The Singularity - Official Thread

Talk about scientific and technological developments in the future
firestar464
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Re: The Singularity - Official Thread

Post by firestar464 »

Well we don't live in a Y2K trap as many people seem to think.
Tadasuke
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Re: The Singularity - Official Thread

Post by Tadasuke »

I'm trying to not be disappointed again and again, but each day manages to disappoint nonetheless.

It would be nice if AI finally had some serious positive impacts on lives, instead of just being hype and investment strategy. Similarly to cryptocurrencies or AR/MR/VR. Grifters rejoice as usual.
Global economy is likely going to double every 17 years, AI computing capability every 3 years, battery capacity every 8 years, solar energy every 3 years and the total number of robots every 2.5 years.
firestar464
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Re: The Singularity - Official Thread

Post by firestar464 »

How would you define "serious positive impacts on lives?" It is worth noting that "THE MOMENT" is not going to happen immediately, especially when it comes to complex fields like health. Notaby people on this forum have asked you time and time again about your intended use case, yet for some cryptic reason you refuse to respond.
Tadasuke
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Re: The Singularity - Official Thread

Post by Tadasuke »

Look at how it usually goes:

In an example, Intel talks, talks and shows a slide for 1000x general performance growth between 2020 and 2025 (which they say is necessary for VR, AR, Edge AI, robotics, sensors, medicine and solving climate change) ... then 4 years goes by and performance improves only by 2 - 2.5x, with maybe additional 15-20% in 2025. That's surely exponential growth, but nothing resembling The Singularity being near. I'm trying to write this post using voice recognition, and literally ~65% is transcribed wrongly, despite humans being to able to understand me much better. And I have no speech impediment. My new "Smart" TV is even worse, with ~85% transcribed wrongly despite frequent and annoying updates.

Image

And for me, The Singularity would be exponential improvement in everything, not only in some very narrow areas.
Global economy is likely going to double every 17 years, AI computing capability every 3 years, battery capacity every 8 years, solar energy every 3 years and the total number of robots every 2.5 years.
Vakanai
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Re: The Singularity - Official Thread

Post by Vakanai »

Tadasuke wrote: Thu Oct 17, 2024 6:18 am Look at how it usually goes:

In an example, Intel talks, talks and shows a slide for 1000x general performance growth between 2020 and 2025 (which they say is necessary for VR, AR, Edge AI, robotics, sensors, medicine and solving climate change) ... then 4 years goes by and performance improves only by 2 - 2.5x, with maybe additional 15-20% in 2025. That's surely exponential growth, but nothing resembling The Singularity being near. I'm trying to write this post using voice recognition, and literally ~65% is transcribed wrongly, despite humans being to able to understand me much better. And I have no speech impediment. My new "Smart" TV is even worse, with ~85% transcribed wrongly despite frequent and annoying updates.

Image

And for me, The Singularity would be exponential improvement in everything, not only in some very narrow areas.
A few things...
1. You're following company presentations like Intel instead of scientists and engineers. Ignore the capitalists who usually don't understand what they're talking about and focus on what the actual people doing the work in the field are saying.
2. I've been thinking about it and it seems you're hyper focused on GPU/CPU performance while the speed and acceleration of AI seems to go unnoticed by you. I know that performance growth is important, but I really feel you're putting too much importance on that and not considering all the other factors at play here.
3. You seem to think we need to notice these huge performance increases in these specific field first for it to be "The Singularity" when generally the idea is that AI advances to the point it starts making technology and change so fast we can't predict it. Nowhere in the definition of the Singularity does it mention 1000x general performance growth is needed to reach an AI/AGI that can trigger a Singularity.
Tadasuke
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Re: The Singularity - Official Thread

Post by Tadasuke »

I've had this graph:

Image

on my wall between 2009 and 2018.

I concluded in 2018 that:
- new computing paradigm seems to always be "5 years away"
- flops are not really a great measure of performance
- real performance/price/watt is probably going to double every ~4 years on average
- AI is always overhyped and is usually marketed as better than it really is
- humans are stupid and what they usually do is stupid as well
- I need to be more cautious and less naive in the future
Global economy is likely going to double every 17 years, AI computing capability every 3 years, battery capacity every 8 years, solar energy every 3 years and the total number of robots every 2.5 years.
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Ozzie guy
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Re: The Singularity - Official Thread

Post by Ozzie guy »

(video 7-8 months old) China has actively been racing towards AGI. If US companies slow down due to drama we may be living in a world where China won the AI race.
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Re: The Singularity - Official Thread

Post by raklian »

Ozzie guy wrote: Sat Oct 26, 2024 8:36 am (video 7-8 months old) China has actively been racing towards AGI. If US companies slow down due to drama we may be living in a world where China won the AI race.
I doubt it's going to be that straightforward.
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Re: The Singularity - Official Thread

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Image
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raklian
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Re: The Singularity - Official Thread

Post by raklian »

wjfox wrote: Mon Dec 09, 2024 9:26 pm Image
There is a way to assure our survival in both scenarios - merge with em! :lol:
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erowind
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Re: The Singularity - Official Thread

Post by erowind »

There's a new section on the Chinese Room Argument's webpage at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. For AI believers it's probably the most optimistic entry yet, even though AI's still very clearly are not intelligent.

