[FrustratedMonky]

Alpha-GO was not sci-fi. And that was 2016

Protein Folding? That was against a defined data set and other organizations.

Nobody can re-produce? Isn't that the definition of a competitive advantage?

They are building something others can't, and that is bad? That is what companies do.

[anna-gabriella]

We are discussing AlphaChip in 2024, not AlphaGo from 2016. I don't know much about protein folding (there were some controversies there, but that's not relevant). Neither of these has been related to product claims.

As for "nobody can re-produce", no, that's not the definition. Imaginary things are not competitive advantage. They are exaggerating, and that's bad. But yeah, that's what companies do, you are right.

[FrustratedMonky]

"Imaginary things"

I get the impression you just aren't keeping up with DeepMind.

They have made huge break throughs in science, and they publish their results in Nature. Just because the parent company Google had some bad demo's doesn't mean it is all bunk.

So guess if you are of the ilk that just doesn't trust anything anymore, that there is no peer reviews, all science is a fraud. I really can't help that.

[anna-gabriella]

DeepMind made huge breakthroughs, agreed. AlphaGo beat a sitting go champion, which was very cool. AlphaFold solved a large number of proteins with verified results. Are we clear on this? Hope you are taking back your ad hominem.

The team that did RL for chips work was at GoogleBrain, and you already pointed out that Google had bad demos. The fact that this team was absorbed into DeepMind does not magically rub the successes of DeepMind onto them.

The RL for chips results were nothing like AlphaGo. Imagine if AlphaGo claimed to beat unknown go players, you would laugh. But the Nature paper on RL for chips claims to outperform unknown chip engineers. Also, imagine if AlphaFold claimed to fold only proprietary proteins. The Nature paper on RL for chips reports results on a small set of proprietary chip blocks (they released one design, and the results are not great on that one). That's where imaginary results come up. One of these things is not like the others.

[FrustratedMonky]

And AlphaStar, And recently got Silver Medal in Geometry Olympiad. Didn't beat all humans, but got a silver in one of those tasks that seemingly would be in the domain of humans for awhile. Like Go was considered.

Really, I wasn't arguing about the chips so much. I mentioned DeepMind and you said I must like Sci-Fi, so I assumed you were inferring that DeepMind results were not that extraordinary.

And, I can't keep up with the internal re-orgs now that DeepMind was merged with the other groups at Google. So Maybe I am assuming too much, if this wasn't the same DeepMind group. -- Though I think when companies merge groups like this, they are definitely hoping some 'magic success rubs off on them'.

I guess for the Chip design, is your argument about it was compared against generic human engineer. So if they would set up some competition with some humans, that would satisfy your issue with the results?

So my original more flippant post was Sci-Fi, it's just things are changing fast enough that the lines have blurred, and DeepMind has real results that aren't Sci-Fi:

Take Games as a simplified world models, DeepMind has made a lot more progress in winning games than other companies, then take some of the other companies that have had break throughs in Video-to-Real-World-Models, where the video can be broken down into categories, and those can be fed into a 'Game' function. Now put that on a loop(default mode network in brain) and in a robot body (so it has embodied subjective experience of the world, there are consequences of actions). And I am making a bit of a Sci-Fi leap that you can get human behavior. And, if they can then make leap to designing chips, then they can reach that hockey stick of increasing intelligence.

So, guess I am making Sci-Fi leap. But I think the actual results from DeepMind already seem Sci-Fi like but are real. So are we really that far away, given things we thought would take 100's of years are falling by the wayside.

ok. take back ad-hominem. but it is hard to tell on the internet. it seemed like you were questioning verified results, and you must know that there is a large contingent on internet that casts doubt on all science. So once someone goes down that path it is easier to ignore them.