> Before approving construction, I would want communities of humans to understand why the design works and what justifies confidence in its safety. I would hope that we all would.
Until very recently, I pored over every single line of code Claude generated with razor sharp scrutiny. I would usually catch issues with every response. I'm catching fewer problems these days. Maybe the model is just getting better, and maybe I'm being less careful while under pressure to ship more and more often. But model capability is obviously growing. Even back in March, you could tell it "give me a function that adds two numbers" and you could be 100% confident that it would write the correct function. There was almost no point in looking at the code. Since then, the complexity floor of problems in the category "this is so simple that the model couldn't possibly get it wrong" is rising, and with it, my cognitive surrender to the model is increasing too. Why check it? It's obviously going to be correct.
If AI designs a terawatt fusion plant, then of course we're going to meticulously pore over every detail to ensure safety, reliability, efficiency, whatever. If we find no flaws in the design whatsoever, will we be less careful about the second one? The third one? What about the ten thousandth one? Will "a nuclear fusion plant" become something that models couldn't possibly get wrong?
Terence Tao is arguing that the human involvement in research is crucial, but doesn't convincingly justify why, in my opinion. He says that "human agency is a value of fundamental importance" and that we will need to build "thriving human communities that can understand [AI ideas] together" - not for the sake of correctness, which AI may surpass us on, but for, I guess, the possibility of reclaiming human meaning and purpose. I don't disagree with this at all, but it's not an argument, it's a statement of values. Unfortunately, the stark reality is that if AI does surpass humans, it will become the economically dominant strategy to not verify them and not double check them, but to just do whatever they say. This seems like a great way to raise p(doom). But as the models get better and better, and as I'm scrutinizing Claude's output less and less... I just hope that there are more Terence Taos out there than people like me.
A metaphor I'm constantly drawn to is the transition from agrarian to urban societies following the Industrial Revolution. Somebody who somehow saw the Industrial Revolution coming from the perspective of somebody living in an agrarian society might have envisioned it leading to 'super farms.' And it did.
But the biggest change wasn't what it did to farming, but enabling people and societies to start doing much more than just farming, as well as enabling some great social change as well by simply economically obsoleting slave labor. And trying to imagine all of the implications of this, as well as much society might look like, from the perspective of somebody living in an agrarian society would probably have been simply impossible.
I think people keep ignoring this possibility for things that LLMs will change. There's a vast amount of the 'cognitive economy' that LLMs stand to be able to automate. And I think that will open up a vacuum in society for people to build on top of what LLMs will do (and already are doing). I don't know what that means exactly, but that's because we still live in that 'agrarian society' and trying to imagine what things will look like after the 'Industrial Revolution' is probably just impossible.
> I think that will open up a vacuum in society for people to build on top of what LLMs will do (and already are doing).
If an AI can replace me on the mental aspects of work, and robotics are on their way to replacing humanity on the physical aspects of work... then what's left? When there was agrarian societies, there were writers, priests, bankers, merchants, and laborers before and after - I really don't think things were that unclear even at the time. Now that we have machines that are close to exceeding humans in every way, what good are humans?
I like to think of AIs as the third revolution for us humans.
1st - Writing. This spread the power of memory to everyone. Socrates famously maligns writing as decreasing memory for the people. I'd say we have gotten along just fine. We still use memory, we still need it for ourselves, and using a tremendous amount of memory is still quite expensive.
2nd - Engines. This spread the power of muscles to everyone. No longer was it tied up in horses and mules and Goliaths. Even the most disease ridden pencil neck could trench and mine and build lavish houses now. The power to make pyramids is within the reach of a small company now. We still need muscles, of course, we still use them for little odd jobs, for health and well being, and using a lot of power is still quite expensive.
3rd - AIs. This is more speculative, of course. But I see AIs and LLMs as just like the other two revolutions. Intelligence (probably poorly defined by us these days) will be democratized and spread out. No longer will you have to study for decades or hire really expensive people to get it. You can just use some for relatively cheap. You'll still need intelligence of course, use it around the house and with friends and family, and using a lot of intelligence will likely still be quite expensive.