It's section 4.6 Advances in Artificial Intelligence if anyone's curious.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/#AdvAI

An excerpt from the entry with the important bits:
There is no doubt that AI agents now have a way with words, and can present useful information. If those models can diagnose disease better than diagnosticians, write essays better than essayists, argue law better than lawyers, and answer questions better than teachers, then it appears to be sad sour grapes to say “but they don’t understand anything”. So has AI progress refuted Searle? Asked in 2024 “Do you understand English words”, ChatGPT itself responds “Yes, I understand English words and can process and respond to them. If you have any questions or need help with something specific, just let me know!” It is loquacious if asked what a hamburger is, Searle’s example of something a natural language program cannot understand. It readily explains the difference between a hamburger and the word “hamburger”. But when pressed, and asked HOW it understands English, ChatGPT responds “I understand English semantics through a combination of patterns and context.” When asked directly, “John Searle argues you cannot get semantics from syntax – is he correct?” the response is “Searle’s argument highlights a crucial limitation: syntax alone is insufficient for fully capturing semantics. While syntactic rules provide a framework for constructing sentences, understanding meaning involves additional layers of context, interpretation, and often real-world knowledge.” And to “Doesn’t Searle’s argument apply to ChatGPT?” we get “Yes, John Searle’s argument does apply to systems like ChatGPT. … ChatGPT uses patterns and rules from the vast amounts of text it has been trained on to generate responses. It operates based on statistical correlations between words and phrases, mimicking syntactic structures. … ChatGPT doesn’t truly understand meaning in the human sense. It generates text that appears to be meaningful based on the patterns it has learned, but it lacks genuine comprehension of the content or context beyond what it has been trained to predict.”

So, paradoxically, the system appears to understand that it doesn’t understand. However it fails to notice that these claims are inconsistent with its output made just minutes before. So we are not there yet. A system that answers questions with carefully argued denials that it can understand anything is not going to pass the Turing Test. However this may get fixed in the future, such that LLM systems will avoid what has been called “locutionary suicide” (e.g. “Here’s the answer to your question, but I don’t understand your question”). The consequence may be that if systems that use language just as proficiently as humans in all contexts are argued by a thought experiment to not really understand, then we can’t test for “real” understanding, and it adds nothing to the purposes for which we use language. “Really” understanding becomes epiphenomenal: undetectable, causally inert, and irrelevant.
weatheriscool
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Re: The Singularity - Official Thread

Post by weatheriscool »

If there's a singularity it won't be from the human mind in its current state but a.i. Humans outside of getting over their tribalism and focusing on becoming a species that care about science, tech and education above all else isn't going to come close.

It is possible that a.i tied with android bodies could have a singularity and one day view as the bugs that we're. I doubt in this current environment that the general public would support merging with such or any kind of eugentics or biological fusing with the a.i to advance our species into that super species. If we did then yes, I think an ever increasing advancement curve could be possible. Right now, it is possible that humanity in some parts starts deadvancing as culture and value of education in some of the western nations become less important and they vote for more of a traditional belief system. I think the United states peaked on the curve in the 40's-60's outside of computers, a.i and customer electronics.

Of course, I suspect that a.i plus nations like India and some parts of asia will push back against this deadvancement curve.
firestar464
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Re: The Singularity - Official Thread

Post by firestar464 »

I think the United states peaked on the curve in the 40's-60's outside of computers, a.i and customer electronics.
Jim Crow:

Also no shit, you need AI that gets better exponentially for a singularity to happen.
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Re: The Singularity - Official Thread

Post by wjfox »

In this recent podcast, Sam Altman says he now thinks a fast AI takeoff is more likely than he did a couple of years ago, happening within a small number of years rather than a decade:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s ... 0682967449
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raklian
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Re: The Singularity - Official Thread

