"Just gave a last-minute-invitation, 6-minute, slideless talk at TED. I was not at all expecting the standing ovation. I was moved, and even a tiny nudge more hopeful about how this all maybe goes. " — Eliezer Yudkowsky
(https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1648379167245844483)
"at TED"
"not...expecting...standing ovation"
"more hopeful about...this all"
I was going to say those were in order, but then that last one is like, shit, dude, am I sneering because the relative magnitude of homeboy's idiocy is u n r e a l or because he's so clearly goddamn certain about it?
Every time I read this dude another absolutely wrong position appears. It is impressive. I'm fucking impressed. I saw a person earlier yell "shit fuck shit" for 4 straight minutes. I was equally impressed by that. But for real, on top of all this, he's bummed about our future prospects with/without AGIpacolypse? Fuckkkk, that is **sad.**
Thanks for the killer slam, consider this post dated idk August 1st, 2010.
I once got a comment from a talk organizer for not clapping at the end... He then asked the audience for an applause to the speaker. And I just looked at him...
A standing ovation is expected in most places FFS
I don't necessarily agree with all of his positions, but it says more about you than it does about him that you would claim with a straight face that Eliezer Yudkowsky is an idiot. He has been wrong about some things, but he definitely knows the subject matter better than 99.99% of the populace. Have a little respect and humility, internet rando.
Edit: Every downvote or reply to the contrary here is just evidence that you're all arrogant dipshits like u/Studstill. So yeah, so far we've got u/ritterteufeltod, u/CompletelyClassless, u/NeilGuyman, u/completely-ineffable. Let the list grow. You're all on record saying something moronic about a subject completely over your heads.
Eliezer has claimed GPT architecture could learn to break hashes. He claimed AI dungeon (GPT 2) had an intuitive understanding of physics. He thinks Drexler’s ideas about nanotech are plausible. There is a long list of topics Eliezer has Dunning-Kruger’d himself on. (I can list a lot more if you are capable of updating given sufficient evidence).
If he can’t get known topics right, why should we trust him about highly speculative topics built on edifices of speculation and presumption?
I have wondered for a while, does GPT use Bayes (or is that all still closed source, just like how the datasets are closed off)? (I was looking at it before and I found people who said it used Bayes 'implicitly' which seemed a bit off to me, so I mean explicitly) because if it doesn't Yud really bet on the wrong conceptual horse for his 'this will give birth to AGI' idea.
(I also discovered that somebody already wrote an Chatgpt website on subjects like this and its nonsense output is already high at the top of google, which is great).
It’s kinda implicitly bayesian… here is a blog I found which summarizes a paper that says that: https://www.inference.vc/implicit-bayesian-inference-in-sequence-models/
Eliezer seemed to be doubting the potential of neural network approaches up until DL took off around 2012, so overall I would count it against his ability as a technology forecaster: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/C4EjbrvG3PvZzizZb/failure-by-analogy
Yes, I have no idea how ChatGPT is implemented, and am asking questions about it. And is has been over a decade I actually did things with machinelearning stuff, and while trying find out more I just found automatically generated bs which doesn't answer my question.
I already admitted being clueless on this subject on the post. Congrats for being able to read between lines.
Yeah, I have not looked into the implementation of chatgpt, that matter very little re our subject matter. You don't have to know every implementation detail to make remarks on how certain things work. But yes, I admit I'm rusty on the whole matter, and was thinking of probability interpretations, of which iirc bayes is one type. But sure, if you want to laugh at me for not knowing a thing and asking about it. Go ahead. I don't care.
And the fact that you cannot read a simple english sentence is a bit silly. Here let me explain it in shorter sentences.
Somebody made site.
Site uses gpt to make content for site.
Site is unusable due to chatgpt, creating weird gibberish.
Site already on top of google search results.
Found several similar sites.
That is why I ask it here and not in other places. We dont pretend to stop the godai here.
And sorry if my sentences I type on the toilet are not up to your high academic standards. Of course, I expect a certain level of intelligence, and ability to parse complex sentences, from people who read lw on the reg. So I dont spend long editing posts.
