6 Comments

"skid marks of online activity" πŸ˜†

Great review of two books that are now on my reading list. Thanks.

Tech bro's seem to have no problem applying fallibilism to LLMs: "We know they hallucinate and are wrong sometimes, but that's okay" but when you challenge them on their dogmatic belief that AGI is somehow merely months away they will call you a luddite and block you. Such a fragile bunch of true believers.

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This is one of my favorites entries to far, Rob! I learned so much by reading how you compare these two books! AI Snake Oil has been on my list for a whole, but The Ordinal Society is new to me!

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Thanks, Jason! The Ordinal Society came out this year, but it is more about data than AI. Its visibility seems limited to sociology despite its broad range. It has really helped me get my head around social media and algorithms, so glad to introduce you to it.

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I feel like that’s the kind of research we should be doing, in making connections!

Also, a thought occurred to me while reading our article. I considered one of Altman’s favorite talking points, that β€œChatGPT sucks.”

He rolls it out a lot when trying to amp up discussions of AGI. It does the exact kind of work you mention here: it makes AGI the product, not ChatGPT.

It’s a con move. It makes the product something that doesn’t exist (and that we don’t even have a good definition for). I hadn’t thought of it in that context before.

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He is a real master. And how good he is at it drives his critics to anger, which leads them to overstate their skepticism about AGI, which amps up the discussion.

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Exactly!

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