Rossphorus@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Honestly? If AI systems stopped improving forever? That’s probably best case scenario. LLMs are already superhuman on a knowledge level, human-level in terms of speed (tokens per sec, etc), but subhuman in many other areas. This makes them useful for some tasks, but not so useful that they could cause any sort of existential threat to humanity (either in an economic sense or in a misalignment sense). If LLMs stagnate here then we have at least one tool in our AI toolbox that we’re pretty sure isn’t conscious/sentient/etc., which is useful since that makes them predictable on some level. Humans can deal with that.
Unfortunately, I see no reason why AI systems in general wouldn’t continue to improve. Even if LLMs do stagnate they’re only one tiny branch of a much larger tree, and we already have at least one example of an AI system that is conscious and sentient - a human. This means even if somehow the human brain was the only architecture ever capable of sentience (incredibly unlikely), we could always simulate/emulate a human brain to get human-level AGI. Simulate/emulate it faster? Superhuman AGI.
MotoAsh@lemmy.world 4 days ago
No… you’re anthropomorphising the technology to hell and back…
“Knowledge” takes understanding, and no current generation of “AI” has basically any level of understanding. Being able to crap out eloquently stated BS is not knowledge nor thought.
Yet, they’re still a MASSIVE economic threat, mostly because moronic investors and c-suits are also anthropomorphising them and buying in to the sales pitch BS that’s straight up lies at a fundamental level…
Rossphorus@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I don’t want to get into an argument of semantics, whatever your definition of ‘knowledge’ is, LLMs can recall a greater number of factoids than any individual human. That’s all I meant. Are they perfect? No, I never said that. They’re still far beyond the average human, however, hence superhuman.
I said that LLMs are not an existential threat to humanity, even economically. I never said that they wouldn’t threaten individual jobs, or cause a bubble. Please don’t strawman me. You and I are looking at completely different levels of effects, I’m looking at the big picture - is humanity or society as we know it going to continue to exist in 100 years (in this hypothetical where AI and/or LLMs stagnated)? If yes, then LLMs are not an existential threat. That’s what an existential threat means, after all.
Is AI causing en economic bubble? Sure, but like all bubbles they will burst when people realise that they have limited use due to their drawbacks. The world will then return to some semblance of normalcy. That’s a non-existential threat.
Now, if we’re talking about a world in which AI systems continue to evolve? All bets are off the table.
MotoAsh@lemmy.world 3 days ago
You’re still doing it. “recalling factoids” is not how they work. At all.
Me saying you’re wrong about them being an economic threat isn’t a strawman. It’s me disagreeing about the severity of the issue. You having an ignorant opinion is not me strawmanning you. It’s me calling you ignorant.
Rossphorus@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Fine, you want me to be pedantic? When prompted with tokens that appear in an order that humans understand as a question that corresponds to some aspect of the universe as we understand it, the tokens predicted by the LLM correspond to an answer that humans agree is more representative than the tokens provided by the average human. Tell me where in my initial comment I said they weren’t an economic threat. I never said they weren’t. I said they aren’t an existential threat. Please read my comment.