It is amusing however that I have found others also complaining about how horrible the information about chatgpt is (actual respected tech people, not a weird reddit nerd). You know what would help with the 'what you are saying is wrong, you are stupid. No I will not explain' people, if 90% of the time they were not wrong. Several times i have seen people worry about chatgpt/cryptocurrencies things, and then pro those things people 'you are wrong' and then turns out they qere not wrong. You seem to be one of those people. Why do you do it? Do you see all the downvotes (not from me btw, I dont downvote people im having a 1 on 1 convo with) and go 'people dislike this that means im right'.
This is unrelated to me having fogotten a lot of math.
>Eliezer has claimed GPT architecture could learn to break hashes
We have literally no idea if there even are upper bounds on the capabilities of GPT architecture. It's an open question what it will end up being able to do. Almost everyone's expectations have been overrun by the progress of the GPT architecture within the past 6 months. As impossible as it may seem now, you'd be very premature in asserting that it could *never* happen. He's not even demonstrably wrong there, so forgive me if I don't bother with the rest of your points, nor ask for your list of other similarly well-thought-out arguments.
They are hitting diminishing returns on raw model and data set size.
There are still other steps they could take. They could train models on specialized data sets, train smaller models or compress existing models to run on personal computers, and add in extra non-GPT modules that do other kinds of checking and verification on it (for example a citation database to enforce actual citations instead of hallucinated gibberish citations, or a computer algebra system to do actual math).
Side note, I feel like "enforcing actual citations" would almost make it worse lol because it would be harder to spot when it's just making stuff up and citing it to a random source
Ahh yes, the classic "humans get stuff wrong too sometimes." You know, because when we don't know the answer to a question we just make something up instead of saying we don't know. Actually... come to think of it, that would explain a lot of Silicon Valley ;)
Yeah, I feel like I've picked up a thing or two on the subject in my two decades as a professional software engineer. 👍
And while it currently seems quite impossible to break via brute force or any other means, it's also impossible to guess what AI will be capable of in the future. Maybe it will suddenly have an epiphany about the nature of the universe, spin off an N-dimensional quantum computational cluster, then reach into the anus of the multiverse to pluck out the key from the end of a wormhole located at the heat death of all possible universes. It's literally impossible to even conceive of what they'll be capable of.
I'm not trolling. Current SOTA AI is GPT based, and there's no reason to assume future AI progress won't be made through just scaling up the same architecture.
Well that wouldn't have wormholes or quantum compute, now would it?
And he didn't say it would break it by learning to use external resources, he said it would break it through its next token prediction ability.
Why are you wasting your time defending a blowhard
maybe 99%, m a y b e. (and of course “knowing” is different from “communicating effectively.)
but in most random samples of 10,000 people, i could find at least ONE person who knows AI better than EY (and also, EY would not accept this fact gracefully).
Adding people to your naughty list is a funny gimmick.
However, have you considered that with all the hours we spend here on watching Yud (we don't have a crush on his rugged beard, honest) we actually know more than you do? Esp as we started from the hypothesis that Yud was smart and looked for counterevidence (and found some), as good scientists do.
Oh, I didn't realize you're a _scientist_. Pardon me for not recognizing the discussions you're having here as research oriented. I'll just stand aside and let you geniuses do your good work and read about it after it has been published, peer reviewed, then explained to me by a science popularizer like all the other idiots. Sorry to waste your no doubt precious time, Doctor.
Yet you're the one claiming that your membership in the learned hall of SneerClub scientists entitles your opinions to preferential treatment because you... ... spend a lot of time shit talking the target of your sneering here.
I just claim the same laws of, bloggers are scientists, also apply to us. You are the one trying to give me the honorary title of doctor of the sneer from the university of jdmcnair. I never asked for this, so I will have te decline the honor.
I only accept degrees from universities in Latveria.
OK. I hope I've been clear enough that I'm mocking the idea of any activity here being anything close to "science", or even the rigor of well supported blogging.
That said, I don't hang out here. My sole exposure is this post, which could cast the sub in a more negative light than reality bears. But, for the record, good scientists absolutely do not engage in calling the theorists that they disagree with "idiots" just because they disagree with them. They'll engage them in debate, they'll respond to and disprove their theories, but ad hominem bullshit like I've seen here has no place in serious debate.
