• @[email protected]
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    18120 days ago

    AGI is not in reach. We need to stop this incessant parroting from tech companies. LLMs are stochastic parrots. They guess the next word. There’s no thought or reasoning. They don’t understand inputs. They mimic human speech. They’re not presenting anything meaningful.

    • @[email protected]
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      5120 days ago

      I feel like I have found a lone voice of sanity in a jungle of brainless fanpeople sucking up the snake oil and pretending LLMs are AI. A simple control loop is closer to AI than a stochastic parrot, as you correctly put it.

      • @[email protected]
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        2520 days ago

        There are at least three of us.

        I am worried what happens when the bubble finally pops because shit always rolls downhill and most of us are at the bottom of the hill.

        • @[email protected]
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          1720 days ago

          Not sure if we need that particular bubble to pop for us to be drowned in a sea of shit, looking at the state of the world right now :( But silicon valley seems to be at the core of this clusterfuck, as if all the villains form there or flock there…

      • @[email protected]
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        -520 days ago

        pretending LLMs are AI

        LLMs are AI. There’s a common misconception about what ‘AI’ actually means. Many people equate AI with the advanced, human-like intelligence depicted in sci-fi - like HAL 9000, JARVIS, Ava, Mother, Samantha, Skynet, and GERTY. These systems represent a type of AI called AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), designed to perform a wide range of tasks and demonstrate a form of general intelligence similar to humans.

        However, AI itself doesn’t imply general intelligence. Even something as simple as a chess-playing robot qualifies as AI. Although it’s a narrow AI, excelling in just one task, it still fits within the AI category. So, AI is a very broad term that covers everything from highly specialized systems to the type of advanced, adaptable intelligence that we often imagine. Think of it like the term ‘plants,’ which includes everything from grass to towering redwoods - each different, but all fitting within the same category.

        • @[email protected]
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          120 days ago

          Here we go… Fanperson explaining the world to the dumb lost sheep. Thank you so much for stepping down from your high horse to try and educate a simple person. /s

          • @[email protected]
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            20 days ago

            How’s insulting the people respectfully disagreeing with you working out so far? That ad-hominem was completely uncalled for.

            • @[email protected]
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              220 days ago

              “Fanperson” is an insult now? Cry me a river, snowflake. Also, you weren’t disagreeing, you were explaining something to someone perceived less knowledgeable than you, while demonstrating you have no grasp of the core difference between stochastics and AI.

    • @[email protected]
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      2620 days ago

      That undersells them slightly.

      LLMs are powerful tools for generating text that looks like something. Need something rephrased in a different style? They’re good at that. Need something summarized? They can do that, too. Need a question answered? No can do.

      LLMs can’t generate answers to questions. They can only generate text that looks like answers to questions. Often enough that answer is even correct, though usually suboptimal. But they’ll also happily generate complete bullshit answers and to them there’s no difference to a real answer.

      They’re text transformers marketed as general problem solvers because a) the market for text transformers isn’t that big and b) general problem solvers is what AI researchers are always trying to create. They have their use cases but certainly not ones worth the kind of spending they get.

    • @[email protected]
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      20 days ago

      My favourite way to liken LLMs to something else is to autocorrect, it just guesses, and it gets stuff wrong, and it is constantly being retrained to recognise your preferences, such as it starting to not correct fuck to duck for instance.

      And it’s funny and sad how some people think these LLMs are their friends, like no, it’s a collosally sized autocorrect system that you cannot comprehend, it has no consciousness, it lacks any thought, it just predicts from a prompt using numerical weights and a neural network.

    • @[email protected]
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      -720 days ago

      Why is AGI not in reach? What insight do you have on the matter than you can so confidently make an absolute statement like that?

    • @[email protected]
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      8821 days ago

      Or, worse, they might actually have to hire enough people to actually do the job. Why hire 100 people with good work life balance, when you can hire 60 people that aren’t allowed to have lives or families.

      • Sundray
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        1621 days ago

        60 people workers that aren’t allowed to have lives or families

        I mean, that’s what the AI will be for…

        • @[email protected]
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          921 days ago

          Yeah, suddenly they’ll go from 60 hour work weeks to 0 if the AI proponents are to be believed (which you shouldn’t).

          • Sundray
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            1221 days ago

            For real – ultimately it’s the dream of every billionaire to have a servile AI at their beck and call, while the rest of us can eat rocks and roam the wasteland fighting over gasoline.

        • @[email protected]
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          421 days ago

          Exactly that’s where it should be doubled down… if their own estimates are correct… it’s only a 6 month expense. If they really believe they are about to open the key to basically eliminating the cost of millions of workers indefinately, wouldn’t throwing thousands of workers to accomplish it faster, lead to cost savings.

          Say if I wanted a machine that could make eggs indefinately forever… but to make it I had to put 100 eggs into it. why would I put one egg in a day for 8 months, instead of buying 100 eggs today.

  • @[email protected]
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    12721 days ago

    “Work 50% longer weeks so you can make something that’ll both make me richer AND cost you your jobs!” is not the motivational speech he thinks it is.

    • @[email protected]
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      3220 days ago

      I don’t even know what AGI is, and I read the headline as “rich disconnected from reality asshole”.

      Turns out I was right.

    • @[email protected]
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      520 days ago

      Wait, are these AI boosters bragging about how close they are to building God the torture that Roko’s Basilisk is inflicting on us all?

      • enkers
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        420 days ago

        To be fair, you’re only going to be tortured if you don’t help out like good old Sergey here.

