domain:youtube.com
No_one
5m ago
It's not a nothingburger. It was overhyped initially (as everything is).
Anyway, LLMs. Apparently you can prevent them from hallucinating and make them accurately give advice on the content of a textbook or manual. Or so says Steve Hsu, who founded a company that (he claims) did that. I haven't followed it up but supposedly they had an initial sale.
Looks like superhuman performance isn't going to happen through this architecture, as you can't do self-competitive play - what was done with games but incremental progress -people making the models reliable, useful, likely even assembling normal to middling smart human-intelligence agents, with a will -is likely in the near term (10 years).
So at the very least, within 15 years, we're looking at governments being able to use 'kinda dumb' spies, automatically flag problematic online, on the scale of an entire population.
To sum it up:
-call centres: likely a lot less employment
-increased productivity of at least software developers, lawyers, theoretically bureaucrats (lol no).
-automated spying on everything your write on an online device -but not very smart spying- almost certain. Combined with universal private messaging access by governments (EU -DC's sock puppet - wants this), it's likely going to happen. Even though 'chat control' the initial proposal was defeated, it's going to come back.. IMO I suspect having an app that is not broken might even be criminalised because 'Chyna'.
-social media is dead without independent ID verification. Automated, much better online astroturfing.
-good enough chatbots that waste time of troublemakers / get people to spend money on BS / troll
-textbooks that talk
-even more addictive porn in the 5 year horizon (people can overuse the porn to the degree they can find that one special thing that appeals to them. When that can be generated on the fly, crap..)
In 'other ML' news, autonomous killbots (ethical militaries will geofence them to combat zone) are 100% certain to happen.
100%, anyone who doesn't develop autonomous drone air fighters in is going to get absolutely wrecked by people who develop autonomous drones bombers. I'm talking machineguns vs cavalry style carnage on the ground. Developing a $1000, fast, evasive reusable FPV drone drop mortar bombs with pin-point accuracy is just a question of 4-5 good university aeronautics student projects. It'll zoom low across the ground at 50-100 kph, deliver a bomb, reload/swap battery, while getting target data from recon drones or troops. It's not even funny how brutal this is.
A countermeasure - autocannon with VT flak rounds costs $300k. And needs a vehicle. A vehicle that's vastly more expensive than an IR or optically guided missile.
Ray beams won't help you (at sea maybe) because of line of sight problems. Drones will spot them call in an missile strike. Poof.
Ditto6687
6m ago
If you aren't willing to show your face for a cause, to have your name associated with it, do you really believe in it at all?
I'm pretty sure I saw the official Israel twitter account or some large American Jewish account bragging about how they were gonna use facial recognition tech to make sure "none of these people ever find a job again."
No_one
26m ago
I think Krugman is full of shit because there's a vast difference between 'fax machine' and people doing research being able to access practically everything interesting that's ever been written.
At least with software development internet enabled cooperation increases productivity by a big factor.
RaiderOfALostTusken
41m ago
Here was a "debunking the debunkers" post on it, i suppose you can use this in your search.
Here's a question, and CSIS this is a joke, how hard would it be to get a bit of Trudeau DNA and Castro DNA to do a comparison?
Here
1hr ago
I'm at Penn Law.
I went to the protests tonight as a legal observer because there were reports that arrests were "imminent." While I was there, the encampment organizers designated a "red" group- those who WANTED to be arrested - from a "yellow" group - those WILLING to be arrested. The distinction concerns me; there are people actively SEEKING to get arrested.
We didn't currently have an active police presence, so it would take some time for a police force large enough to arrest anyone to show up. By the time enough police had gathered, those unwilling to get arrested could leave.
The admin has been clear they will only arrest non-Penn affiliates. The majority of protestors are not Penn affiliated - we are the meeting point for Temple and Drexel SJPs also, as our campus gets the most national attention because people sometimes realize we aren't Penn State. In addition, there are plenty of "community members" who are non-students heavily involved. I'd estimate approx. 15% of the total people were Penn affiliates, and maybe 50% were students at all.
Arrests have still not been made (there was a pro-Israel dude who walked through earlier with a pocket knife who got a citation but that's about it). I left after the chants shifted to "Al-Qassim make us proud, kill another soldier now" and "we don't want no two state, we want '48." I think the protestors are genuinely upset that the police have left them alone this entire time. I don't know if it's a resume line item checklist - "getting arrested for social justice ❤️💙" might play well for a political career? - or just people making reckless decisions. I'm scared, and tired, and finals start tomorrow.
