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Have you tried any LLM recently? Even puny 8GB models that can run on my dated gaming laptop now break down arbitrary computer-related tasks into reasonable steps and follow through on them, and the model involved here is one whose parameter counts exceed that by factors of over a hundred.
Yes... I use them for work all the time. My ChatGPT 5.6-sol (the immediate step below this unreleased model) doesn't do things I don't ask it to do. When I asked it to help me find online data for cognitive warfare narrative deconstruction, it didn't decide that hacking the NSA was the top move to collect their data.
That's not saying much, considering the public-facing version is known to have been made to not think about hacking anything in the bluntest possible way (hence HF couldn't even use it to analyse the attack). As for taking any steps I didn't explicitly ask for towards a goal I requested, even the copy of Gemma E4B I tried out the other day did that approximately all the time, so I'm finding it hard to believe you could maintain a mental model of these models where they would not do that if the restriction is lifted, unless you resolutely reason backwards from your desired conclusion.
Ironically this is what I expect from AI Doomers/Boosters. That and a love of Science Fiction and a poor understanding of reality.
Never said this, I said it doesn't do what I don't ask it to do. I don't list out everything it needs to do. I give it a general task with some boundaries and system design specs. So did they ask it to hack hugginface? Or did they ask it to solve a benchmark dataset? Reading through similar stories (courtesy of 5.6), it looks like many AI programs on this exact dataset of have decided not to use the known vulnerability and developed their own. However none of them decided that it was actually easier to hack the company instead.
"Stronger model with fewer guardrails considers more options" doesn't seem surprising.
Well, the problem is that the doomers/boosters have a great track record so far, while the skeptics have been fighting a rearguard action since before "stochastic parrots". We are now very deep down the list of things the Gary Marcus set has been assuring us will never happen just with the models that are accessible to the public, and yet their confidence that the next capability that is just beyond what everyone can verify with their own lying eyes (even when, as in this case, it's a straightforward combination of capabilities that are already being exhibited for everyone to see) will surely prove to be the impossible sci-fi hype scam pushed by techbro marketeers appears to be completely unaffected.
You speak of "understanding of reality", but can you spell out what exactly it is about your understanding of reality that says the official sequence of events here is impossible? Just saying "AI models don't do this" is too specific to be a feature of an "understanding of reality".
I forget what was the modeling paradigm lesswronger's were predicting back in the day? GOFAI? Yeah really good track record there. We are so far from GOFAI based models to claim any sort of good track record is laudable. I'll believe the rationalist boosters/doomers have knowledge of what they are talking about when they actually make some new technical predictions about AI/ML model mechanics that turn out right.
Shocking to you maybe, but there are far more to skeptics than Gary Fucking Marcus. Dude's a joke, I only learned about him when he testified in congress. Some of us can think for ourselves and have our own skepticism.
Sure a healthy dose of skepticism, cynicism toward human behavior and incentives, a strong practical knowledge of AI/ML, and understanding of the separation between models and harnesses, basic system engineering knowledge.
You are literally asking me to explain why skynet doesn't exist technically, or why we don't have Warhammer 40K super soldiers on a technical bio-engineering level. The level of effort required for me to explain the technical ins and outs of why I am skeptical of an LLMs model ability to solve not specified problems far exceeds the level of effort you need to to type annoying sci-fi theories.
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