4th - Who knows! But I think that us humans have a lot of things that we do and say and make and see that aren't really well understood right now. Empathy, love, morality, care, soul, sin, mind, war, justice, honor, god, family, emotion, education, desire, courage, citizenship, chance, beauty, art, divinity, there is a lot!
pyridines · · focus · HN ↗
Until very recently, I pored over every single line of code Claude generated with razor sharp scrutiny. I would usually catch issues with every response. I'm catching fewer problems these days. Maybe the model is just getting better, and maybe I'm being less careful while under pressure to ship more and more often. But model capability is obviously growing. Even back in March, you could tell it "give me a function that adds two numbers" and you could be 100% confident that it would write the correct function. There was almost no point in looking at the code. Since then, the complexity floor of problems in the category "this is so simple that the model couldn't possibly get it wrong" is rising, and with it, my cognitive surrender to the model is increasing too. Why check it? It's obviously going to be correct.
If AI designs a terawatt fusion plant, then of course we're going to meticulously pore over every detail to ensure safety, reliability, efficiency, whatever. If we find no flaws in the design whatsoever, will we be less careful about the second one? The third one? What about the ten thousandth one? Will "a nuclear fusion plant" become something that models couldn't possibly get wrong?
Terence Tao is arguing that the human involvement in research is crucial, but doesn't convincingly justify why, in my opinion. He says that "human agency is a value of fundamental importance" and that we will need to build "thriving human communities that can understand [AI ideas] together" - not for the sake of correctness, which AI may surpass us on, but for, I guess, the possibility of reclaiming human meaning and purpose. I don't disagree with this at all, but it's not an argument, it's a statement of values. Unfortunately, the stark reality is that if AI does surpass humans, it will become the economically dominant strategy to not verify them and not double check them, but to just do whatever they say. This seems like a great way to raise p(doom). But as the models get better and better, and as I'm scrutinizing Claude's output less and less... I just hope that there are more Terence Taos out there than people like me.
somenameforme · · focus · HN ↗
But the biggest change wasn't what it did to farming, but enabling people and societies to start doing much more than just farming, as well as enabling some great social change as well by simply economically obsoleting slave labor. And trying to imagine all of the implications of this, as well as much society might look like, from the perspective of somebody living in an agrarian society would probably have been simply impossible.
I think people keep ignoring this possibility for things that LLMs will change. There's a vast amount of the 'cognitive economy' that LLMs stand to be able to automate. And I think that will open up a vacuum in society for people to build on top of what LLMs will do (and already are doing). I don't know what that means exactly, but that's because we still live in that 'agrarian society' and trying to imagine what things will look like after the 'Industrial Revolution' is probably just impossible.
gWPVhyxPHqvk · · focus · HN ↗
If an AI can replace me on the mental aspects of work, and robotics are on their way to replacing humanity on the physical aspects of work... then what's left? When there was agrarian societies, there were writers, priests, bankers, merchants, and laborers before and after - I really don't think things were that unclear even at the time. Now that we have machines that are close to exceeding humans in every way, what good are humans?
Balgair · · focus · HN ↗
1st - Writing. This spread the power of memory to everyone. Socrates famously maligns writing as decreasing memory for the people. I'd say we have gotten along just fine. We still use memory, we still need it for ourselves, and using a tremendous amount of memory is still quite expensive.
2nd - Engines. This spread the power of muscles to everyone. No longer was it tied up in horses and mules and Goliaths. Even the most disease ridden pencil neck could trench and mine and build lavish houses now. The power to make pyramids is within the reach of a small company now. We still need muscles, of course, we still use them for little odd jobs, for health and well being, and using a lot of power is still quite expensive.
3rd - AIs. This is more speculative, of course. But I see AIs and LLMs as just like the other two revolutions. Intelligence (probably poorly defined by us these days) will be democratized and spread out. No longer will you have to study for decades or hire really expensive people to get it. You can just use some for relatively cheap. You'll still need intelligence of course, use it around the house and with friends and family, and using a lot of intelligence will likely still be quite expensive.
4th - Who knows! But I think that us humans have a lot of things that we do and say and make and see that aren't really well understood right now. Empathy, love, morality, care, soul, sin, mind, war, justice, honor, god, family, emotion, education, desire, courage, citizenship, chance, beauty, art, divinity, there is a lot!