[jerf]

AI != LLM.

We can reasonably speak about certain fundamental limitations of LLMs without those being claims about what AI may ever do.

I would agree they fundamentally lack models of the current task and that it is not very likely that continually growing the context will solve that problem, since it hasn't already. That doesn't mean there won't someday be an AI that has a model much as we humans do. But I'm fairly confident it won't be an LLM. It may have an LLM as a component but the AI component won't be primarily an LLM. It'll be something else.

[xenadu02]

Every AI-related invention is hyped as "intelligence" but turns out to be "Necessary but Not Sufficient" for true intelligence.

Neural networks are necessary but not sufficient. LLMs are necessary but not sufficient.

I have no doubt that there are multiple (perhaps thousands? more?) of LLM-like subsystems in our brains. They appear to be a necessary part of creating useful intelligence. My pet theory is that LLMs are used for associative memory purposes. They help generate new ideas and make predictions. They extract information buried in other memory. Clearly there is another system on top that tests, refines, and organizes the output. And probably does many more things we haven't even thought to name yet.

[Ferret7446]

Most adult humans don't have "true intelligence" so I don't quite get the point

[Jensson]

What do you mean? Most adult humans can learn to drive a car, book a plain ticket, get a passport, fly abroad, navigate in a foreign country etc. There is a variation in human intelligence, but almost all humans are very intelligent compared to everything else we know about.

[JackFr]

> Every AI-related invention is hyped as "intelligence" but turns out to be "Necessary but Not Sufficient" for true intelligence.

Alternatively, the goalposts keep being moved.

[ezst]

Not really, only "merchants" are trying to package and sell LLMs as "artificial intelligence". To this day AI still very much is the name of a research field focused on computational methods: it's not a discovery, it's not a singular product or tool at or disposal (or it is in no greater capacity than Markov chains, support vector machines or other techniques that came before). If you ever expect the goalposts to settle, you are essentially wishing for research to stop.

[ithkuil]

Both things can be true:

1. People are trying to sell a product that is not ready and thus are overhyping it

2. The tech is in its early days and may evolve into something useful via refinement and not necessarily by some radical paradigm shift

In order for (2) to happen it helps if the field is well motivated and funded (1)

[xenadu02]

I don't think we fully understand all the aspects of intelligence. What the potential feature set is. How to categorize or break it down into parts. We have some data and some categories but we are so far away from a full description that it only makes sense we must move the goalposts constantly.

[lbrandy]

> has a model much as we humans do

The premise that an AI needs to do Y "as we do" to be good at X because humans use Y to be good at X needs closer examination. This presumption seems to be omnipresent in these conversations and I find it so strange. Alpha Zero doesn't model chess "the way we do".

[klabb3]

Both that, and that we should not expect LLMs to achieve ability with humans as baseline comparison. It’s as if cars were rapidly getting better due to some new innovation, and expecting them to fly within a year. It’s a new, and different thing, where the universality of ”plausibly sounding” coherent text appeared to be general, when it’s advanced pattern matching. Nothing wrong with that, pattern matching is extremely useful, but drawing the equal sign to human cognition is extremely premature, and a bet that is very likely be wrong.

[shkkmo]

Alpha Zero is not trying to be AGI.

> The premise that an AI needs to do Y "as we do" to be good at X because humans use Y to be good at X needs closer examination.

I don't see it being used as a premise. It see it as speculation that is trying to understand why this type of AI underperforms at certain types of tasks. Y may not be necessary to do X well, but if a system is doing X poorly and the difference between that system and another system seems to be Y, it's worth exploring if adding Y would improve the performance.

[byteknight]

I have to disagree. Anyone that says LLMs do not qualify as AI are the same people who will continue to move the goal posts for AGI. "Well it doesn't do this!". No one here is trying to replicate a human brain or condition in its entirety. They just want to replicate the thinking ability of one. LLMs represent the closest parallel we have experienced thus far to that goal. Saying that LLMs are not AI feel disingenuous at best and entirely purposely dishonest at the worst (perhaps perceived as staving off the impending demise of a profession).

