Readit NewsDeleted Comment
The number of neuron-neuron connections in current AI systems is still tiny compared to the human brain.
The largest AI systems in use today have hundreds of billions of parameters. Nearly all parameters are part of a weight matrix, each parameter quantifying the strength of the connection from an artificial input neuron to an artificial output neuron. The human brain has more than a hundred trillion synapses, each connecting an organic input neuron to an organic output neuron, but the comparison is not apples-to-apples, because each synapse is much more complex than a single parameter in a weight matrix.[a]
Today's largest AI systems have about the same number of neuron-neuron connections as the brain of a brown rat.[a] Judging these AI systems based on their current capabilities is like judging organic brains based on the capabilities of brown rat brains.
What we can say with certainty is that today's AI systems cannot be trusted to be reliable. That's true for highly trained brown rats too.
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[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_n... -- sort in descending order by number of synapses.
It’s interesting how a relatively small # of synapses can do all abstract reasoning when free from those concerns.
Take the pre-frontal cortex, leave the rest.
And I trust (quite a bit) that whatever he brought to light should be followed up on - if no other reason than to respect his memory. I hope it is taken seriously and those who retaliated find themselves w/o their positions of responsibility and power over other faculty.
How would the car industry change if someone made a 3D printer that could make any part, including custom parts, with just electricity and air? It is a sea change to manufacturers and distributors, but there would still be a need for mechanics and engineers to specify the correct parts, in the correct order, and use the parts to good purpose.
It is easy to imagine that the inventor of such a technology would probably start talking about printing entire cars - and if you don't think about it, it makes sense. But if you think about it, there are problems. Making the component of a solution is quite different than composing a solution. LLMs exist in the same conditions. Being able to generate code/text/images is of no use to someone who doesn't know what to do with it. I also think this limitation is a practical, tacit solution to the alignment problem.