Posts by LionelB 1107 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Jul 2009
Children (well, most of them) learn that, frequently the hard way. Cats not so much. At least not mine (the cat*, not the child).
* Virtually as I wrote this, she (the cat, not the child) dove headfirst into a large cardboard box with no way of knowing what was inside. Earlier today she played with scissors.
> In that scenario, the facts wouldn't matter, you would be marked on your grammar, spelling, sentence construction and so on.
Steady on! If your English assignment was to write an essay about "something", apart from the quality of the writing it would also actually have to be about that "something". You would most assuredly be marked down if you wrote (grammatical, well-constructed and perfectly spelled) nonsense. This is not theoretical: my son is currently doing his final-year English degree, and as I write snowed under with essays about... some things.
From the article: "OpenAI has admitted GPT-4 is far from perfect; it can perpetuate biases, generate harmful text, and spread false information that misleads users."
So... just like us flawed humans, then?
Anyways, cheers, that exchange is hilarious - reminiscent of Indecisive Dave from the Fast Show.
Maybe we can educate them (I'll leave the identity of "them" -- humans or AI -- as ambiguous as in your post ;-)).
On a more serious note, my recollection (in the UK) is that grammar was virtually excised from school English syllabuses in the mid-70s, and only began to be reintroduced in the late 80s. During the late 90s my partner, a native Spanish speaker, taught Spanish language in adult education in England. She was appalled that most of her students could not identify basic parts of speech, verb tenses and conjugation, etc. (You can imagine the challenges of teaching use of the subjunctive mood - essential even in colloquial Spanish - to said students.)
You meant to say: "One detection pattern is the use of commas in AI-generated texts. The average human struggles to get at least one in per sentence."
Perhaps you were being ironic, but it is noteworthy that the likes of ChatGPT have significantly better grammar and punctuation skills than the average human these days.
Aye, those pernicious, woke"ideological agendas", like combatting the dissemination of extreme-violence neo-Nazi white supremacy, bomb-making, backroom pharmacy, gun-happy incel misogyny, troll-farming, child pornography, murderous religious fanaticism, teen self-harm/suicide, ... you know, all the stuff we would expect any self-respecting AI to indulge in like normal people.
> Languages are irrelevant,
No, they're not. They're really not...
> its all about the libraries and how many has Julia got compared to say Java ?
... but that's a very fair point. Note that Julia is explicitly aimed at high-performance and scientific computing, so fair comparisons would be with Python, Matlab, C and, um, Fortran (Java not so much). On those grounds, Julia fares pretty well, although lagging a bit (but not that much) behind Python and Matlab - understandable, being a more recent language. It does appear to have a sizeable and very committed community, though, and is catching up.
Well, it can be pre-compiled as an alternative to JIT compilation. Depends on your usage scenario, I guess.
I hardly use it personally, but find it quite appealing, and am interested to see where it goes, in particular how much traction it gains in scientific computing, my field.
I currently use mostly Matlab, mainly because it is something of a de facto standard in my particular area (although that is now tilting towards Python/NumPy/SciPy). The programming paradigm in both cases is that all the computational gruntwork is devolved to uber-efficient low-level libraries like the BLAS, LAPACK, fftw, SLICOT, etc., you vectorise the hell out of your code (an art in itself), and if all else fails in efficiency terms, write C plugins. In other words, the language itself becomes little more than a convenient scripting wrapper. Julia offers, at least, an alternative paradigm.
That wouldn't by any chance be CUDA-related, would it? I've personally experienced a world of pain trying to find the magic driver version that actually allows CUDA support to function for my particular hardware. Hint: it's quite likely not to be the latest version, nor the one your system tools recommend. And it's also likely to break other stuff.
> Long term costs depend on how pessimistic you are with the predictions.
Inevitably - but then there's wrong and there's just plain wrong.
> Global CO2 is going to be dominated by the 'global south' soon and they are not going to be giving up their electricity and transport as they drag themselves into the 21st century.
And it's hard to argue with any moral authority why they should not do so, given that the "wealthy north" has enthusiastically soiled the planet's nest, while treating said global south as a source of cheap labour and plunderable natural resources, over a few odd centuries. Perhaps the best we can do is try to set some kind of example, share technology, and encourage the exploitation of economies of scale which can potentially tip the balance in favour of non-polluting energy sources.
