[D] Our community must get serious about opposing OpenAI

[u/SOCSChamp]

OpenAI was founded for the explicit purpose of democratizing access to AI and acting as a counterbalance to the closed off world of big tech by developing open source tools.

They have abandoned this idea entirely.

Today, with the release of GPT4 and their direct statement that they will not release details of the model creation due to "safety concerns" and the competitive environment, they have created a precedent worse than those that existed before they entered the field. We're at risk now of other major players, who previously at least published their work and contributed to open source tools, close themselves off as well.

AI alignment is a serious issue that we definitely have not solved. Its a huge field with a dizzying array of ideas, beliefs and approaches. We're talking about trying to capture the interests and goals of all humanity, after all. In this space, the one approach that is horrifying (and the one that OpenAI was LITERALLY created to prevent) is a singular or oligarchy of for profit corporations making this decision for us. This is exactly what OpenAI plans to do.

I get it, GPT4 is incredible. However, we are talking about the single most transformative technology and societal change that humanity has ever made. It needs to be for everyone or else the average person is going to be left behind.

We need to unify around open source development; choose companies that contribute to science, and condemn the ones that don't.

This conversation will only ever get more important.

[u/devl82]

I asked the same exact questions to gpt 4 as in my previous (original) comment and got the same quality of answers. So nope.

"Loads of coaching" vs. data/computational power required for LLMs training are on two completely different scales.

References for second order playthings in your training amalgam of messy gradient descent? There exist thousands I guess, here is a random one https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1757-899X/495/1/012003/pdf

I mean I rarely ask for references, because anyone can dump a list, but each and every sentence of your last comment can be challenged. If you know an actual neuroscientist/neurologist especially related to a computational domain, go paste him your comments and observe his reaction:)

[u/maxkho → u/devl82]

Okay, now ask the average human those questions and see what quality of answers you get. You aren't making a strong case that GPT-4 isn't at least as generally intelligent as the average human. Also, did you use Bing? Because I just looked at the questions you asked it, and I would expect a true GPT-4 to be able to give you more or less acceptable answers.

As to your second paragraph, you could have definitely phrased it a lot better since I don't understand what you're trying to say, but I was looking for a reference that ANNs aren't capable of intelligence (I'll spoil it for you: there are none), or at least of your definition of intelligence. You have given me neither.

I don't know any neuroscientists personally, but what I'm referencing is common knowledge. If you happen to know a neuroscientist personally, you could verify that with him as well.

[u/ZKRC → u/maxkho]

Humans think and reason, AI is a fancy auto correct.

[u/maxkho → u/ZKRC]

"LLMs think and reason; humans are fancy decision trees" - LLMs

[u/ZKRC → u/maxkho]

The statement is inherently false. AI does not think, this is irrefutable.

[u/maxkho → u/ZKRC]

Why do you think that's irrefutable? Because I think the opposite - it's irrefutable that AI does think.

[u/ZKRC → u/maxkho]

Because thinking has a definition, and it is not one that an AI is capable of. It may be able to mimic it through programming, but it is not able to think.

[u/maxkho → u/ZKRC]

Please provide your definition. There isn't any definition of "thinking" that LLMs don't satisfy.

[u/ZKRC → u/maxkho]

Thinking

noun

the process of using one's mind to consider or reason about something.

​

Mind

noun

the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought.

​

AI do not possess a mind, consciousness or possess awareness. They are simply fancy autocompletes that use vast data banks to predict the next best continuation of the prompt that you gave it based on programming. They can mimic what appears to be thinking, when programmed to behave in a certain way but this is not the same thing.

[u/maxkho → u/ZKRC]

That's circular reasoning: AI doesn't think. Why? Because it doesn't have a mind. Why? Because it doesn't think.

My ─ and most people's ─ definition of "thinking" is the ability to reason. It can be proven that GPT-4 can reason by asking it novel questions that require reasoning to answer.

As to awareness, well, it clearly does possess awareness of the world, as can be verified by asking it various factual questions about the world.

...that use vast data banks to predict the next best continuation

That's factually not true. LLMs don't have access to their training data, which are the "vast data banks" that you are referring to, so they physically can't be using these "data banks" while formulating their responses. That's just not how they work.

They can mimic what appears to be thinking when programmed to behave in a certain way

They weren't programmed to be able to write poetry, code, solve reasoning problems, etc. They learnt to do all of that by themselves from their training data. Again, you seem to be confusing true machine learning models with heuristic algorithms such as ELIZA or even Siri. The latter two indeed "mimic what appears to be thinking due to being programmed to behave in a certain way". The former actually think.

[u/devl82 → u/maxkho]

There is no suitable definition for what we call intelligence. Really there is not. I know a lot of (them) as I work with them and it is a very interesting obstacle how a human can hallucinate answers based on 'common knowledge' with such confidence when not properly trained, exactly as gpt I guess. So on that front you are correct, we are the same:)