Thread

1. js8 · 1790928479 · focus · HN ↗

   I am also an optimist about AI, although I worry about the labor aspect as well (as a leftist I see the class aspect of this, on the other hand, as a computer programmer, computers were also originally meant to replace human labor, and we all see what happened).

   My view is, current top AIs do multiple different things:

   1. Interpret and output natural language

   2. Do formal logical reasoning

   3. Do informal logical reasoning

   4. Provide encyclopedic knowledge

   5. Discern vague instructions/statements and fill the most likely gaps (kind of error correction)

   6. Serve as a model of the human mind, a proxy for a person

   7. Translate between different languages, formal and informal

   All these things are combined in these huge, hard-to-understand blobs of weights. I think humanity would be better off by understanding each aspect separately, but disentangling them will take decades of philosophical research. So there is a lot of interesting work ahead of us.

   1. pwndByDeath · 1791039083 · focus · HN ↗

      Doing formal logic because they memorized the token patterns of humans doing formal logic.

      1. saulpw · 1791042550 · focus · HN ↗

         Isn't it remarkable that this works? I wouldn't have thought so either, and yet here we are.

         1. pwndByDeath · 1791047572 · focus · HN ↗

            Not really, I think it says more about how little intelligence is in the behaviors we value

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.