The sooner people stop worrying about a label for what you feel fits LLMs best, the sooner they can find the things they (LLMs) absolutely excel at and improve their (the user's) workflows.

Stop fighting the future. Its not replacing right now. Later? Maybe. But right now the developers and users fully embracing it are experiencing productivity boosts unseen previously.

Language is what people use it as.

[sarchertech]

> the developers and users fully embracing it are experiencing productivity boosts unseen previously

This is the kind of thing that I disagree with. Over the last 75 years we’ve seen enormous productivity gains.

You think that LLMs are a bigger productivity boost than moving from physically rewiring computers to using punch cards, from running programs as batch processes with printed output to getting immediate output, from programming in assembly to higher level languages, or even just moving from enterprise Java to Rails?

[skydhash]

Even learning your current $EDITOR and $SHELL can be a great productivity booster. I see people claiming AI is helping them and you see them hunting for files in the file manager tree instead of using `grep` or `find` (Unix).

[Espressosaurus]

Or the invention of the container, or hell, the invention of the filing cabinet (back when computer was a job)

[overgard]

The studies I've seen for AI actually improving productivity are a lot more modest than what the hype would have you believe. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbDDYKRFjhk

Skepticism isn't the same thing as fighting the future.

I will call something AGI when it can reliably solve novel problems it hasn't been pre-trained on. That's my goal post and I haven't moved it.

[jerf]

!= is "not equal". The symbol for "not a subset of" is ⊄, which you will note, I did not use.

[byteknight]

I think you replied in the wrong place, bud. All the best.

EDIT - I see now. sorry.

For all intents and purposes of the public. AI == LLM. End of story. Doesn't matter what developers say.

[marcus_holmes]

> For all intents and purposes of the public. AI == LLM. End of story. Doesn't matter what developers say.

This is interesting, because it's so clearly wrong. The developers are also the people who develop the LLMs, so obviously what they say is actually the factual matter of the situation. It absolutely does matter what they say.

But the public perception is that AI == LLM, agreed. Until it changes and the next development comes along, when suddenly public perception will change and LLMs will be old news, obviously not AI, and the new shiny will be AI. So not End of Story.

People are morons. Individuals are smart, intelligent, funny, interesting, etc. But in groups we're moronic.

[leptons]

So when an LLM all-too-often produces garbage, can we then call it "Artificial Stupidity"?

[byteknight]

Not sure how that fits. Do you produce good results every time, first try? Didn't think so.

[leptons]

>Do you produce good results every time, first try?

Almost always, yes, because I know what I'm doing and I have a brain that can think. I actually think before I do anything, which leads to good results. Don't assume everyone is a junior.

>Didn't think so.

You don't know me at all.

[neoromantique]

Sr. "human" here.

If you always use your first output then you are not a senior engineer, either your problem space is THAT simple that you can fit all your context in your head at the same time first try, or quite frankly you just bodge things together in non-optimal way.

It always takes some tries at a problem to grasp edge cases and to easier visualize the problem space.

[Jensson]

Depends on how you define "try". If someone asks me to do something I don't come back with a buggy piece of garbage and say "here, I'm done!", the first deliverable will be a valid one, or I'll say I need more to do it.

[danielbln]

Here you have it folks, seniors don't make mistakes.

[Jensson]

When I'm confident something will work it almost always works, that is very different from these models.

Sure sometimes I do stuff I am not confident about to learn but then I don't say "here I solved the problem for you" without building confidence around the solution first.

Every competent senior engineer should be like this, if you aren't then you aren't competent. If you are confident in a solution then it should almost always work, else you are over confident and thus not competent. LLM are confident in solutions that are shit.

[oinfoalgo]

In cybernetics, this label has existed for a long time.

Unfortunately, discourse has followed an epistemic trajectory influenced by Hollywood and science fiction, making clear communication on the subject nearly impossible without substantial misunderstanding.

[parineum]

> Anyone that says LLMs do not qualify as AI are the same people who will continue to move the goal posts for AGI.