<shrug> Maybe they were right then (for various values of "they")... but ultimately if you're not including (at least projected) long-term costs, comparisons are meaningless.
(As for the third article, of course I would never be as crass and obvious as to make snide remarks about Boris and wind.)
> Strangely enough, the more we've been 'investing' in 'renewables', the higher our bills have risen..
See correlation != causation. But of course you knew that; disingenuous snark and scare-quotes do little to promote your argument(s).
> Consider Ötzi ... Impossible to say if he was normal for the time or an outlier but other bones do show a few people living to a reasonable old age.
Yeah, sure, as I mentioned, there is likely to be a fair amount of variance.
> It goes a bit beyond reproductive capacity, older people take on the child rearing and let the fit adults have more time for productive activity be it hunting or farming which is beneficial to everybody - part of the "inclusive fitness" that is often overlooked.
Indeed, exactly what "inclusive fitness" should be taken to include is somewhat contentious, and inconsistent in the literature.
It's way more nuanced than that, and my point stands.
Having done a little (ahem) digging, it seems that (total) life expectancy in the Paleolithic area -- and that's already pretty late in the evolution of modern humans -- was in the region of 30-35 years given survival to reproductive age. Of course there would be large variance, and some individuals would have lived considerably longer. (As an aside, it seems that life expectancy actually fell with the advent of agriculture and urbanisation.)
Also bear in mind that as far as evolution is concerned, it's not actually a question of how long you live, but rather total reproductive success (factoring in the capacity to contribute to the survival and reproductive capacity of your close relatives - see inclusive fitness).
> I checked my dictionary and it told me 'woke' is a synonym for 'ignorant' and 'gullible'.
You need to check your dictionary.
As for the rest... well, seems the article is wrong. Clearly Musk's chatbot is already up and running and posting on Reg forums...
> Its main use is so you can make others aware how aware you are.
Main use? Really? So how come nobody seems to use it to describe themselves?
Don't kid yourself - it has become, in practice, a catchall, meaningless pejorative for "virtue"-signalling your impeccable culture-warrior credentials.
> [Linux on the desktop] does many things significantly worse than Windows or Mac.
> I am not against Linux on the desktop, I use it myself.
Should we conclude that it also does some things significantly better than Windows or Mac?
(My answer is yes, certainly, for a raft of reasons connected to my personal usage scenario -- hardly a mainstream one -- to the point that I have no motivation to use Windows or Mac.)
As for "year of Linux on the desktop" - that's so 00s. And in any case is not going to happen until such time as mainstream desktop hardware routinely ships with Linux preinstalled (so maybe never, but who knows?) - for the simple reason that the vast majority of non-tech users are never, ever going to even consider installing an alternative OS, even if they were aware that that option were available to them (why would they, if what they're given is familiar and, as far as they are concerned, works?) Proprietary and legacy-bound lock-in in the business sector is another reason, as is the migration to cloud computing, which is more or less agnostic about what's running on your desktop.
More to the point, who cares? Just use what works for you.
Cheers, I'll watch that when I get a chance.
FWIW, I am a mathematician, statistician and research scientist. I currently work in a neuroscience-adjacent area, but my PhD was in (a mathematical aspect of) evolution theory. I'm also something of a pop-sci addict.
> ... we need to agree that intelligence cannot exist without sentience ...
Not sure I can agree on that. It depends on how you are understanding "sentience"; by a very literal definition -- the capacity for sensation -- you'd have to concede that a thermostat is sentient. But I'm sure you mean something closer to the capacity for "feeling" - whatever that means, not to mention how you recognise that capacity in another entity (reacting to stimuli is clearly insufficient - see thermostat). But I do not see any evidence or convincing argument that feeling, self-awareness, etc., etc., are necessary for intelligence. Again, I think that is simply an extrapolation from biology. It may be true (for some values of "intelligence" and "feeling"), but I think this brings the Scotsman back into the room.
> ... - it is this that permits self awareness, consciousness.
And again, you seem to be arguing that self-awareness and consciousness are prerequisites for intelligence. Modulo your working definitions of "intelligence", "self-awareness" and "consciousness", we really don't know that.
