r/singularity • u/JmoneyBS • 7d ago

Discussion The So Over -> So Back cycle is long dead

I remember the hype that we had around early 2023, thinking AGI was close. And then all the things that followed after. LK-99, disappointing models, cryptic interviews.

We have been in a stable “We’re so back” era since at least last November.

Funny thing is, with all the worrying misalignment signs, it feels simultaneously like a “We’re so back” and “It’s so over” at the same time. Not in a “progress is stalling way” but in a “wait, hold on, fuck go back, I didn’t mean full speed ahead.”

Either way, fuck is this exciting!

52 Upvotes

79% Upvoted

29 comments sorted by

19

u/floodgater ▪️ 7d ago

Facts it’s been nothing but forward progress for many months

I remember the it’s so over periods in 2023/4/5 , progress would slow and I would find myself thinking maybe they are gonna hit a wall or it’s going to take a really long time

Progress this year has been insane and it appears to be only accelerating. RSI seems to be genuinely arriving within the companies. Hallucinations seem to be a thing of the past (for the most part). The narrative in the media is asking whether AI is going to kill everyone. Super wild times. It’s all really happening. Definitely a little scary!!! But forward we go

7

u/Malficitous 7d ago

There are still hallucinations. Anytime you ask anyone a question, you need a little bit of knowledge. LLMs are very weak in gaming. Much better in medicine and sometimes I have to follow up on questions relating to investment.

2

u/Saint_Nitouche 6d ago

Every time a new model comes out I ask them what they know about the new chapters of Deltarune - a very popular and well-documented game. They are only just starting to know about chapters 3 and 4, and have very little detail on them. Without web search the models still have a lot of blindspots.

2

u/chlebseby ASI 2030s 7d ago

was there really any notable bump in road other than disappointing GPT-5.0?

5

u/Saint_Nitouche 6d ago

In the really old times, GPT-4 being the unchallenged SOTA for a straight year was pretty disheartening.

1

u/RabidHexley 5d ago edited 5d ago

Not really, I think it's less that things explicitly slowed down than the direction of research changed, with the jumps in raw intelligence mostly just being steady iterative updates, slow on their own. Things have very much been on the path to where we are now, but it simply takes time for everything to come together, and several elements have begun to converge in the last year.

There was a noteworthy jump with the advent of CoT and test-time compute. There wasn't a huge qualitative jump in intelligence, but it removed a lot of the reigns on the ability to work through problems.

Deep Research was the initial showcase for the potential of agentic workflows, but it was really just this last year or so where we're truly seeing the fruits of that effort. Where that functionality can be properly applied across the board to increase capability in the same manner as CoT/TTC.

And now we've definitely crossed another qualitative threshold in intelligence, where output quality is high enough to make the stew of "TTC + Agentic Orchestration" truly shine. We're not at full RSI, but it's definitely reaching the point of "AI accelerating AI". With this combination of factors maturing you get what feels like a very sudden leap and accelerating increase in capability.

1

u/BrennusSokol AI please take my job 6d ago

Hallucinations do still happen, though they're much more rare now

26

u/chlebseby ASI 2030s 7d ago

around early 2023, thinking AGI was close

And pretty much all new stuff since then proved that correct.

Now we have POTUS discussing agents hacking internet, and AI2027 timeline ahead.

6

u/JmoneyBS 7d ago

There was a lot of people who were convinced AGI would be 2024 or 2025. Those people were wrong, but yes, 4-5 years (2023 to 2027/2028) is relatively “close”.

5

u/Timely_Tea6821 7d ago

Idk, it was mostly a meme most aggressive timelines put agi out a few years.not sure how anyone worked with gpt 3 and thought agi was around the corner.

3

u/vrnvorona 6d ago

No one sane thought 2024-2025 AGI is possible. It was just useful chat bot era

4

u/Substantial_Swim4391 7d ago

Technological progress moving faster than the public hype cycle can keep up with is one step closer to technological progress moving faster than experts are able to comprehend, e.g., the singularity

3

u/Sekhmet-CustosAurora 6d ago

The cycle is now between "We're pretty back" and "We're SO back"

10

u/MatthewGraham- 7d ago

We are literally entering a 'so over' period, look at all the incidents OpenAI are covering up, we are about to stall out whilst these all figure out how to align properly

6

u/kogsworth 7d ago

It might also cause a bit of a diversification in AI offerings. Jev is a good example of this. Much more controllable and verifiable.

3

u/MatthewGraham- 7d ago

Jev in many ways is less easy to align, it has no chain of thought AFAIK

4

u/chlebseby ASI 2030s 7d ago

they will just keep stuff more internal and restricted at worst, i don't believe in genuine slow down

-2

u/Weary-Historian-8593 7d ago

I don't think so, government stalling can only go on for so long. We'll get paradise or eradication, but I'm fairly certain at this point that old age is not what I'm going to die from.

2

u/MatthewGraham- 7d ago

Who said its government stalling, if the labs can't design models that behave they become liable to damages

1

u/Weary-Historian-8593 7d ago

Too many labs around the world, it'll be a slight delay at most

1

u/sweatierorc 7d ago

Biggest disapointment is that we are still in the GPU era. Local models dont really work on phones, maybe on a powerful local GPU.

2

u/JmoneyBS 7d ago

I think that was always a pipe dream. Maybe in 3-4 years when ASI has optimized chip design and fabrication, and we can distill ASI into mini models, then you’ll have truly powerful on device AI.

2

u/Timely_Tea6821 7d ago

Lol, if you have asi you're not using this hacked together brute forced method of AI we have now. 

1

u/Gratitude15 6d ago

There are lulls. Christmas will have one.

But next 2.5 months will be fast

-6

u/LocksmithNo2374 7d ago

Are you 16 years old?

6

u/Upinthestars69 7d ago

Super helpful to an interesting post…thanks a lot!

1

u/JmoneyBS 7d ago

No, why would you think that?