Did you not notice a trendline of technological improvement of AI?
> Sure, I probably could make something more effective, using non-LLM technologies (given a large enough budget), but… why would I, or anyone else, do that when it'd be obviously harmful, with no benefit?
Technology will improve. The likelihood of you being part of that progress is nearly zero. So what you say here is categorically wrong. You are not able to make anything better. Humanity collectively will make something better and we don’t know who will be the one to do it.
People are willing to pay for companionship so there’s huge profitability in this area. Profit and self interest often at the expense of everything else is what drives progress.
No, in fact I noticed a series of AI winters. In all things, progress is famously _not_ a straight line.
Also I find it interesting that your argument seems to boil down to “I’m smart because line goes up, you’re dumb because you think line goes down.” Everyone Clearly can see what would happen if line went up, I just; looking at the broad history and totality of factors(that I’m aware of) don’t think it’s inevitable.
“You can’t stop progress”
We literally stop progress all the time, every time we choose not to invest in something, crypto progress slowed from its height, Vr progress, green energy, I’d argue it’s relatively few technologies that progress forever.
A series of winters? There's only one winter. Then after Geoffrey Hinton you can bullshit every 6 month lull into a "winter" if you want but everyone knows what the "actual" winter was. In general over a span of 10 years the line is UP.
>Also I find it interesting that your argument seems to boil down to “I’m smart because line goes up, you’re dumb because you think line goes down.” Everyone Clearly can see what would happen if line went up, I just; looking at the broad history and totality of factors(that I’m aware of) don’t think it’s inevitable.
The crazy thing is it's true. I never said that the line going up is inevitable. I said that's the most probable outcome. And you are dumb if you don't acknowledge the most probable outcome. like there's no logical way around this. You can sort of twist my argument into something that looks strange or stupid or whatever but there's no logical counter to what I said because it is factually the best answer.
>We literally stop progress all the time, every time we choose not to invest in something, crypto progress slowed from its height, Vr progress, green energy, I’d argue it’s relatively few technologies that progress forever.
You can't stop it. It can stop but you can't actually put your hand in front of it to stop it. That's what I mean. Nobody is choosing to stop progress and nobody really has this choice.
That being said you're right. No technology can progress forever. There is an upper bound. But AI. What's the upper bound? Do we have examples of the upper bound of intelligence? Do these things physically exist in reality that we can use these physical examples of Intelligence to measure how far in physical actuality and reality that we can go with AI?
No. No such examples exist. LLMs are the forefront of intelligence. There is nothing in reality more intelligent then LLMs and LLMs represent the physical limit in terms of evidence. Or is there something I'm missing here?
Yeah for certain things like space travel. It's possible we're hitting upper bounds, because we don't have physical examples of certain technologies.
But Again, intelligence? Do we have examples? What is the upper bound? Why don't you kick that brain (hint) into gear and think about it? One of the most realistic predictions of a continued upward trend in technology is in AI BECAUSE a PHYSICAL ACTUALITY of what we want to achieve both EXISTS and is reading this comment right now.
So we have a trendline that points up. And the actuality of what we want to achieve ALREADY exists. What is the most probable bet that you cannot just not acknowledge? The logic is inescapable. You must consider the outcome that AI continues to progress as that is the most likely outcome.
I'll grant you that AI not progressing and hitting another winter IS not at such a lower probability that we cannot consider it. But most of HN is just claiming we 100% hit a wall when all evidence is saying otherwise. In actuality another AI winter is the lower probability bet. Wait 10 years and come back to this comment and we'll see if you're right.
Contradictorally though - I am near certain we will declare victory on AGI much sooner than 10 years from now. OpenAI’s contract with Microsoft nearly requires it, and Sam Altman recently said that by reasonable measures of 5 years ago, ChatGPT 4 is AGI. In some sense that may best evidence things are stalling.
But really 10 years from now, either one of us could declare victory, and we’d probably be right.
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/the-sp-500-index-out-performe...
You'd be a fucking idiot if you bet on zero or negative growth for the SP500 in the next decade. The market is utterly the perfect example of a predictable trendline. The key is that you need to look at it over the long term.
Warren buffet called out every idiot investor because they all did short term bets based on short term gains and he said the way forward was long term investments. Now tell me. What does the long term trendline for the past decade say about machine learning? What does the short term LLM "training wall" say about it? Are you an idiot investor or are you not? Most investors are idiots.
Xerox PARC. Bell Labs. Academia. Wikipedia. You must have a rather narrow and useless definition of "progress".