  • 3DMVR
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    6621 days ago

    If it can be reached in 60 hour work weeks it can be reached in 40, but nah mfs should rush to get themselves replaced

    • @[email protected]
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      2320 days ago

      If it can be reached in 60 hour work weeks, then it can be reached in 40 hour work weeks be hiring a second person.

      If management isn’t willing to put the effort in of hiring the required staff, why would I want to work the job of 2 people for 1 persons pay?

      • @[email protected]
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        920 days ago

        IT project management doesn’t work that way, but it doesn’t matter much. 60 hour work weeks wouldn’t help, either.

  • @[email protected]
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    6420 days ago

    If it’s within reach of a 60 hour week then it’s within reach of a 30 hour week.

    This LLM copycat bullshit is never going to be it though. It’s not thinking, it’s looking up the answers at the back of the book.

    • @[email protected]
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      20 days ago

      Is there any actual evidence that they are getting closer to AGI? It seems ridiculous to think that this LLM parrot bullshit is getting there, when the thing can’t even learn the rules of a basic sum.

    • @[email protected]
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      620 days ago

      Yup, hire 20-30% more people and have them work 30 hours. That’s fewer total hours worked, but they’re higher quality hours, so you should get more from less.

  • @[email protected]
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    6220 days ago

    lol no way AGI is within reach. He is just trying to hype investors. Bet he has a scheduled stock sale soon.

  • Chozo
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    6020 days ago

    “Man who works 10 hours per year tells underlings to work 60 hours per week.”

  • Sibbo
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    5621 days ago

    This is almost too depressing to be funny.

  • @[email protected]
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    5320 days ago

    Thought this was an Onion article!

    Hey plebs! I demand you work 50% more to develop AGI so that I can replace you with robots and fire all of you and make myself a double plus plutocrat! Also, I want to buy an island, small city, Bunker, Spaceship, And/Or something.

  • billwashere
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    5019 days ago

    I’m really getting sick and tired of these rich fuckers saying shit like this.

    1. we are no where close to AGI given this current technology.

    2. working 50% longer is not going to make a bit of difference for AGI

    3. and even if it would matter, hire 50% more people

    The only thing this is going to accomplish is likely make him wealthier. So fuck him.

    • @[email protected]
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      19 days ago

      Increasing working hours decreases actual labor done per hour. A person working 40 hours per week will more often than not achieve more than someone working 70.


      “in Britain during the First World War, there had been a munitions factory that made people work seven days a week. When they cut back to six days, they found, the factory produced more overall.”

      “In 1920s Britain, W. G. Kellogg—the manufacturer of cereals—cut his staff from an eight-hour day to a six-hour day, and workplace accidents (a good measure of attention) fell by 41 percent. In 2019 in Japan, Microsoft moved to a four-day week, and they reported a 40 percent improvement in productivity. In Gothenberg in Sweden around the same time, a care home for elderly people went from an eight-hour day to a six-hour day with no loss of pay, and as a result, their workers slept more, experienced less stress, and took less time off sick. In the same city, Toyota cut two hours per day off the workweek, and it turned out their mechanics produced 114 percent of what they had before, and profits went up by 25 percent. All this suggests that when people work less, their focus significantly improves. Andrew told me we have to take on the logic that more work is always better work. “There’s a time for work, and there’s a time for not having work,” he said, but today, for most people, “the problem is that we don’t have time. Time, and reflection, and a bit of rest to help us make better decisions. So, just by creating that opportunity, the quality of what I do, of what the staff does, improves.””

      • Hari, J. (2022). Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention–and How to Think Deeply Again. Crown.

      In 1920s Britain, W. G. Kellogg: A. Coote et al., The Case for a Four Day Week (London: Polity, 2021), 6.

      In 2019 in Japan, Microsoft moved to a four-day week: K. Paul, “Microsoft Japan Tested a Four-Day Work Week and Productivity Jumped by 40%,” Guardian, November 4, 2019; and Coote et al., Case for a Four Day Week, 89.

      In Gothenberg in Sweden around the same time: Coote et al., Case for a Four Day Week, 68–71.

      In the same city, Toyota cut two hours per: day: Ibid., 17–18.


      The real point of increasing working hours is to make your job consume your life.

    • JackFrostNCola
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      19 days ago

      Or option 4) stay as you are and you will just acheive it in due time rather than in a 50% shorter timeframe?
      Edit: 25% shorter? I dont know, maths isnt my strong suit and im drunk.

      • billwashere
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        218 days ago

        They are very impressive to where we were 20 years ago, hell even 5 years ago. The first time I played with ChatGPT I was absolutely floored. But after playing with a lot of them, even training a few RAGs (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), we aren’t really that close and in my opinion this is not a useful path towards a true AGI. Don’t get me wrong, this tool is extremely useful and to most people, they’d likely pass a basic Turing Test. But LLMs are sophisticated pattern recognition systems trained on vast amounts of text data that predict the most likely next word or token in a sequence. That’s really all they do. They are really good at predicting the next word. While they demonstrate impressive language capabilities, they lack several fundamental components necessary for an AGI: -no true understanding -they can’t really engage in the real world. -they have no real ability to learn real-time. -they don’t really have the ability to take in more then one type of info at a time.

        I mean the simplest way in my opinion to explain the difference is you will never have an LLM just come up with something on its own. It’s always just a response to a prompt.

    • @[email protected]
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      2820 days ago

      More like 10-20% more weeks. It turns out people get less productive the more hours they work.

    • @[email protected]
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      720 days ago

      I mean, we could get a rogue agi take over the world. It might not even be worse lmao

    • @[email protected]
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      20 days ago

      Who wants AGI other than war pigs and billionaires?

      Every single person suffering from a chronic / terminal illnes for example. If a problem can be solved, then AGI can solve it.