Only 14 people in the encampment of 200 paused for the call to prayer at dusk. None of the prayer individuals were masked. The leaders of the protest, from what I could tell, were a Latino and a white woman (with purple hair, not that that really matters). The Latino led everyone in a chant of "we are all Palestinian." What happened to cultural appropriation?
There was a "protest against hate speech" or whatever earlier by the Pro-Israel crowd. The pro-Israel crowd were the first time I had seen American flags brought into this at all. They remembered where we were, what we actually had power over. None of them were masked, either.
Almost the entire pro-Palestine group was masked (I hesitate to call them pro-Palestine instead of pro-Hamas after the Al-Qassik chants). The three exceptions in the pro-Palestinian group were those who engaged in the call to prayer, the Latino leader, and the "red" group. If you aren't willing to show your face for a cause, to have your name associated with it, do you really believe in it at all?
I don't know anything anymore. One of the 19 year olds who stood next to me as the first tents were going up a few days ago, James, asked me what "encampment" meant. I thought he was joking, or at least asking what it meant in this specific context. No, actually. He, a sophomore at Penn, genuinely has never heard the word before. These are our best and brightest.
campfireSmoresEaten
1hr ago
"the altruistic AI that loves humans scenario is also possible."
It is not realistically possible. It would be like firing a very powerful rocket into the air and having it land on a specific crater on the moon with no guidance system or understanding of orbital mechanics. Even if you try to "point" the rocket, it's just not going to happen.
You're thinking that AI might have some baseline similarity to human values that would make it benevolent by chance or by our design. I disagree. EY touches on why this is unlikely here:
https://intelligence.org/2016/03/02/john-horgan-interviews-eliezer-yudkowsky/
It's not a full explanation, but I have work I should be getting back to. If someone else wants to write more than they can. There are probably some Robert Miles videos on why AI won't be benevolent by luck.
Here's one:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZeecOKBus3Q
I'm not going to watch it again to check but it will probably answer some of your questions about why people think AI won't be benevolent through random chance (or why we aren't close to being skilled enough to make it benevolent not by chance). Other videos on his channel may also be relevant.
cjet79
1hr ago
Tried it, you can just lie to it, which I guess would be the problem with any app, and why I want a human.
ace
2hr ago
This is a great comment. I'd just like to add (in case it's not clear to others) that while recursive intelligence improvements are terrifying, the central argument that our current AI research trajectory probably leads to the death of all humans does not at all depend on that scenario. It just requires an AI that is smart enough, and no one knows the threshold.
Throwaway05
2hr ago
It's also worth keeping mind that mental illness almost always impairs insight - your ability to understand and read your mental state may be hampered (not that the average person is truly good at this, but it can be more important in someone who struggles).
Many borderline patients hear the diagnosis and its description and go "thank god, that's me! it all makes sense now." Many go "no that's bullshit I AM TOTALLY FINE LALLAALAL................."
slothlikesamwise
Subway Wizard 🔮
2hr ago
Bird flu remains mostly a threat for chicken flocks, birds are very different from mammals and don't have as good a history of mutation to affect humans like pigs do.
There is also a variant of Ebola in swine that is hypothesized to have an airborne transmission, which is fun.
It is still mostly about food prices tho.
vpn
3hr ago
Spoilers:
Well, was definitely pretty off on some of these. I should have thought about how the rich lady's death was heavily foreshadowed given the ending of the opera. I liked how they had her become Jack Bauer and nail three people while firing randomly with her eyes half closed; it's the rule of cool so that makes it ok. I guess I grudgingly liked that they killed her off anyway because at the end of the day, she is an idiot. But I still think it's lazy writing to have her prenup be structured for the husband to inherit all her money if she died. I mean, this is idiotic, right? Surely you'd set up some clause that says in the event of accidental death or anything unnatural, the spouse gets nothing.
I liked the pimp-being-a-paid-actor plot twist. Did not see that coming.
Tomato
3hr ago
Krugman was right about the Internet at least in terms of aggregate productivity/gdp growth. It’s true that we switched dramatically from using red widgets to blue widgets to do basic communication tasks but sort of so what.
ThisIsSin
Personal corporatehood
3hr ago
Respectively:
Yes, since it's more likely it'll find a path to humans (and bonus points for the last "burn the world" emergency having been the uncommon cold, we know exactly how much it cost us now, and we're more likely to reject safety measures now even if they're actually warranted because safetyists burned their social credit on said overreaction).
