I am 99% sure it was an automated system false positive, but it is annoying that we all have to rely on these capricious systems. That is in itself a problem with massive scale platforms. It confirms my silly hot take that all online communities should not be bigger than 10k people. That keeps the number of bad eggs legible to an actual human moderator, and keeps the discussion less mob like
Yes, and I think over time there will be a blatant inequality in who is commoditized and who isn’t.
If AI engineers didn’t create the data to produce the models, and they increasingly don’t write the code to produce the models either, then why are they treated as the agents of change rather than the subjects of change, like mathematicians are?
I have been kind of disappointed by AI science-wise. I was anticipating more advancement. Experiments do take time, so I suppose they could be pending.
AI really struggles with "collision with reality". Computers suck at modeling the real world in a detailed enough way to make scientific progress, aside from small niches like drug discovery where you have a very well scoped problem. If any part of the try something -> test it -> look at the results loop requires hitting the real world, AI is going to struggle.
On the other hand, the areas where it doesn't need to hit the real world, progress is absolutely flying. I would not be surprised if AI is superhuman in math and physics in a year, considering we went from homework helper to IMO Gold to Millennium problem solving in a couple years time. I think we'll start to see more meaningful scientific progress in maybe 2-3 years when scientists have access to an oracle that can formulate theories and direct real-world research better than a human can.
I agree and I think the question is then, how much economically valuable work exists in a closed world? My hunch is less than people think. Finance can't rely on LLMs because its adversarial we can't all be listening to the same oracle and evidence of LLMs being any good at trading are nil. And then lawyers, as per usual, will simply regulate their job security into existence. Of course, AI feels amazing to Silicon Valley / Big Tech, software is the product. And often its software you sell to other people making software. But outside of that? Useful but lots of landmines.
People have to come to grips with the possibility that a technology can be extremely impressive but be a bust in utility. I'm not saying that's what AI is, I'm saying that nobody actually knows.
Same experience. The question "what is your most memorable experience" also kind of annoyed me, because I see AI mostly as a tool. It is like asking me what my most memorable experience with my iphone is. I'm sure I could cook up something, but it felt like they were mining users for happy PR.
I think the reason for this is that the group who has the authority to do the former is much larger than the group that can do the latter. The group who could actually build safeguards seems to have no free time and is constantly being whipped to go faster and win the race.
One could also use language like "a decent chance". But research has shown that people translate vague phrases like "a decent chance" into probabilities in inconsistent ways. For an ML researcher who is already used to dealing in next-token probabilities that aren't rigorously determined, just stating a probability estimate directly is very natural.
> But research has shown that people translate vague phrases like "a decent chance" into probabilities in inconsistent ways.
That is not a bad thing. It captures uncertainty, unlike the fake number.
> For an ML researcher who is already used to dealing in next-token probabilities that aren't rigorously determined, just stating a probability estimate directly is very natural.
Exactly, it is a rhetorical device to persuade a technically-inclined audience. It works because it implies that a quantitative model exists. I want a clear, incisive set of mathematical arguments. Otherwise, I’m ignoring predictions as the ramblings of arrogant idiot rich kids.
Saying 50% likely very clearly implies there is no quantitative model to anyone who deals with probability, predictions, gambling, financial markets, ML/AI and so on. The lack of precision is something to pay attention to.
You may decide that the person doesn't know what they are talking about, but that's a very different issue.
People start with this prior in the examples you gave when they are completely uncertain and have no better mental model. It is not a good starting point for an event that has never happened and can only happen once.
Maybe people you interact with do. In my world, people don't say 50% when they have no idea, they say they have no idea. Saying "no idea" might effectively be saying "uniform distribution over all probabilities" which yields 50%, but at least with people I interact with, the reverse is not true.
Either way - let me clarify - this guy is guessing, using his brain, that it's a 50% chance. He is not saying "i don't know" or "uniform distribution" or anything of that nature. And he works in the field, so he has some insight. His guess is wildly off imo, but he isn't some clueless hack.
It's also a very natural way to speak for anyone who gambles, or deals with financial markets. And the lack of precision makes it very clear it's just based on thinking, not some sophisticated mathematical model.
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