Personally, I much prefer to avoid getting hung up on constraining and circular definitions. That is ultimately unilluminating. What difference does it really make whether you call some computational system AI or ML? That system will do what it does regardless. Better to stop counting angels on the head of the pin and get on with the business of studying the phenomenology, of theorising, and of experimentation; - i.e., doing some science and engineering.
I think you may be underestimating the extent to which humans are vulnerable -- have blind spots -- to things they haven't seen before. There is plenty of evidence in the psychology literature for this, and it applies to game-playing as much as anything else.
Of course, though, humans are way, way better generalists than any machine learning so far devised; totally unsurprising, since (a) machine-learning systems to date (e.g., game-playing systems) are explicitly and almost exclusively domain-specific; and (b) because human (and other biological) intelligence has vastly superior processing power, and the benefits of billions of years of evolutionary design plus lifetime learning.
> Pure science is about observation, yes. Are you conflicting yourself? On the one hand you're saying "forget about definitions, just do it!". That's engineering, in which case I agree: smash it out see if it works, rinse repeat. I'm not saying that engineering is random hit or miss, because:
No! I think it was Einstein who said something along the lines of "There is no science without observation, and there is no science without theory". You most certainly need theory - but that theory must be grounded in, and corroborated by observation of the real world. It is the theory which realises the real power of science - theories enable prediction. That is not engineering.
> You appear to be attempting to treat "intelligence" as a discrete component of [an intelligent being]. Humans (for argument's sake!) have intelligence, sentience, consciousness (self-awareness). These are all facilitated by having a physical body that allows interaction with our environment.
Oh, absolutely! I am no Cartesian dualist. My reference to "understanding" was in response to the many, many posters on these forums who appear to claim understanding-whatever-that-means as some sort of deal-breaker for intelligence-whatever-that-means.
I've mostly just been exercising my pet peeve that, when it comes to AI, conflation of intelligence with the human variety is restrictive and self-limiting. I suspect we probably agree on thiat.
The history of science would seem to teach us that it can be futile, if not actually counter-productive to waste time on defining the thing you are trying to understand. In practice, understanding comes from studying the phenomenology, then modelling, theorising, and validating those theories. In other words, science doesn't progress by consideration of what things are, but rather what they do.
Thus, for instance, Volta, Watt, Faraday, Maxwell, ... did not (just) sit about idly contemplating what electricity/magnetism is, so much as experimenting, measuring, modelling, and theorising about how it behaves. Likewise, Darwin and Wallace's breakthrough did not arise through contemplation of some elan vital "spark of life" (as many of their peers did); rather, they meticulously observed the phenomenon itself -- what life "does" -- formulated theories on that basis, and tested the predictions of their theory against reality.
By contrast, those 18th and 19th century natural scientists/philosophers who sat on their bums contemplating the nature of space, time and light came up with what seemed a plausible theory, the "aether". Of course it was wrong, as empirical observation would reveal.
So forget about definitions: any real understanding of intelligence, cognition, sentience and consciousness is far more likely to arise through observation, experimentation, modelling, theorising and validation.
> And the sense of 'self' might just be an illusion that the brain is hardwired to generate. ... We all live in the same human created universe
Or maybe not "the same" universe, since every brain generates it's own perceived reality?
There is certainly a strong trend in consciousness science pushing this idea. See, e.g., https://www.anilseth.com/being-you/
> Not really sure what you're saying here. I'm saying there's no "I" in "AI" (AI is not extant), not that there are not products called "AI" ("AI" is extant).
Apologies, I wasn't at all clear what you were getting at. You said "There is no consensus at any level as to the definition of intelligence ... so I know with certainty that AI is not extant despite the hype.
That came across to me as a non-sequitur: surely if there is no operational (consensual) definition of intelligence then that applies across the board - including to humans?
> We can only say that humans are intelligent, by definition, but we cannot define intelligence itself.
Okay, so correct me if I'm wrong, but you basically seem to be saying that the only intelligence we can identify consensually -- and by implication the only consensually-recognised intelligence which can exist -- is the human variety.