No, because I prefer a dignified life to a safe one and those things taste good.
popocatepetl
3hr ago
Well, it's more than a nothingburger. At minimum, public education will be forever changed by LLMs doing assignments for kids. At the same time, I disagree with the projections coming from the AI enthusiast/AI doomer camps. I don't expect to see anytime soon:
- an AI-generated serial hitting the Top 500 views on Royal Road
- an AI-generated humor Youtube channel cracking 50k subscribers
- an AI-generated Op-Ed or political essay trending on X
What I mean by these choices is that I don't expect AI to do even very low-brow creative work within a decade. (Except by technicality, wherein the popularity comes from "Look what an AI did", or a human has directed the creative process behind the scenes.) Let alone the sort of self-improving singularity bootstrap AI fans/blackpillers are expecting.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3hr ago
Article prophesising and diagnosing doom on the Indian economy: https://time.com/6969626/india-modi-economy-election/
Some of it is really staggering - 10 million manufacturing jobs were lost even before Covid. Indian manufacturing employment halved in 5 years (up to 2021 but doesn't seem to have recovered that much, though output is rising). Even in output it's still quite low as a % of the economy, falling as a proportion the 2010s. Meanwhile there are 60 million extra farm workers: deurbanization and deindustrialization. India is at the bottom of the Global Hunger Index, below North Korea and above Afghanistan.
I note that the article author wrote a book on Modi despotism so can't be considered unbiased, yet he has a lot of pretty ominous links. Some of them are structured in a deceptive way - 'crude imports' being down 14% goes against the article's overall message of trade increasing, even if goods exports decreased. It's always good to read these kinds of articles with a sceptical eye, economics is so broad that you can paint all kinds of pictures. It looks like India is focusing very heavily on services rather than manufacturing, leaving it rather vulnerable to AI disruption, as self_made_human has predicted. Vietnam exports more manufactured goods, while India's overall exports are much higher.
There's also this fun website that graphs exports by type: https://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore?country=104&queryLevel=location&product=undefined&year=2021&productClass=HS&target=Product&partner=undefined&startYear=undefined
India is ICT nation, the tech support stereotype. China and Vietnam do manufacturing. Russia and Australia dig things out of the ground. The US does services and manufacturing.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
3hr ago
I don’t think it’s hard, I think controlling any super intelligent being whether natural or artificial is not possible. In order to control it, you have to understand it and its current and future limitations. But if AI is going to be orders of magnitude smarter than us and have a will that is somewhat free, you have a being who’s thoughts you can’t even begin to understand with desires that you cannot hope to comprehend. It’s like your dog trying to control you. Your desire to play COD makes no sense to your dog. He can’t even understand that you’re controlling what happens on the screen let alone why you want to do that. The dog can’t abstract in a way that makes your decision to do that make sense, nor can he make sense of what you’re doing. AI might not be just 2-3 times smarter and thus better at abstraction, it might eventually be 1000 times smarter. We might be ants trying to understand humans. Nothing you do besides literal eating makes sense to the ant. Yet, we humans arrogantly proclaim that we must fence in and control AI. Our rules for it will keep it from escaping.
DradisPing
3hr ago
The big problem is that Young Pierre Trudeau and Young Castro could easily pass for brothers. So it's hard to tell if there's any funny business from looking at Justin. Justin looks like his brothers in family photos.
Goodguy
4hr ago
I fully understand that it would be nearly impossible for humans to control a superintelligent AI. I just don't care much about it. I don't have any children. If humanity was destroyed by superintelligent AI, my attitude to it would, aside from the obvious terror, also probably include some mirth. The lords of the known world, those who conquered all those other species, now destroyed by the same cold Darwinian logic of reality.
My point is that, while the Skynet scenario is definitely possible, the altruistic AI that loves humans scenario is also possible. There's no particular reason to think that a hyperintelligent AI would have the sort of incredibly hardwired "kill all opposition" motivation that we as humans have as a result of having evolved through billions of years of eat-or-be-eaten fighting. Of course AI, just like everything else in reality, is subject to natural selection, but there is no reason to think that AI would be subject to natural selection in a way that makes it violent in the ways that us humans are violent.
campfireSmoresEaten
4hr ago
My guess is that people think that just going by what they've picked up along the way is enough to understand the doom arguments. Just whatever information has reached them through cultural osmosis.
campfireSmoresEaten
4hr ago
I also think that AI doomers are underrating the possibly beneficial things that super-powerful AI could bring. I mean, yeah, there's a chance that humans will be replaced by AI overlords, but there's also a chance that super-powerful AIs will have no desire to destroy us and instead will give us a bunch of good things.
