“Babe I promise it’ll be worth it, just trust me. I promise. I can’t show you the present, but I promise I got you one.”

They will say “but it doesn’t actually KNOW anything. It’s just perfectly acting like a super intelligence.”

Gary Marcus is a clown.

He was on the Sam Harris podcast with Stuart Russel, and was not only awkwardly defensive the entire time, but continued to make the most ridiculous , petty arguments like his tweet here.

This is just the AI effect: goal posts will continue to be pushed as progress occurs.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

And what limitations do you see with LLMs that wouldn’t be “solved” as time goes on?

We don’t know how other minds work, either. Animals and all that you listed, I mean.

And complexity doesn’t imply… anything, really. And you have a misunderstanding of what LLMs do — they aren’t “memorizing” necessarily. They are predicting the next text based on a massive amount of data and then a given input.

I’d argue that it’s not clear we are any different than that. Note I’m not claiming we are the same! I am simply saying I don’t see evidence to say with certainty that we are different / special.

But we don’t know how the human mind works lol

What you maybe are referring to is Theory of Mind, wherein we are aware that other people have their own experience? But we have not much to go on at all when it comes to “how does our mind actually do what it does”

Isn’t the octopus example completely wrong because it was only “trained” on a small sample of text / language?

The point is — what if the octopus had seen/ heard all about situations of stranded island dwellers. All about boats, survival, etc.

With more context, it could interpret the call for help better.

And while this author might claim “it’s just parroting a reply, it doesn’t actually think”— I’ll ask how the hell she knows what human thinking actually is.

People are so confident to claim humans are special, yet we have zero idea how our own minds work.

I’m struggling to see how you’re so confident that we aren’t on a path or close.

First, LLMs are neural nets— as our our brains. Second, one could make the argument that humans take in data and output “bullshit”.

So I guess I’m trying to see how we are different given what we’ve seen thus far. I’m again not claiming we are the same, but I am not finding anything showing why we’d be different.

Does that make sense? I guess it seems like your making a concrete claim of “these LLMs aren’t thinking, and it’s certain” and I’m saying, “how can we know that they aren’t similar to us? What evidence is there to show that?”

I’ll be a pedantic prick and say we often invent things just because we can, too lol

It’s not confidence that they are similar at all. There is potential, that’s what I’m saying — and folks like yourself a the once being overconfident that “the current AI / LLM are definitely not smart or thinking.”

I’ve yet to see a reason why we’d dismiss the idea that these LLMs aren’t similar to our own thinking or even intelligent. That’s my piint

This dude references Netflix recommendation system, Amazon recommendations, and Facebook for “what we think true AI is”.

That is so far removed from what many are discussing right now. He doesn’t touch on LLMs at all in that interview. He talks about inference and thinking, and dismisses AI’s capabilities because “all it is in inference”.

It’s a common pushback: “the AI doesn’t actually understand anything.” And my response is, “..so?”

If it gives the illusion of thinking. If it can pass the Turing test to most of the population. If it can eventually get integrated with real-fine data , images, video, and sound — does it honestly matter if it’s “truly thinking as a human does”? Hell, do we even know how HUMANS think?

Interestingly enough, Sam Altman has invested $375 mil himself into Helion, a fusion company (or fusion research company).

If the same dude who reaps the most reward from AGI is also the same dude who reaps the most reward from fusion… good grief lol

40 years is generous lol

Factor in exponential growth and i would argue society looks crazy different in 5-7 years.

It’s only been 15 years since the smart phone, and look at how drastically different life is today.

This will be orders of magnitude more

Are you me? I could’ve written this exact post.

People continue to say, “psh, it doesn’t actually know or think.” And I say, “tell me how humans know sometbing or think.” And there’s not ever an answer !

Yet they think we are somehow special and protected from AI simply because we are made of meat.

I am concerned as I am excited (potentially more the former), yet I feel crazy talking about it in real life.