of "THIS IS AI" hype marketing, which oversells the tools. The tools are potentially useful and quite powerful, yes, but they are not general artificial intelligence in the way that's still being researched and developed before, during, and since you bought into the "AI" marketing label for LLMs.
They are already here, they are already screwing over many people in the working class and they're already doing massive environmental damage, and pretenses of personhood for the treat printers (or insulting living beings as "afraid" or whatever Redditisms may come) isn't making them any more 1:1 biological-analogue sapient but it is certainly blurring actual scientific inquiry with "just like the cyberpunkerinos" wish fulfillment desires.
You keep bringing up stuff I didn't even mention. It's super annoying. It's like you're arguing against a character in your head. I don't really wish to continue this conversation.
e: But hey, actually. I apologize for my tone earlier, it's been a tough week. It's interesting to discuss it with other smart folks nonetheless.
How do you think I feel when you keep conjuring up a pile of straw labeled "frightened superstitious Luddite who fears for their immortal soul" and smugposting toward it?
Then don't. There's plenty of subreddits such as /r/singularity and /r/futurology that will cheerfully agree with all of your internalized marketing beliefs.
Then why did you use the same fucking tone in this post?
If you want to stop, just stop. If you want to fling more "respectful" insults my way, I can't stop you.
Okay, sure. Like this?
Honestly, I could have used nicer words. I just realized maybe I was subconsciously kinda picking on you with my brusque language earlier because you're so abrasive. I need to examine why I did that and try to grow from it, and also maybe just not engage on this topic here, as it's too upsetting for you. lmao
Yeah, it's not working. You never stopped doing it and you're trying to blame it on me.
Believe whatever you want to believe about marketing hype calling large language models "AI" as it has for the last few years, no matter the blurring effect that that sloppy hype branding has already done to actual artificial intelligence research.
I'm done.
Desperately hoping they announce a live action ducktales movie or something to take your mind off this interaction and give you something to write thousands of words about.
If you have to play a last word game after I said "I'm done" then spare me the concern trolling with your next reply.
deleted by creator
Realized we probably both need to get the last word in, so I'm really leaving it here to
Do you have any self awareness at all, especially after what you already said about me?
Hey there, I've got no stakes here and I don't want to speak for anyone but I think what happened here was QuillCrestFalconer and DPRK_Chopra were simply pointing out that the technology is rapidly evolving, that it's capabilities even just a couple years ago were way less than now, and it appears that it will continue to develop like this. So their point would be that we need to still prepare and anticipate that it may soon advance to the point where employers will be more willing to try to replace real workers with it. I don't think they were implying that this would be a good thing, or that it would be a smart or savvy move, just that it's a possible and maybe even a likely outcome. We've already seen various industries attempt to start doing that with the limited abilities of "AI" already so to me it does seem reasonable to expect them to want to do that more as it gets better. Okay, thanks for reading. 👋
Yeah, the technology is rapidly developing but I am not the only one unconvinced that just piling in more data in the exact same way as it is now is going to 1:1 match biological brains. I'm not saying it is impossible, far from it. I'm saying the current "just spend more energy and produce more carbon waste pile on the data" approach, powered by marketing, isn't likely to produce a generalized artificial intelligence on its own.
Marketing hype being what it is and how it's both misused and even doing a disservice to actual nascent artificial intelligence research, I reject calling the current LLM technology "AI."
Okay. I am under no illusion that current technology is anywhere near replicating digital brains. I don't think that's what QuillcrestFalconer or DPRK_Chopra were saying either. When we say "replace workers" we mean "replace the functions that those workers do for their employers". We're not talking about making a copy of your coworker Bob, but making a program that does many of the tasks that are currently assigned to Bob in a manner that isn't too much worse than the real guy (from the warped perspective of management and shareholders of course), and anything the machine can't do can be delegated to someone else who gets paid a pittance. That's what we're talking about, nothing about recreating human intellects. I put the term AI in scare quotes in my first comment because I too am well aware that it's a misnomer. But it's the term that everyone knows this technology by (via marketing and such like you said) so it's easy fall back on that term. LLM, or "AI" in scare quotes, I don't think the specific term really matters in this context because we're not talking about true intelligence, but automation of task work that currently is done by paid human employees.
My primary beef and the main thrust of my argument was exactly that: the primary triumph of "AI" is as a marketing term.
It does a disservice to research and development of generalized artificial intelligence (which I hope won't be such a fucking massive waste of resources and such a massive producer of additional carbon waste and other pollution) by jumping the gun and prematurely declaring that "AI" is already here.
I think it does, unfortunately, if only because of how people already take that misleading label and ride it hard.
Valid discussion for sure, and I wish it could be pried away from the marketing bullshit because it's really misleading a lot of people, including otherwise educated people that should know better.
Well first, brains aren't the only kind of intelligent biological system but they aren't actually trying to 1 for 1 recreate the human brain, or any other brain for that matter, that's just marketing. The generative side of LLM's is what gets the focus in the media but it's really not the most scientifically interesting or what will actually change that much all things considered.
These systems are absolutely fantastic at finding real patterns in chaotic systems. That's where the potential lies.
More like trying to go to the moon with a Civil War era rocket, it is early days yet. But progress is insanely quick.
No arguments there; my issue is the marketing bullshit that wants to call them 1:1 "artificial intelligence" which is an insult and a dismissal of actual ongoing artificial intelligence research projects.
My metaphor was heavy handed, I know. Maybe I should have said it's like trying to fire a bullet at the moon and just expecting more and more gunpowder to do the trick instead of considering a different approach using chemical propulsion.