[Tactician_mark]

Sure, it's a sign that we don't "understand this stuff properly", but you can say the same about human brains. Is it a red flag that we use language to communicate with each other instead of manipulating nerve impulses directly?

[fakedang]

> Is it a red flag that we use language to communicate with each other instead of manipulating nerve impulses directly?

From an almighty creator's, yes. Direct telepathic communication is much more efficient compared to spoken language. Just look at the Protoss and where they went, leaving us behind :-(

[LadyCailin]

We have no choice but to have and use our brains, not so with LLMs. We don’t have to start building core technologies off of fundamentally flawed models.

[diydsp]

Great point. Btw: The problem is corporate irresponsibility:

When self-driving cars were first coming out a professor of mine said "They only have to be as a good as humans." It took a while but now i can say why that's insufficient: human errors are corrected by discipline and justice. Corporations dissipate responsibility by design. When self-driving cars kill, no one goes to jail. Corporate fines are notoriously ineffective, just a cost of doing business.

And even without the legal power, most people do try to drive well enough to bit injure each other which is a different calculus from prematurely taking products to market for financial gain.

[WoodenChair]

The top 3 causes of death by vehicle accident in USA are [0]:

- DUI

- speeding

- distraction

In other words all human errors. Machines don’t drink, shouldn’t speed if programmed correctly, and are never distracted fiddling with their radio controls or looking down at their phones. So if they are at least as good as a human driver in general (obeying traffic laws, not hitting obstructions, etc.), they will be safer than a human driver in these areas that really matter.

What do you care more about—that there is somebody specific to blame for an accident or that there are less human deaths?

0: https://www.idrivesafely.com/defensive-driving/trending/most... and many other sources you can find

[diydsp]

Under corporate control safety spirals down to increase profit. See: opiods, climate change, pesticides, antibiotic resistance, deforestation, and privacy. 50 years from now self-driving cars will be cheaper and more dangerous. Human driving misbehavior will still be disincentivized through the justice system, but corporations will avoid individual responsibility for dangerous programming.

[bliteben]

We could likely put 80% of cars on rails just as easily

[kenjackson]

Human errors are not corrected by discipline and justice. Drunk driving is still a huge problem.

[robswc]

They only have to be as good as humans because that's what society deems an acceptable risk.

I do think the point about how companies are treated vs humans is a good one. Tbh though, I'm not sure it matters much in the instance of driver-less cars. There isn't mass outrage when driver less cars kill people because that (to us) is an acceptable risk. I feel whatever fines/punishments employed against companies would only marginally reduce deaths, if that. I honestly think laws against drunk driving only marginally reduce drunk driving.

I'm not saying we shouldn't punish drunk driving... just that anything short of an instant death penalty for driving drunk probably wouldn't dissuade many people.

[Szpadel]

In my country, drunk driving is punished by losing license and banning you from using another one for half year for first time and of life for second. And it's very effective, as those cases are rarity now

[int_19h]

> It took a while but now i can say why that's insufficient: human errors are corrected by discipline and justice.

If they did, we'd be living in utopia already.

But also, by the same token, generative AI errors are similarly "corrected" by fine-tuning and RLHF. In both cases, you don't actually fix it - you just make it less likely to happen again.

[cdogl]

Very succinctly put - this captures my view but I couldn’t have put it in these words; thanks!

[Davidzheng]

Such a strange take. We have no choice but to use our brains??? It is also an incredibly capable system! At some point if the capabilities are so drastically different is it confusing that you would choose a much more capable system even with all its flaws?

[pixl97]

Because you are demanding and may rise up with pitchforks if the corporate class asks too much.

At the same time, humans are also unreliable as hell , push us much more than 8 hours a day of actual thinking work and our answers start to get crappy.

[IshKebab]

Are you suggesting we just ignore the immense capabilities of these models because we don't fully understand them?

I hope you never need any medicine!

[manojlds]

Yeah, if we wanted to flap wings to fly, we would have never got the airplane.

[Filligree]

The ornithopter is real, mind you.

[stevenhuang]

> fundamentally flawed

Citation needed

[krainboltgreene]

> but you can say the same about human brains

It should be an HN rule that in order to type out variations of this sentence you have to also prove you have a degree in neuroscience.

[xcdzvyn]

I think you should have to show your ML creds to claim LLM research is "pseudoscience", but here we are.

[krainboltgreene]

Well it's not a science and you're going to have to a hard time convincing me that Richard Feynman is wrong.

[int_19h]

You don't have to have a degree in neuroscience to be aware of the fact that we aren't even close to understanding how human brain works when it comes to high-level process such as sentience.

[krainboltgreene]

First off we understand a lot about the human brain, but that doesn't matter because no one is arguing that we understand the totality of the human brain, instead what is being argued is: The human brain is as simple as an LLM and thus LLMs are sentient, can reason, and can know facts.