Post by raklian »

wjfox wrote: Tue Jan 14, 2025 2:08 pm In this recent podcast, Sam Altman says he now thinks a fast AI takeoff is more likely than he did a couple of years ago, happening within a small number of years rather than a decade:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s ... 0682967449
It will be interesting to witness. A fast AI takeoff will immediately be followed by an exponentially faster takeoff - almost everything we hold to be self-evident truths will be undone. We're in uncharted territory.
To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
Vakanai
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Re: The Singularity - Official Thread

Post by Vakanai »

raklian wrote: Thu Jan 23, 2025 2:20 pm
wjfox wrote: Tue Jan 14, 2025 2:08 pm In this recent podcast, Sam Altman says he now thinks a fast AI takeoff is more likely than he did a couple of years ago, happening within a small number of years rather than a decade:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s ... 0682967449
It will be interesting to witness. A fast AI takeoff will immediately be followed by an exponentially faster takeoff - almost everything we hold to be self-evident truths will be undone. We're in uncharted territory.
Well, not everything. Laws of physics will remain untouched unless we've been wrong all along, human nature will remain...whatever view you hold on it (mine is that humanity is ruled by the moronic...), and there will remain some limits on technology just based on physical and practical limitations - we'll probably not see warp drives or wormholes any time soon.

But a lot will change.
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raklian
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Re: The Singularity - Official Thread

Post by raklian »

Vakanai wrote: Thu Jan 23, 2025 3:45 pm
raklian wrote: Thu Jan 23, 2025 2:20 pm
wjfox wrote: Tue Jan 14, 2025 2:08 pm In this recent podcast, Sam Altman says he now thinks a fast AI takeoff is more likely than he did a couple of years ago, happening within a small number of years rather than a decade:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s ... 0682967449
It will be interesting to witness. A fast AI takeoff will immediately be followed by an exponentially faster takeoff - almost everything we hold to be self-evident truths will be undone. We're in uncharted territory.
Well, not everything. Laws of physics will remain untouched unless we've been wrong all along, human nature will remain...whatever view you hold on it (mine is that humanity is ruled by the moronic...), and there will remain some limits on technology just based on physical and practical limitations - we'll probably not see warp drives or wormholes any time soon.

But a lot will change.
Who is to say the primary force of innovation in the future will always be in human hands? If we cannot keep up with the pace of breakthroughs but they are still applied by AI, it is effectively out of our hands. In this respect, all this talk about human nature being the limiting factor may not be as relevant we think it does.
To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
Vakanai
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Re: The Singularity - Official Thread

Post by Vakanai »

raklian wrote: Thu Jan 23, 2025 4:07 pm
Vakanai wrote: Thu Jan 23, 2025 3:45 pm
raklian wrote: Thu Jan 23, 2025 2:20 pm

It will be interesting to witness. A fast AI takeoff will immediately be followed by an exponentially faster takeoff - almost everything we hold to be self-evident truths will be undone. We're in uncharted territory.
Well, not everything. Laws of physics will remain untouched unless we've been wrong all along, human nature will remain...whatever view you hold on it (mine is that humanity is ruled by the moronic...), and there will remain some limits on technology just based on physical and practical limitations - we'll probably not see warp drives or wormholes any time soon.

But a lot will change.
Who is to say the primary force of innovation in the future will always be in human hands? If we cannot keep up with the pace of breakthroughs but they are still applied by AI, it is effectively out of our hands. In this respect, all this talk about human nature being the limiting factor may not be as relevant we think it does.
Where did I say any such thing? I said that some things we hold to be self evident truths will remain such - human nature being one of them. I wasn't talking about human nature being a limiting factor, I was talking about the fact that humans are still going to act like they always do. I then went on to also mention that technology may still run against physical and practical limitations. I think you just got confused and combined the two separate points into one point?
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Ozzie guy
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Re: The Singularity - Official Thread

Post by Ozzie guy »

Personally I think AI is quite pathetic right now.
I think what we have seen is a snowball reaching critical mass but not for AI rather for rich and powerful people taking AI seriously. This has kind of created an illusion that we are closer to the singularity.tm than reality.

Big breakthroughs keep getting made but the breakthroughs effectively change nothing in regards to AIs impact on the world which I think shows how bad AI still is.
There are no rumors that any kind of AGI is being worked on and of course some very basic poor performing AGI is far off a human.

We are still in the fog of having no idea when ASI will change the world.

Really what has changed is the rate of AI improvement (more releases and updates etc) and the powerful starting to take it seriously. This is a big deal compared to 5-10 years ago when no one took it seriously and you might get one chunk of progress like alpha go once every 2 or so years.
firestar464
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Re: The Singularity - Official Thread

Post by firestar464 »

They def working on AGI; it's just a question on how far they are from getting there
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