Isn't society made up of everyday people? While I agree that the public being informed is a mutual responsibility, placing that responsibility on the government (which in many cases has plenty of incentive to keeping people ignorant) will not work either.
If you are implying that this is the case because this is also how leaders are selected in a democracy, then of course the sarcasm is noted - but here's my real unpopular opinion: Democracy only has value when the majority of voters are not morons. Unfortunately, I can't come up with a better solution - maybe create a model for which there is a wide agreement on and let it rule?
I have no doubt it plays on the same fears - whether it was deliberately done so, I don't claim to know. My assumption was that in a discussion on AI, the comment about the terminator was not alluding to a literary metaphor but to a fear from the actual thing. There was no intent in downplaying the fear of AI - just adding a new perspective. I'm am curious to know what you think self-awareness has to do with any of this.
The terminator you talk about is a movie character. It might be built one day, it might not. It is also totally irrelevant considering there is a real terminator which can be described with the same adjectives and built in to every personal life that ever existed or will exist. Knowing how to deal with that seems more important than worrying about some specific scenario.
>Even the most basic questions such as put a ball in a cup and place it on a table upside down then pick up the cup and put it in a box.
That reminds me - this used to be my go-to question for smaller models and on which they would always fail miserably on:
A small strawberry is placed in a large cup. The cup is placed upside down on the kitchen table. Someone then lifts the cup as-is and puts it in the microwave. Where is the strawberry when the cup is in the microwave?
Here's what the 1.9GB VibeThinker-3B-GGUF:Q4_K_M answered:
Answer: The strawberry is still on the kitchen table – it fell out when the cup was turned upside‑down, and the subsequent lift‑and‑microwave move doesn’t change that.
So it seems there is definite progress here. Both specialized and yet improved common sense on things outside its domain of specialization.
Wow, that was. impressive :-)
A few random thoughts I had while reading this, in more or less the order they appeared:
1. The relation/connection between optimization and the hedonistic treadmill
2. That this combination of enthusiasm, curiosity, intelligence, rigor and inventiveness/creativity would be exactly what I would look for in a technical co-founder
3. What other parameters that we don't know about or are in a different dimension than those mentioned here (ingredients, amount, time etc.) would also push the needle?
4. This is why we can have nice things :-)
I think the great advantage of AI in software is that it enables you to create code faster. I think that the great disadvantage is that it tempts you to create code incredibly faster.
I think that is a valid opinion, but don't think there is any conclusive evidence to make it a valid fact (while of course not disagreeing with "fun toy, useful technology and dangerous new problem" part). Would be happy to learn otherwise.
If you're old, I guess that makes me ancient. Byte is what got me hooked on the path I walk to this day, though back then it would be far beyond my wildest dreams to believe that in my lifetime it would be possible to hold an intelligent conversation with software, and everything that entails
I think what the parent comment was hinting at is that there is no absolute separator between a non-adult and an adult. It is a thousand different things and the type of game you enjoy playing is not necessarily a good indicator on its own.
You already stated the reason you think why so many people are in total denial. If indeed the reason is indeed a sense of threat to what people take themselves to be then I would be very surprised if the response would have been any different. Whether this indeed is the case is what remains to be seen. I for one do believe there is something different going on here than yet another technological advancement, but again - time will tell
"In an ideal world, I'd want xAI to emulate the maturity Anthropic showed here: affirm willingness to help defend democracies (including via classified/intel/defense tools), sacrifice short-term revenue if needed to block adversarial access, but stand firm on refusing to enable the most civilizationally corrosive misuses when the tech simply isn't ready or the societal cost is too high. Saying "no" to powerful customers—even the DoD—when the ask undermines core principles is hard, but it's the kind of spine that builds long-term trust and credibility."
It also acknowledged that this is not what is happening...
The very fact that people are arguing with a non-existent author signals that whatever generated the content did a good enough job to fool them today. Tomorrow it will do a good enough job to fool you. I think the more important question is what this means in terms of what is really important and what we should invest in to remain anchored in what matters.
This got me thinking: I am not about to fight windmills and the future will unfold as it will, but I think the idea of "LLM as a compiler of ideas to high-level languages" can turn out to be quite dangerous. It is one thing to rely on and not to be able to understand the assembly output of a deterministic compiler of a C++ program. It is quite another to rely on but not fully understand (whether due to lazyness or complexity) what is in the C++ code that a giant nondeterministic intractable neural network generated. what is guaranteed is that the future will be interesting...
Even if this is true, a possible takeaway is that after the bubble bursts and the dust settles, AI's effect will be 17 times stronger than that of the Internet...
Personally, I think it will end up being much higher, but that doesn't mean I'm going to invest in it any time soon
Thank you. Was subscribed to it around 1981-1983. Eagerly waited every month for it to make its way across the Atlantic so I could dig into all the fascinating new technologies. I'm sure it had a great influence on my interests and eventual career.