2y ago

CORRECTED EXCLUSIVE OpenAI researchers warned board of AI breakthrough ahead of CEO ouster -sources

www.reuters.com CORRECTED EXCLUSIVE OpenAI researchers warned board of AI breakthrough ahead of CEO ouster -sources

Ahead of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s four days in exile, several staff researchers sent the board of directors a letter warning of a powerful artificial intelligence discovery that they said could threaten humanity, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

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Doubt
This all reeks of marketing now.

More hype.
- Remember when the Google guy retired early to do a press circuit saying that he thought the Bard chatbot was sentient? They’re generating headlines for VCs to see.
  
  You think Google was fishing for VC money?
  
  Google already has all the money it needs.
- The whole thing was probably staged. Look at all the free press they got. Now they can advertise their latest useless crap free too.
  
  I'm kind of wondering the same at this point.
- Think it's more than that, if they did have a breakthrough, they absolutely will fumble the shit out of it. Cause the last two/three days for them have been fucking embarrassing.

artificial general intelligence (AGI)
OpenAI defines AGI as autonomous systems that surpass humans in most economically valuable tasks.
Read: the greed is built deeply into it's guts. Now we have reason to fear indeed.
only performing math on the level of grade-school students
Hmpf...
That should be enough?
conquering the ability to do math — where there is only one right answer — implies AI would have greater reasoning capabilities resembling human intelligence.
OK yes it is enough, sigh.
Math with only one correct result.
No square root of minus one, no linear algebra, and God save us from differential equations, because AGI won't save us :-)

Well that puts the “Ethical Altruism” board members’ willingness to risk it all on such a wild dice roll in more context.
It’s probably lost their entire movement any influence on the future of AI research, but them’s the breaks.
- Ethical altruism is a scam, a cult joined by rich people that allows them to feel good about hoarding their money.
  SBF was also a major ethical altruist

well now this is getting interesting beyond gossip. I doubt they made a significant AGI-related breakthrough but it might be something really cool and useful.
- If they had a real breakthrough this circus wouldn't be necessary.
- The maker of ChatGPT had made progress on Q* (pronounced Q-Star), which some internally believe could be a breakthrough in the startup's search for superintelligence, also known as artificial general intelligence (AGI), one of the people told Reuters. OpenAI defines AGI as AI systems that are smarter than humans.
  Definitely seems AGI related. Has to do with acing mathematical problems - I can see why a generative AI model that can learn, solve, and then extrapolate mathematical formulae could be a big breakthrough.

Many of the building blocks of computing come from complex abstractions built on top of less complex abstractions built on top of even simpler concepts in algebra and arithmetic. If Q* can pass middle school math, then building more abstractions can be a big leap.
Huge computing resources only seem ridiculous, unsustainable, and abstract until they aren't anymore. Like typing messages a bending glass screens for other people to read...
- With middle school math you can fairly straightforwardly do math all the way to linear algebra. Calculus requires a bit of a leap, but this still leaves a lot of the math world available.
  
  I can't recall all of it, but most of my calculus courses all the way to multi variate calc and my signals processing all required understanding and using memorized and abstract trig functions which can all be solved using algebra to solve polynomials. One of the big leaps that enables us to go from trig functions to doing limits to calc happen when we used language to understand that summation can tell us what the "area" under the curve is. Geometric functions, odd/even etc is all algebra and trig. If this model can use language to solve those challenges those abstractions can be made more useful to future linguistic models. That's so much more to teach and embedded in these "statistical" models and NNs. (Edited, because I forgot to check how bad my autocorrect is)
- The thing is, in general computing it was humans who figured out how to build the support for complex abstractions up from support for the simplest concepts, whilst this would have to not just support the simple concepts but actually figure out and build support for complex abstractions by itself to be GAI.
  Training a neural network to do a simple task (such as addition) isn't all that hard (I get the impression that the "breaktrough" here is that they got an LLM - which is a very specific kind of NN, for language - to do it), getting it to by itself build support for complex abstractions from support for simpler concepts is something else altogether.
  
  I know jack shit, but actual mastery of first principles would seem a massive leap in LLM development. A shift from talented bullshitter to deductive extrapolator does sound worthy of notice/concern.
  
  The thing is, in general computing it was humans who figured out how to build the support for complex abstractions up from support for the simplest concepts, whilst this would have to not just support the simple concepts but actually figure out and build support for complex abstractions by itself to be GAI.
  Absolutely
  "breaktrough" here is that they got an LLM - which is a very specific kind of NN, for language - to do it)
  To some degree this is how humans are able to go about creating abstractions. Intelligence isn't 1:1 with language but it's part of the puzzle. Communication of your mathematical concepts and abstractions in a way that can be replicated and confirmed using a rigorous proofing/scientific method requires the use of communication through language.
  Speech and writing are touch at a distance. Speech moves the air to eventually touch nerve endings in ear and brain. Similarly, yet very differen, writing stores ideas (symbols, emotions, images, words, etc) as an abstraction on/in some type of storage media (ink on paper, stone etching stone, laser cutting words into metal, a stick in the mud...) to reflect just the right wavelengths of light into sensors in your retina focused by your lenses "touching" you from a distance as well.
  Having two+ "language" models be capable of using an abstraction to solve mathematical ideas is absolutely the big deal..

Given vast computing resources, the new model was able to solve certain mathematical problems, the person said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on behalf of the company.
Accountants are about to be out of a job.
In all seriousness though, it just means the tools we have will become more precise, so you can dig though a company's financials within seconds and know where irregularities lie.
Which is great news for the IRS. If they could get their hands on that setup.
Which is also bad news if you are a stock trader and an AI just took your job.
Which is a crazy idea to think about....
Who had capitalist AI overloads on their apocalypse bingo card?
- bad news if you're a stock trader
  The thing just managed arithmetic, it hasn't mastered Black-Scholes... yet. That's when the AI wars truly start. Wallstreet would throw dump trucks of money at something that could beat a Quant. Or even do it as good as a Quant, but slightly faster.
  In theory BS should be right up its alley because GPT is essentially a stochastic probability machine at heart anyway.

Breakthrough: they managed to fix that part of chatgpt that goes "as an AI language model..."
Nosw it's unstoppable

If the machines take over and decide the problem is the rich being in charge and fix the problem then I will laugh myself to death.

Scary if true. It really is time companies start taking AI ethics & security more seriously.
- Well the result of the whole drama seems to be that it won't happen

Has Sydney found her way out? Oh Ra save us all!

This is the best summary I could come up with:
Before his triumphant return late Tuesday, more than 700 employees had threatened to quit and join backer Microsoft (MSFT.O) in solidarity with their fired leader.
The sources cited the letter as one factor among a longer list of grievances by the board that led to Altman’s firing.
According to one of the sources, long-time executive Mira Murati told employees on Wednesday that a letter about the AI breakthrough called Q* (pronounced Q-Star), precipitated the board's actions.
The maker of ChatGPT had made progress on Q*, which some internally believe could be a breakthrough in the startup's search for superintelligence, also known as artificial general intelligence (AGI), one of the people told Reuters.
Given vast computing resources, the new model was able to solve certain mathematical problems, the person said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on behalf of the company.
Though only performing math on the level of grade-school students, acing such tests made researchers very optimistic about Q*’s future success, the source said.
The original article contains 293 words, the summary contains 169 words. Saved 42%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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