No i have a realistic definition of progress in capitalism. You must have a rather narrow brain and are unable to comprehend the difference between a realistic and practical application of "progress" versus an ideal that is unrealistic.
Bell labs, Xerox PARC are done. These labs existed because capitalist businesses were successful in their profitable endeavors AND could AFFORD side quests that were unprofitable. In the end these places were shuttered because they were unprofitable.
Now take a look at academia. Where does all that money come from? Taxes. Where do Taxes come from? Business and profit. Academic progress comes from business.
In fact all progress comes from business and profit. That's the general actuality. Of course there are exceptions, but that's just pedantism.
Where does the common education system and legal system system underpins the business world come from? Government. Who puts dollar bills into the hands of people and tells them "come next tax season, we're going to ask you for a bunch of dollars at gunpoint, which will make them valuable, so you better have some", which creates the demand for dollars which stimulates the economy? Government.
"Business and profit" are not possible without government, which will do stuff like "fund research into the internet so we don't lose the Cold War if the Russians nuke us", which leads to Google and Meta having great "business and profit", "spend billions on aircraft carriers patrolling the oceans to make sure that shipment of shoes Nike spend 3 dollars per pair to make in Cambodia gets to California where it will be resold for 100 dollars a pair", and "fund a school system and research institutions to ensure a steady stream of educated workers to build the miracle of modern capitalism".
So if you believe all progress comes from business and profit, you believe all progress comes from the government, because business and profit is a side effect of governement.
I encourage you to read Debt and Dawn of Everything by Graeber for more information on this subject :)
Funny you should say that: business and profit are actually way undertaxed in the US, compared to (for instance) salaries and pensions. But, you're still talking about the on-paper accounting (and choosing an arbitrary point in a cyclic economy as the "original source", but let's ignore that for now).
Let's consider how progress actually occurs, on the ground. People learn how things work, whether through study, experience, original thought, or (more often) a mix of the three. They then attempt to find improvements: new methods, new machines, new buildings. They then verify these improvements, through experiment, theory, or a mix of the three. We call this "innovation". They then put these into practice: building, manufacturing, distributing, teaching, or performing; which improves the efficiency of some resource manipulation activity, or enables people to accomplish or experience things they couldn't otherwise. We call this "progress".
Individuals cannot efficiently acquire all resources (respectively: accomplish all tasks, experience all experiences, etc) alone. Specialised tools and skillsets allow certain people to accomplish certain tasks more efficiently than others: we call this "expertise" and "economies of scale" and "virtuoso", among other names. Working together, people can accomplish more than they can apart: we call this "collaboration" when it is direct, and "trade" when it is indirect. To make trade (locally) more efficient in large groups, we abstract large trade networks by valuing more-or-less everything along one axis, which we call "currency", or "money". Money represents resources, because it can be exchanged for goods and services. (Therefore, money is fungible.) Money also represents debt, for much the same reason. (Therefore, money is not fungible.) What money represents depends quite a lot on your metaphysics, because it is an abstract concept.
A trade where each party to the trade receives more value than they spend (according to the "money's worth" metric) is considered a "profitable trade": the "more value" is called the "profit", and trades can be profitable for all parties despite a variety of different choices of profit allocation. (Various factors constrain profit allocation in practice; we will not discuss them here.) Some trades are mediated by intermediaries (traders, employers), who take some portion of the profit: in some cases, these intermediaries are providing value (e.g. by transporting goods, or organising a team); but in other cases, they are not. One example of an intermediary that does not provide any value is a corporate person qua employer: by virtue of not actually existing, a corporation cannot by any clever argument be said to actually contribute to boots-on-the-ground labour activity.
So we see that profit is, except on the balance sheets of a sole trader / worker-owned coöp, actually the removal of resources from the people doing the actual work, making the actual progress. If the removed resources are pooled and used for R&D – as in the cases you describe as "side quests" – and we further propose that this R&D would not have been performed by those the resources were removed from, we can say that profit contributes towards progress. (Certain investment schemes provide another example.) However, in many cases, profit goes towards things like "build us a moat to keep the competitors out!" or "bribe the regulators" or "outspend our competitors' advertising budget" or "buy the C-suite even bigger yachts": we cannot say this contributes towards progress, unless we define the ultimate end of human progress narrowly: in the field of yacht manufacturing, or perhaps the field of cheating at sports.
Business, likewise, is sometimes related to progress, but sometimes unrelated to it, and in any case not in any way essential to progress (except in the field of business studies). Saying the word "actuality" doesn't make what you say true.
I notice you didn't address the example of Wikipedia.