I have the complete opposite feeling. The layman understanding of the term "AI" is AGI, a term that only needs to exist because researchers and businessmen hype their latest creations as AI.

The goalposts for AI don't move but the definition isn't precise but we know it when we see it.

AI, to the layman, is Skynet/Terminator, Asimov's robots, Data, etc.

The goalposts moving that you're seeing is when something the tech bubble calls AI escapes the tech bubble and everyone else looks at it and says, no, that's not AI.

The problem is that everything that comes out of the research efforts toward AI, the tech industry calls AI despite it not achieving that goal by the common understanding of the term. LLMs were/are a hopeful AI candidate but, as of today, they aren't but that doesn't stop OpenAI from trying to raise money using the term.

[shkkmo]

AI has had many, many lay meanings over the years. Simplistic decision trees and heuristics for video games is called AI. It is a loose term and trying to apply it with semantic rigour is useless, as is trying to tell people that it should only be used to match one of its many meanings.

If you want some semantic rigour use more specific terms like AGI, human equivalent AGI, super human AGI, exponentially self improving AGI, etc. Even those labels lack rigour, but at least they are less ambiguous.

LLMs are pretty clearly AI and AGI under commonly understood, lay definitions. LLMs are not human level AGI and perhaps will never be by themselves.

[parineum]

> LLMs are pretty clearly AI and AGI under commonly understood, lay definitions.

That's certainly not clear. For starters, I don't think there is a lay definition of AGI which is largely my point.

The only reason people are willing to call LLMs AI is because that's how they are being sold and the shine isn't yet off the rose.

How many people call Siri AI? It used to be but people have had time to feel around the edges where it fails to meet their expectations of AI.

You can tell what people think of AI by the kind of click bait surrounding LLMs. I read an article not too long ago with the headline about an LLM lying to try and not be turned off. Turns out it was intentionally prompted to do that but the point is that that kind of self preservation is what people expect of AI. Implicitly, they expect that AI has a "self".

ChatGPT doesn't have a self.

[shkkmo]

AI and AGI are broad umbrella terms. Stuff like Alpha Zero is AI but not AGI while LLMs are both.

Engaging in semantic battles to try to change the meanings of those terms is just going to create more confusion, not less. Instead why not use more specific and descriptive labels to be clear about what you are saying.

Self-Aware AGI, Human Level AGI, Super-Human ANI, are all much more useful than trying to force general label to be used a specific way.

[parineum]

> Engaging in semantic battles to try to change the meanings of those terms is just going to create more confusion

You're doing that. I've never seen someone state, as fact, that LLMs are AGI before now. Go ask someone on the street what Super-Human ANI means.

[byteknight]

"Just ask AI" is a phrase you will hear around enterprises now. You less often hear "Google it". You hear "ChatGPT it".

[imiric]

> The sooner people stop worrying about a label for what you feel fits LLMs best, the sooner they can find the things they (LLMs) absolutely excel at and improve their (the user's) workflows.

This is not a fault of the users. These labels are pushed primarily by "AI" companies in order to hype their products to be far more capable than they are, which in turn increases their financial valuation. Starting with "AI" itself, "superintelligence", "reasoning", "chain of thought", "mixture of experts", and a bunch of other labels that anthropomorphize and aggrandize their products. This is a grifting tactic old as time itself.

From Sam Altman[1]:

> We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started. Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence

Apologists will say "they're just words that best describe these products", repeat Dijkstra's "submarines don't swim" quote, but all of this is missing the point. These words are used deliberately because of their association to human concepts, when in reality the way the products work is not even close to what those words mean. In fact, the fuzzier the word's definition ("intelligence", "reasoning", "thought"), the more valuable it is, since it makes the product sound mysterious and magical, and makes it easier to shake off critics. This is an absolutely insidious marketing tactic.

The sooner companies start promoting their products honestly, the sooner their products will actually benefit humanity. Until then, we'll keep drowning in disinformation, and reaping the consequences of an unregulated marketplace of grifters.

[1]: https://blog.samaltman.com/the-gentle-singularity