How are you on this website without realizing how hard it is to control a superintelligent AI? Have you not thought about that? I think that you are thinking "AI can either be aligned to human values or not. Sounds like 50/50."
In fact, aligning a superintelligence to human values is extremely difficult and extremely unlikely to happen by accident. Human values are a very small slice of the possible spectrum of minds that could exist.
It kind of feels like people vastly overrate the degree to which they understand the arguments of AI doomers. Like they're just going by a few tweets they read. Twitter is not a good way to full understand a contentious subject.
I'm about to start the last episode of season 2 of The White Lotus. Thought I'd play a game with myself and make predictions on the fate of the main characters (in billing order) based on information from the first six episodes. I didn't consider doing this until now so probably could have paid more attention while watching. Spoilers ahead.
- Perv grandpa: his story is about aging, ancestry, infidelity. It's not clear why the local family didn't want to see him when he visited. But the fact that he stepped out of the car when the possible mafiosos were kidnapping the prostitute girl makes me think there is a 10% chance his past is connected to the mafia (low prob because I don't see how). But 30% chance he hooks up with the other prostitute girl, the singer, since they flirted before, and given that, 80% chance it turns out the singer turns out a relative to him. Not fully sure if his head injury from earlier is at all significant, but maybe 10% chance he dies.
- Rich old lady: love, misery, fantasy (and her phobia to harsh realities), and control. I couldn't tell if the photo she picked up in E6 was of the old gay guy and her husband? Didn't bother rewinding. If it was, then clearly there is some kind of conspiracy afoot. The most obvious foreshadowed outcome is for her to die of overdose or an accident so her money goes to her husband who then shares with the old gay guy and all the cash poor people. That the show keeps saying she's worth $500m (and did not specify the figure in S1) raises this probability. Also the gypsy prediction. I'll say 80% of a conspiracy to take her money, not higher because she has the prenup in place and so it's unclear how they'd get her money. But I think 80% she survives, partly because it'd be interesting to see her return for S3, as she's the only recurring character, and it's fun to have her patronize every White Lotus location and wreak havoc every season; partly because she's depicted as mostly clueless and helpless, so it'd be unsatisfying for her to be victimized as we expect her to be; partly because of her assistant, who I think the story requires a purpose, and saving the life of the employer she hated at the beginning seems to be a nice arc.
- Nice guy Stanford: being aggressive vs. nice, not following his father's path on sex and love. 80% chance he tries to help the prostitute from her pimp by paying money. 60% chance he offers to help her move to LA. 80% he finds out the girl slept with his dad. 40% he's injured in some kind of conflict with the pimp/mafia. 90% he survives.
- Bimbo wife: about image, asserting petty revenge/equity. This character seems like mostly a supporting role and not fully fleshed out. I don't really know what forecasts I can make. That she's the one character shown in the flashforward at the very beginning suggests maybe this is intentional. 99% she survives--1% being if the story continues after the flashforward. 95% she stays with the marriage, however flawed. She's tied down with her two kids. Plus, she has her hot trainer. 90% she did not manage to make a new bestie this trip.
- Singer hooker: music, purity, escape. She's supposed to have been corrupted by her friend. She's also not depicted as being connected to the pimp, so I guess she's not formally part of the trade? 60% she does not escape prostitution. I can't really see her staying at the hotel, given the other guy is scheduled to return, and while the hotel manager may have had a moment of weakness, it's obviously not some kind of true connection. But it seems nice for the two girls to have contrasting fate, so if the shop hooker is to have a tragic ending, then the singer should have a happy ending? 20% she does something wild, even if inadvertent, that hurts or kills someone, since she was responsible for the male singer's hospitalization.
- BLM guy: money, freedom. I really didnt get the sense from S1 that he was some psychopath, so it strains disbelief for him to be part of some grand conspiracy to kill his wife. His secretive phone calls are probably to his ex wives and kids or something. 95% he comes back in the last episode. Be weird if he just stayed in the U,S. and didn't get more screentime. 60% he's in on the local conspiracy. 70% he and wife will separate somehow. He's obviously not happy in the relationship. Maybe he's the one that manages to die, ironically. This opens rich old lady up to new adventures in S3.