If you bothered looking through this sub, there are plenty of effortposts devoted to debunking Lesswrong (and related blogs) and documenting their role in the alt-right pipeline. It’s just that the primary purpose of this sub is mockery, so you don’t get serious discussion outside the occasional effort posts. Serious effort posts are marked NSFW so people that just want lolz can avoid them.
The reason there isn’t more serious mainstream academic debunkings of Lesswrong is because it doesn’t engage with conventional academia enough for anyone serious to bother with addressing it. So this sub is actually the closest you get to serious (critical) discussion of his work.
As for actual scientific work… Eliezer made one passing attempt to get a decision theory paper published (in an actual peer reviewed journal), got numerous serious problems pointed out by reviewers, and gave up on the process.
The idea that serious physics scientists dont call cranks idiots is also funny. Or even other scientists they disagree with or have an other feud with. For example im sure Newton and Leibniz were nice and friendly to each other when they both discovered calculus.
It feels like an extension/variant of the tone-policing troll strategy the alt-right uses. Turn it into a discussion of politeness so you can convince low-information bystanders of your points while ignoring the actual contents of what’s being said.
It is funny that this person came here, never read up on what kind of sub this is, makes a list of his personal posting enemies and then goes round and starts tonepolicing sneerclub. 'Stop calling people stupid you morons, insults dont convince people'
All of this because somebody said it was a bit idiotic of Yud to be suprised at getting a standing ovation at TED and that giving him hope.
The irony is I think he's wrong a lot, and I'm not really a fan of his on the whole. I just don't think holding a few wrong views makes someone inherently an idiot. I acknowledge that he makes some faulty points, but he's asking hard questions with no "correct" answers that nevertheless may have untold impact on the future of humanity. They're important discussions, whether he's right or wrong.
I just don't get the mockery going on here. I mean, I'm not judging; it's just not my style. To me it discredits the more serious content that may appear here to have it sit side-by-side w/ a bunch of unchained ad-hominem mockery.
> I just don't get the mockery going on here. I mean, I'm not judging; it's just not my style. To me it discredits the more serious content that may appear here to have it sit side-by-side w/ a bunch of unchained ad-hominem mockery.
Why are you here? Not a rhetorical question. Too much serious content is typically discouraged, this is a subreddit for mockery and fun.
>Edit: Every downvote or reply to the contrary here is just evidence that you're all arrogant dipshits
Every time I see someone do this weird posturing I just can't get over the fact that people like this actually exist.
I'm sorry if all this is upsetting you. I wasn't trying to be \*that\* rude. I just asked if you were lost, because this is a sub for people who recognize the massive consistent reasoning errors in everything Yudkowsky writes. This is not a place where people typically defend him.
I'll try to be a bit fairer about Yudkowsky: compared to a person of genuinely "average" intelligence, sure, Yudkoswky is not an idiot. He has read and learned about a lot of difficult subjects, and has engaged with them on a level that many are unable. However, he's really not that brilliant. If you read him critically, and break down his arguments, you can see how flawed his reasoning is. In other words, he's a mediocrity. However, to many of us, he's actually something far worse: a mediocrity who has convinced himself *and hoards of similar mediocrities* to believe, and repeat, utterly ridiculous views.
This sub is mostly people who recognize that, and gently mock him and other "rationalists" (i.e., mostly tech bros with outsize egos).
I don't know you or your background, and don't wish you any ill will. Try not to get too offended here. You might start to see the light.
>I'll try to be a bit fairer about Yudkowsky: compared to a person of genuinely "average" intelligence, sure, Yudkoswky is not an idiot. He has read and learned about a lot of difficult subjects, and has engaged with them on a level that many are unable.
Yeah, this is pretty much my point entirely. I don't even *agree with* Yudkowsky on the whole. I say bring on the AI overlords, because they couldn't possibly fuck up worse than the humans in charge are already doing. Let's roll the dice and bring in new management. They could be our only salvation from climate change, nuclear war, or dozens of other human-induced catastrophes. But I recognize that Yudkowsky is versed in these matters well beyond myself or any other anonymous, uncredentialled internet rando. He brings some flawed arguments, but he's talking about things we couldn't possibly know at this point. While he may not have nailed the nature of every risk in exquisite detail, there clearly are imminent risks that we barely have the capacity for understanding. He's sometimes wrong, but definitely not an idiot.
