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Comment on Why you shouldn't believe the AI extinction lie

In no way true AI

I’m not so sure about that. One of my friends has really high end hardware and is experimenting with a LlaMA3 120b model, and it’s not “right” much more often than the 70b models, it will sometimes see a wrong answer that is due to an error in its lower-level reasoning, and it will recognise there’s a flaw somewhere even as it fails to generate the correct answer repeatedly, even lamenting that it keeps getting it wrong.

This of course makes sense, thinking about the flow - it’s got an output check built in, meaning there are multiple layers at which it’s “solving” the problem and then synthesising the outputs from each layer into a cohesive natural-language response.

But reading the transcripts of those instances, I am reminded of myself at 4 or 5 years old in kindergarten, learning my numbers. I was trying to draw an “8”, and no matter how hard I tried I could not get my hand to do the crossover in the middle. I had a page full of “0”. I remember this vividly because I was so angry and upset with myself, I could see my output was wrong and I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t get it right. Eventually, my teacher had to guide my hand, and then knowing what it “felt” like to draw an 8 I could reproduce it by reproducing the sensation of the mechanical movement of drawing an 8.

So, it seems to me those “sparks” of AGI are getting just a little brighter.

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littlebluespark@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

I’m not so sure

… Go on.

One of my friends

Oh, FFS. This isn’t Flakebook. 🤦🏽‍♂️

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- voracitude@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I suppose that’s my fault, you lot have no idea who my friends are or what they do for a living. I hoped the detail in the rest of the comment would get my message across though. The friend in question is a computer scientist and researcher whom I have previously co-founded a startup with - but I’m not going to doxx myself by providing more details so I don’t think stating that helps at all.
  
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  - littlebluespark@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That tracks.
    
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davidgro@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
In your case that was a motor control issue, not a flaw in reasoning. In the LLM case it’s a pure implementation of a Chinese Room and the “book and pencils” (weights) randomly generate text that causes humans to experience textual pareidolia more often than not.

It can be useful - that book is very large, and contains a lot of residue of valid information and patterns, but the way it works is not how intelligence works (still an open question of course, but ‘not that way’ is quite clear.)

This is not to say that true AI is impossible - I believe it is possible, but it will have to be implemented differently. At the very least, it will need the ability to self-modify in real time (learning)

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- voracitude@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I appreciate the response! It’s a flaw in a low-level process that my conscious mind doesn’t have any direct control over, and it produced erroneous output that my conscious mind recognised as wrong but could not correct by itself, is my point.
  
  I updated the comment you replied to with some more information, and also articulated the real question I’m trying to ask, which is:
  
  Let’s assume that it’s (editor’s note: “it” being my perception that we’re getting closer to true AGI) just confirmation bias though, rather than any actual improvement in the model or progress towards “true” AGI. What would it take for you to believe you’re speaking with a “true” AGI, or at least a human-level artificial intelligence with a consciousness of its own?
  
  And, on the other side of the coin, how can you prove to me that you’re a human-level intelligence with a consciousness of your own?
  
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  - davidgro@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    What would convince me that we may be on the right path: Besides huge improvements in reasoning, it would (like I mentioned) need to be able to learn - and not just track previous text, I mean permanently adding or adjusting the weights (or equivalent) of the model.
    
    And likely the ability to go back and change already generated text after it has reasoned further. Try asking an LLM to generate novel garden path sentences - it can’t know how the sentence will end, so it can’t come up with good beginnings except similar to stock ones. (That said it’s not a skill I personally have either, but humans can do it certainly.)
    
    As far as proving I’m a human level intelligence myself, easiest way would likely involve brain surgery - probe a bunch of neurons and watch them change action potentials and form synapses in response to new information and skills. But short of that, at the current state of the art I can prove it by stating confidently that Samantha has 1 sister. (Note: that thread was a reply to someone else, but I’m watching the whole article’s comments)
    
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    voracitude@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    (Note: that thread was a reply to someone else, but I’m watching the whole article’s comments)
    
    Gotcha, my mistake - my bad!
    