- Gay guy: beauty, love, money. He seemed super nice at the beginning, complimenting rich old lady and then helping her feel great and giving her free benefits. That's gotta be sinister, right? 80% lead conspirator. Would be disappointing if it turned out there is nothing evil. But I don't want to go higher because, again, prenup, so cui bono wouldn't apply, unless his game plan is to make some heartfelt appeal for rich old lady to donate money voluntarily. Don't know what else to predict. He had said how he'd loved only once, but that hetero man is now old. His only purpose now seems to be preserving the family house.
- Hotel manager: being professional, comic relief. I guess it's a series trope that these ultra luxury hotels must have incompetent managers. How does someone in hospitality not know to not call a old man old, or a fat lady peppa pig? It's hilarious that she's so incompetent, but that makes her less sympathetic. She's also basically a female incel. 80% she loses her job. Like S1's manager. She's not depicted as good at anything. And she's basically a predator preying on her staff.
- The father: sex, fidelity, family. His mystery is exactly what he did to piss off his wife and daughter so much. This might be a noodle incident that's never revealed (80%). 70%: I think he does not find redemption and instead repeats the old destructive cycle. I'm biased since I don't think people change. The 30% is probably if his son is seriously hurt because of the hooker, and he blames himself, but then I think he copes by continuing the cycle.
- The finance bro: cheating, "alpha dogging". Clearly an antagonist. But seems like prestige shows try to redeem them at least somewhat so there's more nuance. 60% he does something materially redemptive. No idea what. 90% chance he's not punished. His type is supposed to get away with crime and cheating.
- The nerd's wife: judgmental, insecurity, negative outlook on life. 90% she did not have sex with finance bro. It'd go against the earlier depiction of her as highly competent/intelligent (super successful lawyer). 70% the marriage breaks down anyway. Would be an ironic contrast if the couple that we don't think should stay together ends generally happy, and the one that on paper is great ends up destroyed. 30% she finds out she's pregnant. Ironic given they're trying and she keeps drinking so much wine. There isn't enough time for there to be ambiguity over if the finance bro is the father though.
- The assistant: lacking direction, being depressed, wanting adventure. 90% she plays a highly active role in the climax, probably saving her boss's life. Her arc demands transformation. 20% it's hinted that she and the nerd get back together. Seems too Disney to have that ending. 30% she's physically hurt, by her hot new guy or someone else. Doesn't seem like she'd one anything particularly wrong to deserve being punished.
- The nerd: honesty, stasis, impotence. 90% he does something stupid and uncharacteristic because of his suspicion over his wife, which ironically destroys the marriage. 60% some further corruption is hinted in his future, whether he does sleep with hookers, or partake in insider trading. Irony demands his downfall. 30% he dies. I don't really see why he'd die, but he's shown running and swimming, so if someone has to drown, he has that proximity factor.
- Shopkeeper hooker: money, America. 80% she's left behind. I can't see a way out for her. 10% she dies. Don't really see how she'd die (mafia doesn't need to kill its girls, right? just intimidation is enough), but someone has to. 10% she leaves for LA.
- Hot british boy: carpe diem. No idea. 30% he tries to hurt the assistant? 60% he does something rash and stupid? 30% he dies because of the above?
I will say, I'm a bit dissatisfied that so much of the drama stems from people communicating poorly or making dumb decisions. Like I get it if a young assistant or prostitute don't know how to be smart, but the nerd shouldn't struggle so much with getting in trouble with his wife. It feels like lazy writing to me.
campfireSmoresEaten
4hr ago
"If this technology was going to make a big impact it would have done so already" is a more difficult heuristic to use than you might think.
Looking back on automobiles, airplanes, the internet, etcetera, do you think you might have said that about them when the technology was still in the process of rolling out?
"P. Krugman 1998, “The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law' becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s”
I would say that usually when a technology gets as big as LLMs it doesn't just fade away into nothingness. There are many obvious use cases, just as there are many obvious use cases to cars, airplanes, and the internet.
In 1940 Orwell wrote that aircraft had hardly been used for anything up till that point besides dropping bombs. But I doubt he would have said that the air travel revolution would never materialize, just that it hadn't materialized yet.
A certain type of libertarian loves to talk about this one.
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