@megmac @cwebber right. Taking advantage of the controversy.

@brunogirin @cwebber I mean, almost by definition!

@cwebber I mean, maybe the guy was part of a marketing maneuver, but that seems kind of extreme on his part. Or maybe the companies capitalized on the concerns he raised.

@cwebber so, I tend to agree with this pov.

But the current AI safety conversation started when an ex-Anthropic researcher said he was scared, which doesn't fit the corporate astroturfing narrative.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-researcher-quits-over-out-of-control-ai-fears-707b7628

@robpike Have you programmed with them before? Or are you concerned that once you tried them, you wouldn't be able to stop?

@sandriver thanks for this!

@jpaskaruk why's that?

@davep it's perfectly ok with me if this back of the envelope calculation isn't convincing to you. I'm sharing my reasoning for coming to the answer I would give to this question, not trying to convince you.

@davep I don't know if I can provide a citation that params play the same role in LLMs that synapses play in biological brains. I only used it by very bare analogy; they are the "connections" between parts of the network. And from the little I know, I think they're much less complex than biological synapses.

@davep I'm sorry I had an angry response to this earlier. I shouldn't have flown off the handle. I read your post as much more confrontational than it is on second reading.

@ricci thanks for the thoughtful reply!

Ultimately, I think it kind of doesn't matter. If machine intelligence can communicate and behave as if it "really" understands its percepts, I don't know if I care whether it truly is thinking or not.

Other humans at least have the same kinds of bodies as I do, so by the principle of mediocrity (I'm probably not an exception), if I have a mind other humans probably do too.

We can't assume that with machine intelligence. It is by definition very different from me. Everything I know about AI suggests that what's going on inside the machine is very different from what goes on inside me.

This is the Problem of Other Minds, but even worse that with other humans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_other_minds

Oh, one other thing that has come up is whether artificial intelligence is "true" intelligence; can it "really" think.

@draken thanks, that's a really interesting hypothesis.

@bignose why are you confident in that? LLMs are great at a lot of things that computers haven't done well previously.

@rxp OK. I find the idea that we can't have a conversation without rigorous definitions for every term grating. We can talk about vague topics; one of the benefits of intelligence.

@murph because we're getting dumber?

All that said, my gut is still pretty good with that 2040 date.