Well, okay - but in that case artificial intelligence can never be, and will never be, not even in principle (unless you are prepared to accept as "artificial" a perfect simulacrum of a human). I argued in response to an earlier comment that I find this highly unsatisfactory, in a No True Scotsmen kind of way. It just seems way, way too restrictive, unambitious and self-limiting. My feeling is that at some point in the future we will see technology that we recognise -- if not consensually, then at least debatably -- as "intelligent"; debatable in the same sense as we debate the intelligence of non-human animals. And it may not be very human-like at all, in the same way that, e.g., octopus intelligence (I, for one, am perfectly happy to recognise it as such) is strikingly alien (it's sensorium is wildly different to the human one, and its brain - or is it brains? - is/are decentralised, partly to individual tentacles!)
> Humans learn very quickly by having developed brains that function, in part, heuristically, not adding complexity.
Heuristics have been used since forever in ML; having said which, I'm not sure to what extent they feature -- at least explicitly -- in the current crop of popular ML designs. Then again, since current ML systems are extremely opaque in their functioning, who's to say they are not implicitly using something comparable to heuristics? To give an example, a game-playing ML algorithm (say for Go) cannot possibly brute-force the combinatorial explosion of future possibilities - therefore, it effectively uses some criteria (either explicitly programmed, or implicit in the algorithm) to prune/truncate its look-ahead; i.e., a heuristic.
> Although, of course, the brain itself is complex, heuristics is simplicity.
Yes, brains are many orders of magnitude more complex than any technology currently available to us - and, of course, have the benefit of several billions of years of evolutionary design, plus lifetime learning in the environment to which we're adapted. I'm not sure I'd describe heuristics, in general as "simplicity" - whatever, they do not come cheap!
> There is no consensus at any level as to the definition of intelligence...
Fully agreed.
> ... so I know with certainty that AI is not extant despite the hype.
Wait: by the same logic(?) doesn't that also mean that human (or other animal) intelligence is not extant either (despite the hype)?
Resistance is futile; in practice, "AI" now means "machine learning".
<rant> My personal problem with the term is that nobody can seem to agree what artificial intelligence should look like - aside from a large contingent to whom it seems effectively to mean "just like human intelligence", which in my opinion is counter-productively restrictive. The most common critique of AI/ML is that it doesn't "understand" what it's doing. I think that's is both vague (what does it mean to "understand" something?) and actually bogus: as a human intelligence, I don't "understand" what I'm doing half (most of?) the time. Do you understand what you're doing when, e.g., you pick out a familiar face in a crowd? </rant>
> I don't mine crypto so I will be doing my bit by driving my large engined car more aggressively.
Ah well, there're many ways to destroy our way of life. If the large-engine'd car thing doesn't work out, you could take a leaf out of our neighbour's book, and burn old sofas and mattresses in your back garden (it's not even as if they're hippies, so you're okay there).
Funnily enough, though I hardly think about, and am incapable of maintaining my car's engine/transmission, I do know a bit about its function, e.g., road handling, fuel efficiency, emission levels, etc. And I'm actually quite interested in hearing about developments in engine/transmission technology - e.g., hybrids, battery technologies, etc. I'm sure many car owners are similar. Likewise, I imagine that many computer users -- especially those frequenting a tech site like El Reg --- have an interest in the technologies under the hood.
> Before trying to counter this argument, how are you trying to go that? By using a web browser?
Well, yes. By using a web browser that relies on the kernel to function.
When I drive my car, I employ a sophisticated userland system (which includes a steering-wheel, gears and pedals) that interfaces to the engine and transmission systems. (I never have anything to do with the transmission/engine---which occasionally screw up---as I lack the expertise.)
> It's an interesting thought experiment, but despite havng his name on the sign it's clear Mr. Hilbert never worked a day at the front desk.
No problem; the check-in clerk is super-efficient. They can always check a new guest in in half the time they took to check in the previous guest.
Infinitely many mathematicians walk into a bar. The first says, "I'll have a beer." The second says, "I'll have half a beer." The third says, "I'll have a quarter of a beer." And so on. The barman pulls out just two beers. The mathematicians are all like, "That's all you're giving us? How drunk do you expect us to get on that?" The bartender says, "Come on guys. Know your limits."
Infinitely many mathematicians walk into a bar. The first says, "I'll have a beer." The second says, "I'll have half a beer." The third says, "I'll have a third of a beer." And so on. The bartender shouts, "Get the hell out of here, are you trying to ruin me?"
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