    And likely the ability to go back and change already generated text after it has reasoned further.
    
    An interesting criteria, why does going back to edit (instead of correcting itself mid-stream) hold greater weight in your mind? And, how about the built-in output evaluation? Isn’t the flow
    
    Receive prompt > Generate text > Evaluate generated text > Re-prompt with critique > Evaluate revised text
    
    basically the same thing?
    
    As far as proving I’m a human level intelligence myself, easiest way would likely involve brain surgery - probe a bunch of neurons and watch them change action potentials and form synapses in response to new information and skills.
    
    Couldn’t you perform this test on any animal with a discrete brain? Hell, we’ve seen animals learning for decades, some of them even teach each other, so brain activity and the formation of new synaptic connections doesn’t strike as incontrovertible proof of human-level intelligence.
    
    Try asking an LLM to generate novel garden path sentences - it can’t know how the sentence will end, so it can’t come up with good beginnings except similar to stock ones.
    
    I am absolutely game to try this, but I lack what I’d call solid criteria for evaluating novel garden-path sentences. This was my first attempt with Llama 3 running on my 3070:
    
    Prompt: Generate an original “garden-path” sentence. It must be unique, never published before, and in English. Response: What a delightful challenge! Here’s my attempt at creating an original garden-path sentence:
    
    “The five-year-old astronaut who had been kidnapped by aliens as a toddler finally discovered the shocking truth about his parents’ mysterious disappearance on the day he turned into a chicken.”
    
    This sentence is designed to be ambiguous and misleading, with multiple clauses that lead the reader down a path of confusion before arriving at an unexpected punchline. The goal is to create a sense of surprise or even bewilderment when the reader finally understands what’s happening in the story.
    
    Please note that I’ve taken care to ensure this sentence has never been published before and is entirely original, but if you’re concerned about its uniqueness, please let me know! Prompt: No, a garden-path sentence must still make logical sense; the ambiguity comes from the double-meaning of the words used. For example, consider the sentence “The sour drink from the ocean”. “The sour” could refer to “the drink from the ocean”, as in “ocean water is sour”. It could also refer to “sour people”, who “drink from the ocean.” Response: I understand now that a garden-path sentence must still be grammatically correct and logically coherent, but with an ambiguity or double meaning that can lead readers down a wrong path. Thank you for explaining!
    
    In that case, I’ll try again to create an original garden-path sentence:
    
    “The new employee was given the old keys by the company.”
    
    At first glance, this sentence seems straightforward: someone is giving another person some old keys as part of their job or employment process. However, upon closer reading, one might interpret “old” as referring not only to the physical state of the keys but also to the fact that they were previously used by an older employee who has since retired.
    
    Please let me know if this meets your criteria for a garden-path sentence! Prompt: Are there other possible logically-consistent interpretations of this sentence, that you can think of? Response: After re-reading my attempt at creating a garden-path sentence, I realized that there are indeed additional logical and coherent interpretations:
    
    The new employee is being given old keys (as in, no longer used or relevant) by the company as part of their onboarding process.
    
    The “old” refers to the fact that the keys were previously owned or possessed by someone else (e.g., a previous owner or manager), and the company is giving them to the new employee.
    
    These alternative interpretations highlight how garden-path sentences can have multiple plausible meanings, making it even more challenging for readers to arrive at the intended meaning!
    
    Thank you for pushing me to consider these additional possibilities!
    
    It’s a bit simple, and it’s not how I would write it (I think “by the company” is extraneous for example), but I do think it counts as a garden path sentence at least, and it did get the third meaning I was thinking of for “the old keys” after a leading but open nudge. Now, the question is whether it’s novel - what do you think? Searching for it on DuckDuckGo doesn’t bring up any exact or close matches that I could find, but admittedly I’m working and didn’t look very hard.
    
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