I think in the light of your explanation about the sub, I maybe *am* a little lost, just in that it's just something that reddit put in my feed without me really knowing anything about the sub or me seeking it out. I'm probably not a good candidate to spend a lot of time here 😂. Thanks for the context.
Your disagreement with Yudkowsky is like that of a ufologist who believes the aliens are here to help us with a ufologist who believes the aliens are here to conquer us.
Pretty good analogy, really. Well, except that little green aliens don't exist, but artificial superintelligence could be here like *sometime this year*.
>I don't necessarily agree with all of his positions, but it says more about you than it does about him that you would claim with a straight face that
1. What kind of half-ass rhetoric is this? So many extra words. Caveats built in. Are you even actually objecting? Speaking of "arrogant dipshittery", damn.
>Eliezer Yudkowsky is an idiot. He has been wrong about some things,
2. Homeboy, I have literally never seen the man say anything that isn't a throwaway derivation attempting to expand on the final story in *I, Robot* for internet clout. Illuminate us.
>but he definitely knows the subject matter
3. "Subject matter"? This is all *thought experiments with no basis in any scientific discipline,* dude is playing thinky think with modern Ludditism and if it weren't for the inherent fear he'd have no one chirping about how inevitably correct this all is.
>better than 99.99% of the populace. Have a little respect and humility, internet rando.
4. I, an internet rando with a likewise 4 digit SAT score, formally challenge Mr. Yudkowsky to fucking debate on any "subject matter", but specifically, sure, this absolute half-baked nonsense about Basilisks and nanites. The most infuriating thing here is not the idiocy, the obvious wrongness of the "positions", or the navel(and beyond)-gazing erections of TIME Magazine "editorials", but the apparent complete inability or even awareness that one must open themselves up to peer review for their thoughts to have any merit at all. You're defending people ***playing make-believe*** with genocide, #eugenics, and nuclear weapons; get a grip.
5. It was very nice to wake up to "Have a little respect and humility...Edit: you're all arrogant dipshits for disagreeing with me". Thank you, LMAO. Thank you.
6. Thanks, sneer-fam, for the back up, lmao, lmao, sorry it got you labelled arrogant dipshits, but that's not the worst thing you could have on a tombstone, hear hear.
>What kind of half-ass rhetoric is this? So many extra words. Caveats built in. Are you even actually objecting? Speaking of "arrogant dipshittery", damn.
I stand by it.
>"Subject matter"? This is all thought experiments with no basis in any scientific discipline, dude is playing thinky think with modern Ludditism and if it weren't for the inherent fear he'd have no one chirping about how inevitably correct this all is.
The man has [a decades long career](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliezer_Yudkowsky#Work_in_artificial_intelligence_safety) in research and writing around the AI control problem. Since the Singularity remains entirely or mostly in the future, literally the only way to get a grasp on the forthcoming changes is *via thought experiments*. There is no empirical basis for discussion.
>I, an internet rando with a likewise 4 digit SAT score
LOL. Are you bragging about a 4 digit SAT score? [The mean score is 1060](https://blog.prepscholar.com/sat-standard-deviation), so you're bragging about being somewhere between slightly below average and the upper bounds, and we all know you would've mentioned being closer to the higher end of that range if that were the case.
>It was very nice to wake up to "Have a little respect and humility...Edit: you're all arrogant dipshits for disagreeing with me". Thank you, LMAO. Thank you.
I never said nor implied "for disagreeing with me". You're an arrogant dipshit for calling a man who has built a career on pondering these questions, and has been cited in numerous academic publications on the subject, an idiot. You're way out of your depth talking shit about someone who may be wrong sometimes, but is clearly wrong in ways that are above your ability to even voice a valid opinion, right or wrong. Seriously, STFU.
"On my actual SAT, I got a 670 Verbal and a 740 Math. The Midwest Talent Search informed me that this had placed second Verbal, third Math, and second Combined, for the seventh grade, for the Midwest. Their statistics said I was at the 99.9998th percentile. It wasn't until years later that I realized their stats were worthless because I'd skipped a grade, and to this day, I still don't know what percentile I'm really in.
This was the first real sign that I was not only bright but waayy out of the ordinary."
