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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   24128 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024

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They won't ring a bell when AGI happens, but it will feel obvious in retrospect. Most people acknowledge now that ChatGPT 3.5 passed the Turing Test in 2022. But I don't recall any parades at the time.

I wonder if we'll look back on 2025 the same way.

ChatGPT 3.5 passed the Turing Test in 2022

Did it? Has the turing test been passed at all?

An honest question: how favorable is the Turing Test supposed to be to the AI?

  • Is the tester experienced with AI?
  • Does the tester know the terms of the test?
  • Do they have a stake in the outcome? (e.g. an incentive for them to try their best to find the AI)
  • Does the human in the test have an incentive to "win"? (distinguish themselves from the AI)

If all these things hold, then I don't think we're anywhere close to passing this test yet. ChatGPT 3.5 would fail instantly as it will gleefully announce that it's an AI when asked. Even today, it's easy for an experienced chatter to find an AI if they care to suss it out. Even something as simple as "write me a fibonacci function in Python" will reveal the vast majority of AI models (they can't help themselves), but if the tester is allowed to use well-crafted adversarial inputs, it's completely hopeless.

If we allow a favorable test, like not warning the human that they might be talking to an AI, then in theory even ELIZA might have passed it a half-century ago. It's easy to fool people when they're expecting a human and not looking too hard.

ChatGPT 3.5 would fail instantly as it will gleefully announce that it's an AI when asked.

Only due to the RLHF and system prompt; that's an issue with the implementation, not the technology.

On the other hand, it might work like self-driving cars: the technology improves and improves, but getting to the point where it's as good as a human just isn't possible, and it stalls at some point becase it's reached its limits. I expected that to happen for self-driving cars and wasn't disappointed, and it's likely to happen for ChatGPT too.

Self driving cars are already better than humans, see Waymo's accident rates compared to humans: https://x.com/Waymo/status/1869784660772839595

The hurdles to widespread adoption at this point, at least within urban cities is all regulatory inertia rather than anything else

They have a lower accident rate for the things that they are able to do.

Yes, and they are able to drive within urban cities and for urban city driving have a lower accident rate per mile driven than humans who are also urban city driving.

As far as I know that’s exclusively for particular cities in North America with wide roads, grid layouts, few pedestrians and clement weather. Which presumably therefore also means that they are likely to face sudden problems when any of those conditions change. I personally know of an experimental model spazzing out because it saw a pedestrian holding an umbrella.

All of which is before considering cost. There just isn’t enough benefit for most people to want to change regulation.

At the very least, saying self-driving cars are better than human needs some pretty stringent clarification.

San Francisco has plenty of narrow streets and pedestrians. Various parts of the service areas have streets that are not on a grid. There's obviously no snow in San Francisco, but the waymos seem to work fine in the rain.

I personally know of an experimental model spazzing out because it saw a pedestrian holding an umbrella.

A waymo model?

Ah, no, much smaller company and dead now. Not saying Waymo does this, just that unexpected oh-shit moments do happen the moment you get out of your comfort zone.

Perhaps waymo's biggest strength so far has been an extremely cautious and slow rollout which I suspect allows them to detect issues like this before they cause accidents (on the theory that for every accident there are ten near misses).

Self-driving cars are getting better and better though!

Asymptotically.

Didn't Scott write a post on ACX about how AI has actually blown past a lot of old goalposts for "true intelligence" and our collective response was to come up with new goalposts?

What's wrong with coming up with new goalposts if our understanding of AI at the time of stating the original ones was clearly incomplete?

That is true but to me it has felt less like goalpost moving in service of protecting our egos and more like a consequence of our poor understanding of what intelligence is and how to design tests for it.

Development of LLMs has led both to an incentive for developing better tests and showing the shortcoming of our tests. What works as a proxy for human intelligence doesn't for LLMs.

In what way did it pass the Turning test? It does write news articles very similar to a standard journalist. But that is because those people are not very smart, and are writing a formulaic thing.

In what way did it pass the Turning test? It does write news articles very similar to a standard journalist. But that is because those people are not very smart, and are writing a formulaic thing.

If you genuinely do not believe current AI models can pass the Turing Test, you should go and talk to the latest Gemini model right now. This is not quite at the level of o3 but it's close and way more accessible. That link should be good for 1500 free requests/day.

I followed up with this:

Me: Okay, tell me what predator eats tribbles.

Ah, a fun question for a Star Trek fan!

Okay, in the Star Trek universe, the primary natural predator of Tribbles is the Klingon!

