[themgt]

What's strange to me about these comments is they're timeless. They could have been written in 2026 or 2016 or 1966.

Like, afaict, for many on HN going from ELIZA->Fable 5 just didn't cause any update to priors regarding this whole philosophical question. The argument against has remained unchanged. I don't see any point in arguing about it, I just find it very strange.

[defgeneric]

It's a form of denial. We're getting another "de-thronement of man" on the order of Copernicus and Darwin. Some get excited, others turn away in horror. Negation is the outward expression of the desire to keep human intelligence wrapped in its mystical veil.

One popular idea is that these systems will asymptotically approximate human intelligence because they're trained on mostly human-written texts. Not only is that untrue, it's also directly contradicted by our experience with previous RL-systems, where they seem to breeze right by human ability without even the slightest hiccup.

[disgruntledphd2]

> with previous RL-systems

Most human systems are much, much, much more complicated than most closed world games (which is where RL approaches have seen massive success, mostly through self-play).

Like LLMs are great, but I honestly can't see us getting actual general intelligence out of them.

[layla5alive]

They already possess general intelligence by many metrics. Sure they miss a few, but that's nitpicky and goalpost shifty - lots of humans make errors of all sorts as well, or incur brain damage limiting them in one or a few areas of intelligence - we don't then say they are not general intelligence anymore.

I think maybe you mean superintelligence, which is a more fair critique.

[disgruntledphd2]

> They already possess general intelligence by many metrics.

Can you share the metrics you are using for this assessment?

They are really powerful tools, but a quick glance at their thinking tokens (which is a bad name, tbh) rapidly disabuses me of the notion that they are general intelligences.

They possess large amounts of crystallised intelligence (i.e. they have a lot of knowledge), but their fluid intelligence is definitely lower than the human median.

[layla5alive]

My take is that fluid intelligence (quite a bit) below human median is still general intelligence (that is, general intelligence doesn't mean no gaps).

It feels like we have collectively goal-post shifted the definition of AGI to be closer to that of ASI.

One of those "what do you call a doctor who graduated at the bottom of their class" type things. I think despite their genuine deficits (and there are many), frontier LLMs have basically cleared the minimum AGI bar.

Though I realize a lot of people don't agree with this take :)

[iugtmkbdfil834]

<< One popular idea is that these systems will asymptotically approximate human intelligence because they're trained on mostly human-written texts.

Can you elaborate on this? I am clearly not aware of this line of thinking and the related contradiction.

[defgeneric]

Approximate as a limit and not surpass, where the hidden hope actually seems to be that they don't surpass. There are lots of variations floating around, from simple metaphors like "LLM as librarian that speaks to you," to even Sutton's remark that rather than being a case where we've taken the "bitter lesson" to heart, LLMs may be a yet another case where we're limited by it.

[beepbooptheory]

Unpack this a little bit. Why is it strange or interesting to you? What specific priors need to be updated for us here? What is the philosophical questions at play for you?

[themgt]

To meta-unpack a little bit ... it is strange to me that Fable is far more capable of discussing these questions than apparently 99% of humans. Along with being more capable at quite a lot else than most humans.

[notahacker]

It doesn't seem at all strange to me that a chatbot trained by true believers in an AI singularity and the importance of safety guardrails will give more satisfying answers to true believers in an AI singularity and the importance of safety guardrails than talking to humans who might ask questions they're not prepared to answer (or might say nasty sceptical things or just not seem interested)

As for "updating priors", that goes both ways. There's plenty more reason to think "hey, transformers and RLHF might actually make some killer products" but certainly no reason to think the few people who didn't realise that "GPT3 is too dangerous to release" and "all software engineers will be replaced within 6-12 months" were marketing rather than prophecy have some kind of special insight into how it's all going to pan out. Clock's ticking to the promised 2027 reckoning too...

[themgt]

OK. Anyhow ... if there's a cognitive task you are personally superior to Fable at, let us know.

[notahacker]

Can't do that, I'm still in hiding from GPT-3 trying to kill us all.

[suddenlybananas]

Planning

[beepbooptheory]

OK.. when you discuss these things with your Fable, what topics come up? Can you articulate one of the questions? I am probably just another dumb human FYI, but just try it out and we will see if I can follow along.

[zdragnar]

Fable 5 doesn't represent anything new, other than scale and some refinement techniques, over the original LLMs. In the chase for AGI specifically, LLMs are a dead end, just like all the other AI technologies that died in the AI winter.

What priors should be updated?

[0xDEAFBEAD]

>Fable 5 doesn't represent anything new, other than scale and some refinement techniques, over the original LLMs.

Yet it is generating billions in revenue which Eliza did not.

Perhaps all we need is scale and some refinement techniques to eat a big fraction of the economy.

If unimpressive inputs lead to impressive outputs, that should make you more worried, not less.

[zdragnar]

The commercial viability is orthogonal to whether it achieves AGI, which is effectively what "reproducing the human brain" amounts to in this discussion.

[azan_]

What's your definition of AGI?

[m4rtink]

And possibly trilions in running costs, not mentioning all the shady training data sources.

[dwaltrip]

Strong disagree. Fable is first model that actually feels smarter than me in certain non-trivial ways.

It can hold many complex and partially contradictory thoughts in its head at once, in a way that feels significantly superior to Opus (for example). And then can make reasonable syntheses across these.

In a couple rounds of back and forth, with relatively low effort (but strategic) prompting, it produces complex, accurate analyses in 5-10 minutes that would take me multiple hours of hard, very focused work.

I still need to remain tightly in the loop, providing frequent course correction, clarification, high level reframing, nudging, and grounding.

It incorporates my feedback incredibly well.

It’s honestly staggering. Fable has changed my assessment of the current trajectory more than any model since possibly gpt-4. Opus 4.5 of last year might be a close second.

———

My advice for anyone who wants to get more value out of these tools:

When a model does something idiotic, don’t throw your hands up in the air. Be curious. Try to turn it into a puzzle to be solved.

It know it’s hard sometimes, especially if you are drowning in slop from other people… or generated by yourself, heh.

It can be exhausting. I struggle with this also. I have thoughts on how to make it better. We shall see.

[layla5alive]

Human brain looks a lot like scale and minor refinement above dog brain. Or mouse brain.

[iugtmkbdfil834]

I just realized that you might really be onto something. I wonder now if it is just a function of our very human inability to let go of a known construct that has served us well until now or something else. I have my own opinions, but as strange as it sounds, this may be the HN equivalent of ok boomer moment.