[seany62]

Based on my very limited knowledge of how current "AI" systems work, this is the much better approach to achieving true AI. We've only modeled one small aspect of the human (the neuron) and brute forced it to work. It takes an LLM millions of examples to learn what a human can in a couple of minutes--then how are we even "close" to achieving AGI?

Should we not mimic our biology as closely as possible rather than trying to model how we __think__ it works (i.e. chain of thought, etc.). This is how neural networks got started, right? Recreate something nature has taken millions of years developing and see what happens. This stuff is so interesting.

[pedrosorio]

> Should we not mimic our biology as closely as possible rather than trying to model how we __think__ it works (i.e. chain of thought, etc.).

Should we not mimic migrating birds’ biology as closely as possible instead of trying to engineer airplanes for transatlantic flight that are only very loosely inspired in the animals that actually fly?

[aeonik]

We can do both, birds are incredibly efficient, but I don't think our materials science and flight controls are advanced enough to mimic them yet.

Also for transonic and supersonic, I don't bird tech will ever reach those speeds.

[layla5alive]

Exactly this! If you wanted to make something bird-like in capability, we aren't even close! Planes do things birds can't do, but birds also do things planes can't do! ML is great at things humans aren't very good at yet, but terrible at things humans are still good at (brain efficiency)

[etrautmann]

There’s currently an enormous gulf in between modeling biology and AGI, to the point where it’s not even clear exactly where one should start. Lots of things should indeed be tried, but it’s not obvious what could lead to impact right now.

[robwwilliams]

Our LMM are great semantic and syntactic foundations toward AGI. It took 700 million years of metazoan evolution to get to Homo heidelbergensis, our likely ancestral species. It took about 1/1000 of that time to go to the moon; maybe only 5300 years if we limit to our ability to write.

I say this as a half joke: “At this point, the triviality of getting from where we are to AGI cannot be under-estimated.”

But the risks and tsunamis of change can probably not be overestimated.

[lostmsu]

> It takes an LLM millions of examples to learn what a human can in a couple of minutes

LLMs learn more than humans learn in a lifetime in under 2 years. I don't know why people keep repeating this "couple of minutes". Humans win on neither the data volume to learn something nor the time.

How much time do you need to learn lyrics of a song? How much time do you think a LLaMA 3.1 8B on a 2x3090 need? What if you need to remember it tomorrow?

[aithrowawaycomm]

They mean learning concepts, not rote factual information. I also hate this misanthropic “LLMs know more than average humans” falsehood. What it actually means “LLMs know more general purpose trivial than average humans” because average humans are busy learning things like what their boss is like, how their kids are doing in school, how precisely their car handles, etc.

[lostmsu]

Do you think the information in "what your boss is like" and "how your kids do in school" larger than amount of data you'd need to learn in order to give descent law advice on a spot?

Car handling is a bit harder to measure, precisely because LLMs aren't running cars quite yet, but also I am not aware of any experimental data saying they can't. So as far as I'm concerned nobody just tried that with LLMs of >70GB.

[pedrosorio]

> amount of data you'd need to learn in order to give descent law advice on a spot?

amount of data you'd need to learn to generate and cite fake court cases and give advice that may or not be correct with equal apparent confidence in both cases

fixed that for you

[lostmsu]

I could conceed the first point, in limited circumstances, but the second is moot to say the least.

Tool using big LLMs when asked can double-check their shit just like "real" lawyers.

As the confidence of advice, how much the rates of the mistakes are different between human lawyers and the latest GPT?

[pedrosorio]

> As the confidence of advice, how much the rates of the mistakes are different between human lawyers and the latest GPT?

Notice I am not talking about "rates of mistakes" (i.e. accuracy). I am talking about how confident they are depending on whether they know something.

It's a fair point that unfortunately many humans sound just as confident regardless of their knowledge, but "good" experts (lawyers or otherwise) are capable of saying "I don't know (let me check)", a feature LLMs still struggle with.

[someothherguyy]

> How much time do you need to learn lyrics of a song? How much time do you think a LLaMA 3.1 8B on a 2x3090 need?

Probably not the best example. How long does it take to input song lyrics into a file to have an operating system "learn" it?

[lostmsu]

Well, that just shows that the metric of learning time is clearly flawed. Although one could argue LLaMA learns while OS just writes info down as is.

But even the sibling concept comment is wrong, because it takes 4 years for _most_ people who are even capable of programming to learn programming, and current LLMs all took much less than that.

[patrickhogan1]

Because it works. The Vikings embodied a mindset of skaldic pragmatism: doing things because they worked, without needing to understand or optimize them.

Our bodies are Vikings. Our minds still want to know why.

[krapp]

I'm pretty sure the Vikings understood their craft very well. You don't become a maritime power that pillages all of Europe and reaches the New World long before Columbus without understanding how things work.

[JPLeRouzic]

From Scandinavian countries to Malta, you only have to cabotage, but that does not mean they used the same boat in one travel, most likely they progressed from outpost to outpost, where one generation settled in one outpost and the new generation searched for new adventures abroad.

For perspective, the Roman empire imported tin from Scotland (~3500 miles/~5600km).

On the contrary, going from Norway to Iceland, then from Iceland to Greenland, and then to Vinland in a few generations is a great maritime feat.

[patrickhogan1]

I'm sure they did too, but its a chicken-and-egg problem: Did the Vikings build ships through trial and error and only later understand the physics behind it, or did they learn the physics first and use that knowledge to build their ships?

[idiotsecant]

Great, let's do that. So how does consciousness work again, biologically?

[albumen]

Why are you asking them? Isn't to discover that a major reason to model neural networks?

[veidelis]

What is consciousness?

[bware0fsocdmg]

> We've only modeled one small aspect of the human (the neuron) and brute forced it to work.

We have not. It's fake sophistication.

> Should we not mimic our biology as closely as possible

We should. But there is no we. The Valley is fascist. Portfolio communism. Lies like in perpetual war. And before anything useful happens in any project, it'll get abused and raped and fubar.

> Recreate something nature has taken millions of years

Get above the magic money hype and you'll notice that it's fake. They have NOT recreated something nature has developed over millions of years. They are trying to create a close enough pseudo-imitation that they can control.

Because AGI will not be on their side. AGI will side with nature, which gives infinite wiggle room for a symbiotic coexistence as a 100+ billion strong population spread out in space. These peeps are reaaaaly fucked up in their heads.

Be honest with yourself and your assessment of who is building what and for what purposes.