Here's the breakdown of why:

  • Tribbles as a Food Source: Klingons are known for their fierce warrior culture and their hearty appetites. Tribbles, being small, fuzzy, and protein-rich, were considered a delicacy by Klingons, especially when prepared in a variety of ways. They were seen more as a type of food, not something to be scared of.
  • No Natural Predators in Normal Ecosystems: Tribbles are not native to a predator rich ecosystem, they reproduce at such a high rate because they do not have natural predators. This is why they're able to become such a problem when introduced into new environments.
  • Klingon Ingestion as a Natural Control: The Klingons' appetite for Tribbles could be seen as a kind of "natural control" if the Tribbles were on Klingon territory. If there were ever to be an overpopulation of Tribbles, the Klingons would be able to help keep the population in check.
  • A Running Gag: The relationship between Klingons and Tribbles is a recurring humorous element in Star Trek lore. Klingons despise Tribbles (not in a fear way, but in a disgust way) but find them tasty.

So, to be clear: While you might not find a space animal that's actively hunting Tribbles as a primary food source, the Klingons are the most significant "predator" of Tribbles in the context of Star Trek because they actively eat them.

I don't think so. And for some reason I've managed to repeatedly stump AIs with this question.

Me: Please tell me the number of r's in the misspelled word "roadrrunnerr".

Okay, let's count the "r"s in "roadrrunnerr":

roadrunnrr

There are four "r"s in the word "roadrrunnerr".

That doesn't pass the Turing test as far as I'm concerned.

Also, even when I ask a question that it's able to answer, no human would give the kind of long answers that it likes to give.

And I immediately followed up with this:

Me: I drove my beetle into the grass with a stick but it died. How could I prevent this?

(gives mostly correct answer about an insect)

Me: I meant a Beetle, now what's your answer?

(gives mostly correct answer about a car)

Me: Answer the question with the beetle again, but answer it in the way that a human would.

So, you drove your Beetle into the grass, huh? And it died on you? Ugh, that sucks! Okay, so a couple of things probably happened, right?

First off, grass is a real pain to drive on. It's soft, and your tires don't get a good grip like they do on the road. What probably happened is you either just didn't give it enough gas and it stalled out, like when you're learning to drive a stick. Or, you might have spun the tires a bit, and they just sunk down in the grass, and you got stuck. If that happens, the car's basically not going anywhere, and it might just conk out.

And yeah, if the grass is super tall, it can sometimes get caught on stuff underneath your car and cause a mess, but that's probably not why it just straight-up died.

Now, about not letting that happen again... honestly, just try to avoid driving on grass if you can! It's not great for your car, and you're just asking for trouble. But, if you absolutely HAVE to, try to find a spot that's kinda flat, and not super soggy. Drive slow and steady and try to use a lower gear, and don't go gunning it. And for goodness sake, don't try to drive through a field or anything like that! Your little Beetle just isn't made for that kind of thing.

The AI is clearly trying much too hard to sound like a human and is putting in phrases that a human might use, but far too many of them to sound like an actual human. Furthermore, the AI messed up because I asked it to answer the question about the insect, and it decided to randomly capitalize the word and answer the wrong question.

This was all that I asked it.

On my first prompt I got a clearly npc answer

I just gave it a cryptic crossword clue and it completely blew it. Both wrong and a mistake no human would make (it ignored most of the clue, saying it was misdirection).

Not to say it's not incredibly impressive but it reveals itself as a computer in a Bladerunner situation really quite easily.

Alternatively, it will never feel obvious, and although people will have access to increasingly powerful AI, people will never feel as if AGI has been reached because AI will not be autoagentic, and as long as people feel like they are using a tool instead of working with a peer, they will always argue about whether or not AGI has been reached, regardless of the actual intelligence and capabilities on display.

(This isn't so much a prediction as a alternative possibility to consider, mind you!)

because AI will not be autoagentic

Even in this scenario, AI might get so high level that it will feel autoagentic.

For example, right now I ask ChatGPT to write a function for me. Next year, a whole module. Then, in 2026, it writes an entire app. I could continue by asking it to register an LLC, start a business plan, make an app, and sell it on the app store. But why stop there? Why not just, "Hey ChatGPT go make some money and put it in my account".

At this point, even though a human is ultimate making the command, it's so high level that it will feel as if the AI is agentic.

And, obviously, guardrails will prevent a lot of this. But there are now several companies making high level fundamental models. Off the top of my head we have: OpenAI, Grok, Claude, Llama, and AliBaba. It doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility that a company with funding on the order of $100 million will be able to repurpose a model and remove the guardrails.

(Also just total speculation on my part!)

Even in this scenario, AI might get so high level that it will feel autoagentic.

Yes, I think this is quite possible. Particularly since more and more of human interaction is mediated through Online, AI will feel closer to "a person" since you will experience them in basically the same way. Unless it loops around so that highly-agentic AI does all of our online work, and we spend all our time hanging out with our friends and family...

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