>likewise 4 digit SAT score
I was, indeed, not bragging.
Cheers.
Yudkowsky is what I would call a "high IQ idiot". This is someone who is very smart in the conventional sense, he does good on IQ tests, but other flaws prevent him from translating this into *actually being correct about things*. My go-to example of a high-iq idiot would be bobby fischer, chess world champion and holocaust denier.
Yudkowskys fatal flaws are a lack of intellectual humility and a central, incorrect belief that that intelligence is magic. He managed to surround himself with yes-men fans who will protect him from realising that his central beliefs are ridiculously, laughably wrong.
He really doesn’t know shit about the subject matter. Real computer scientists don’t take him seriously because he isn’t one. He’s a professional thought-experimenter who is obsessed with his own image as a super genius.
He’s been consistently wrong about AI and machine learning his entire career. He and his institution have produced approximately zero impactful research.
In 2014, for instance, Elizabeth Holmes gave a talk at a
medical-themed TED conference about the technology that her company,
Theranos, was using to make blood tests more efficient. By the time she
appeared at TED, many inside the company already understood that the
technology was not working as it was supposed to. And yet Holmes
willingly got on stage and sold the story, and TED promoted it, further
propelling Theranos to its peak 0 billion valuation.
He got the *biggest* crowds, people, the *biggest* crowds. But the lying mainstream /r/SneerClub won't tell you about that, will they? After the talk these man came up -- big men, strong men -- *tears in their eyes*, they said, Yudkowsky, *sir*, how do you do it, sir? You're saving the human race, and no one can do it but you.
Sometimes I wonder if there was a time when public intellectuals were better than the Ideas racket with Aspen and TED and then I remember HL Mencken was basically a Nazi.
You know, I seriously thought that his public melt down over the last
couple months was actually going to get him. Bruce Sterling was dogging
on him, people who didn’t know him were realizing he was completely full
of shit, etc.
Now he’s posting “THRIVING” and getting a TED talk?
>...people who didn't know him were realizing he was completely full of shit, etc.Now he's posting "THRIVING" and getting a TED talk?
Not satisfied with the attention he was getting, he broadcast the message that the "most likely result ... is that literally everyone on Earth will die."
He got that quoted at a White House press briefing.
It seems to divide the audiences. The press secretary gives a chuckle, and the Ted Talk audience gives an ovation.
This litmus test tells us about the audience.
I think that's the funniest thing about LessWrong and the Objectivists before them. They talk a big game about being oh so rational and analytical, but then the human inside them pokes out at the funniest of times.
\*applause sign lights up\*
"They gave me a standing ovation! They love me! They really love me!"
"You think it's funny to demand peer review of peoples' work, huh? Gatekeeping science is a joke to you? Well I'll have you know that Bayes' Theorem doesn't lie. I know I am right. You're just mad that you don't have the special insights that I have.
"Delete that criticism."
I found the Ted talk page on it, but no way am I paying for it. Any tips on finding a high seas source? Do they make their content free on YouTube eventually anyway?
At only 6 minutes, I am curious out how Eliezer managed to be that brief, and at worst it only wastes 6 minutes of my life.
Nope just the Ted Talk page: https://tedlive.ted.com/webcasts/t2023/session/740
Judging by online discussion about Ted Talks, it may be months before it ends up on YouTube.
is this 2010
It is difficult to imagine Yud speaking well for 6 minutes. Especially at anything approaching short notice.
Religious leader gets positive reinforcement, thinks it’s a sign of the truth of his scriptures.
The search for higher status continues, how will it be used to sleep with more women? Only time will tell.
Everyone clapped
Oscar Schwartz, “What Was the TED Talk?”
Everyone clapped and it made me feel better deep down inside myself
More like, more hopeful about getting MIRI donations
Methinks he dropped an x.
You know, I seriously thought that his public melt down over the last couple months was actually going to get him. Bruce Sterling was dogging on him, people who didn’t know him were realizing he was completely full of shit, etc.
Now he’s posting “THRIVING” and getting a TED talk?
[deleted]
Where’s the link to the presentation?
Imagine all the editing they’ll have to do to cut out the Yud-isms and make this watchable
burger clapping
So. When Yud makes over statements, is it impossible to imagine how they could happen? And if so, why the jeering?