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An engine performs a simple mechanical operation. Chess is a closed domain. An AI that could fully automate the job of these new hires, rather than doing RAG ov
by billisonline 9mo ago
An engine performs a simple mechanical operation. Chess is a closed domain. An AI that could fully automate the job of these new hires, rather than doing RAG over a knowledge base to help onboard them, would have to be far more general than either an engine or a chessbot. This generality used to be foregrounded by the term "AGI." But six months to a year ago when the rate of change in LLMs slowed down, and those exciting exponentials started to look more like plateauing S-curves, executives conveniently stopped using the term "AGI," preferring weasel-words like "transformative AI" instead.
I'm still waiting for something that can learn and adapt itself to new tasks as well as humans can, and something that can reason symbolically about novel domains as well as we can. I've seen about enough from LLMs, and I agree with the critique that som type of breakthrough neuro-symbolic reasoning architecture will be needed. The article is right about one thing: in that moment AI will overtake us suddenly! But I doubt we will make linear progress toward that goal. It could happen in one year, five, ten, fifty, or never. In 2023 I was deeply concerned about being made obsolete by AI, but now I sleep pretty soundly knowing the status quo will more or less continue until Judgment Day, which I can't influence anyway.
- rvz 9mo agoRemember, these companies (including the author) have an incentive to continue selling fear of job displacement not because of how disruptive LLMs are, but because of how profitable it is if you scare everyone into using your product to “survive”. To companies like Anthropic, “AGI” really means: “Liquidity event for (AI company)” - IPO, tender offer or acquisition. Afterwards, you will see the same broken promises as the company will be subject to the expectations of Wall St and pension funds.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- xmcqdpt2 9mo agoThere is a lot of critihype https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5 https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-cr...
- rukuu001 9mo agoI think a lot about how much we altered our environment to suit cars. They're not a perfect solution to transport, but they've been so useful we've built tons more road to accommodate them. So, while I don't think AGI will happen any time soon, I wonder what 'roads' we'll build to squeeze the most out of our current AI. Probably tons of power generation.
- ForHackernews 9mo agoCustomer service will be almost fully automated, and human customers will be forced to adapt to the bots.
- usrbinbash 9mo agoOr customers will find other providers who don't annoy them.
- ForHackernews 9mo agoExactly why Comcast and Google went out of business with their abysmal customer support.
- dredmorbius 9mo agoHistory so far suggests this is a dim possibility.
- xtracto 9mo agoIt already has with IVRs . I wonder if as a generalization, current technology will keep being used to provide layers and layers of "automation" for communication between people. SDR Agents will communicate with "Procurement" Agents. Customer Support Agents will communicate with Product Agents. Coffee Barista Agents will talk with Personal Assistant Agents. People will communicate less and less among each other. What will people talk about? Who will we talk to?
- sotix 9mo agoThis is a really interesting observation! Cars don't have to dominate our city design, and yet they do in many places. In the USA, you basically only have NYC and a few less convenient cities to avoid a city designed for cars. Society has largely been reshaped with the assumption that cars will be used whether or not you'd like to use one. What would that look like for navigating life without AI? Living in a community similar to the Amish or Hasidic Jews that don't integrate technology in their lives as much as the average person does? That's a much more extreme lifestyle change than moving to NYC to get away from cars.
- creshal 9mo ago> executives conveniently stopped using the term "AGI," preferring weasel-words like "transformative AI" instead. Remember when "AGI" was the weasel word because 1980s AI kept on not delivering?
- cubefox 9mo ago> I'm still waiting for something that can learn and adapt itself to new tasks as well as humans can That's highly irrelevant because if it were otherwise, we would already be replaced. The article was talking about the future.
- littlestymaar 9mo ago> An engine performs a simple mechanical operation It only appears “simple” because you're used to see working engines everywhere without never having to maintain them, but neither the previous generations nor the engineers working on modern engines would agree with you on that. An engine performs “a simple mechanical operation” the same way an LLM performs a “simple computation”.