Oh yeah, I was able to figure out why the article said that with a couple search queries, but I still think that the phrasing in the article is misleading (and likely intentionally so).

Edit: Also, I think part of what’s confusing people is that they keep using terms like “attention” and “inference” to describe computer processes that may or may not have some kind of underlying similarity to the corresponding human capabilities. I also believe this to be deliberate obfuscation.

I should clarify - I do think there are use cases for smaller local models performing very specific tasks - the technology I am specifically referring to as “useless” are the massive data center LLMs.

AI is such a blanket term (intentionally conflated with useful technology by the people poised to profit from said LLMs) that it’s a bit difficult to discuss it as a singular technology. I have no problem with machine learning, or with neural networks in general.

I am, however, having difficulty reading this as a good-faith article

“Lukasz Kaiser, one of the people who invented the Transformer, said on “Unsupervised Learning” in June:”

That man (Lukasz Kaiser) is an employee of OpenAI, which is a massive conflict of interest imo, and disqualifies him from making impartial claims about the technology.

What I find particularly sketchy is the vague use of the word transformer in this context. The transformer was invented in 1886, there are no living persons who helped to invent it. To present this man as the inventor of “the transformer” without clarification/disambiguation is disingenuous. It smells fishy to me.

I’m not angry, you’re projecting, lmao

The emotion I’m experiencing in all of these AI threads is disbelief and disappointment.

It’s not a baby anymore once you’ve fed all of the training data into it. It’s not really a great metaphor.

All of the words that you’re saying are “vague” are actually extremely well defined. Check it out. https://www.merriam-webster.com/

Ok, this is actually just making me depressed at this point.

You really only see your own autonomy as equivalent with a computer programs?

Autonomous actually means “having the right of power or self government” which is not true of AI, or “undertaken or carried on without outside control”, which is also not true of AI.

Power on your computer, load up your fully trained AI, and then wait for it to act without your direction. Did anything happen? No, because a human filled with information and experiences and feelings is actually WAY different than a computer program filled with data.

For example, I did not prompt you to come on Lemmy and vocally fellate technofascists and their fuckware, you chose to do that of your own volition. That’s autonomy. The computer program won’t do that unless you direct it to.

Edit - Just to be clear, because you’re not the only one pointing to “agents” as a sign of autonomy/intelligence/sentience -> An agent is literally a computer program that you prompt, which then talks to an LLM, and then does what the LLM tells it to do. It’s not acting autonomously, it’s following directions from the next-word-predictor machine, and those directions are built off of your original prompt.

Not really, they’re just lying to try to fleece more investors

I mostly agree with you, but AI cannot “act autonomously”. You prompt it, and it acts based off of that prompt.

Think of it like doing the laundry: I load my clothes in and “prompt” the washing machine to do my laundry.

When the washing machine switches from the rinse cycle to the spin cycle, it’s not acting autonomously, it’s continuing to execute my prompt.

Is AI capable of doing something you didn’t expect it to do? Yes. Does that mean it’s acting autonomously? No.

I would also argue that the “power” of LLMs is vastly overstated. A large part of that is for the exact reason you say tho, people with zero knowledge or skill are playing with fire; And when they get burned they blame the machinery, not the operator.

I mean, I guess if you wanted your documentation and reports to be worthless slop bullshit that could work.

Companies do those things for a reason tho, and they’d want them to be accurate.

Every story you read about how their AI is “so powerful it’s scary” or where they characterize the AI as “going rogue” or some other dumb shit like that is manufactured in an attempt to impress investors

I can’t believe I have to keep explaining this to people, lmao

First of all, this is a math equation. Math is what computers do, they are essentially really fucking good calculators.

That math problem hadn’t been solved before, that’s true, however, if you actually read the excerpt you just shared, you’ll see that the equation was solved using preexisting theories and formulas. Ergo, humans had already manufactured every individual piece of the puzzle, and had used them in other contexts that the AI could be fed and then reuse.

Saying that AI came up with the solution isn’t the full story. That’s like saying that AI created a shitty piece of slop art. It did no such thing, it plagiarized a bunch of work from other people and essentially made it into a collage.

When MC Hammer (rather, his producer) sampled Rick James for “Can’t touch this”, did he become the bass player? No, that was still Rick James, they just took his song and altered it to make theirs.

Gotcha, well that’s a different issue (one I believe expands beyond self-driving cars to all new cars that are way more computer integrated than they should be).

Getting hacked is a good reason to be skeptical tho, it’s probably the slickest way to kill someone and make it seem like an accident.

I’m a good driver, and AI is fucking stupid.

The only way you could possibly convince me to even get into a self driving car would be if my only other option was to get into a self flying helicopter.

Also, just to nitpick, the self driving car can’t “go rogue”, that would imply that it has consciousness, sentience, an understanding of what it’s actually doing, judgement, etc. a bunch of shit it doesn’t have. Self driving cars can and do “malfunction” frequently, but they can’t “go rogue”.

Don’t let the techno fascists’ constant anthropomorphic descriptions of their fuckware chat bots confuse you.

What tedious work?

In order to answer that question, you would first need to know how to make AGI (this is not known to anyone).

In order to know how to emulate human intelligence, you would first need to understand how human intelligence is constructed (this is not known to anyone).

In order to understand how human intelligence is constructed, you would have to understand how human cognition works (this is not known to anyone).

In order to understand how human cognition works, you would need to understand how the exact mechanisms upon which human brain works in the first place function (this is not known to anyone).

I could continue, but you should get it by now.

An LLM cannot do that either.

An LLM can only ever rearrange what is put into it and shit it back out. You’re never going to get any knowledge out of it that wasn’t previously fed into it (and even then it hallucinates and doesn’t know shit because it’s literally just code).

We do not know how to make an AGI, ergo LLMs do not “know” how to make an AGI (and in fact, don’t actually know shit at all).

They’re not escaping users control, they’re fucking computer programs.

People are using them irresponsibly.

If you accidentally run someone over in your car, the car didn’t “escape your control”, you just did a shitty job of controlling the car.

It’s not the same thing.

(Fuck “AI” btw)

The limit for what?

The bottom line is that AI is both more expensive and less productive than humans for at least 99% of tasks

Wouldn’t something like that be machinery the saw company already owns?

Does slop not involve expensive machinery?

I agree, and the people at the top of the industry pushing this 100% want a slave.

They don’t know how to build the slave they want though, so they’re attempting to leverage manufactured fear about their fuckware in order to lower the value of real workers in order to push us closer to slavery.

We can’t stop them from telling these lies, but we can certainly help people know not to buy their lies.

That’s not conservative my man, it’s delusional

What information are you extrapolating this from? Just vibes?

Being below a certain employee count reduces worker protections

It does not change the cost of the slop (which is currently artificially tiny)

They can’t do AGI tho. They’re nowhere near being capable of even conceptually thinking about AGI.

They talk like they are to scare their investors into pouring more capital into their furnace, but AGI ain’t happening.