AI - The artificial intelligence thread

[zero]

thought this was an interesting article on how an AI chatbot helped improve performance for newly hired tech support call center reps:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2023/05/02/1172791281/this-company-adopted-ai-heres-what-happened-to-its-human-workers

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Now, when the agents look at their computer screens, they don't only see a chat window with their customers. They also see another chat window with an AI chatbot, which is there to help them more effectively assist customers in real time. It advises them on what to potentially write to customers and also provides them with links to internal company information to help them more quickly find solutions to their customers' technical problems.

Quote

But what's even more interesting is that not all employees gained equally from using AI. It turns out that the company's more experienced, highly skilled customer support agents saw little or no benefit from using it. It was mainly the less experienced, lower-skilled customer service reps who saw big gains in their job performance.

I worked a tech support job a long time ago, and can totally relate here. tons of turnover with the front line reps. I was like 2nd/3rd level support, and front line reps used to have to call me to walk them through stuff. these dudes can now chat with an AI bot, therefore reducing the need for higher paid longer tenured reps.

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Instead of experienced and skilled workers benefiting mostly from AI technology, it's the opposite. It's the less experienced and less skilled workers who benefit the most. In this customer support center, AI improved the know-how and intelligence of those who were new at the job and those who were lower performers. It suggests that AI could benefit those who were left behind in the previous technological era.

bottom line:

people who think deeply and/or value wisdom/altruism = AI sucks! it will enslave us all! stop it now!

the herd = AI's great! give us more! it's helping us so much!

con men, capitalists, sales people = what's AI again? oh well, we'll push it out to the masses asap! sell sell sell! fuck over anyone in our way! make as much $ off AI as possible!

this is how it will go. I already see this shit playing out. 

[auxien]

31 minutes ago, zero said:

thought this was an interesting article on how an AI chatbot helped improve performance for newly hired tech support call center reps:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2023/05/02/1172791281/this-company-adopted-ai-heres-what-happened-to-its-human-workers

I worked a tech support job a long time ago, and can totally relate here. tons of turnover with the front line reps. I was like 2nd/3rd level support, and front line reps used to have to call me to walk them through stuff. these dudes can now chat with an AI bot, therefore reducing the need for higher paid longer tenured reps.

bottom line:

people who think deeply and/or value wisdom/altruism = AI sucks! it will enslave us all! stop it now!

the herd = AI's great! give us more! it's helping us so much!

con men, capitalists, sales people = what's AI again? oh well, we'll push it out to the masses asap! sell sell sell! fuck over anyone in our way! make as much $ off AI as possible!

this is how it will go. I already see this shit playing out. 

interesting! this stood out as well, and along with the other discussion it seems to me at least that the problem was in training/management

Quote

"And what this system did was it took people with just two months of experience and had them performing at the level of people with six months of experience,"

bad businesses get a shot of a good fix.

(i did call center work for like a month when i was 16, it was fucking trash)

related:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/05/ibm-pauses-hiring-around-7800-roles-that-could-be-replaced-by-ai/

Quote

Krishna said that hiring in back-office functions like human resources will be suspended or slowed, affecting roughly 26,000 non-customer-facing roles. That will include not replacing current roles vacated by attrition. "I could easily see 30 percent of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period," Bloomberg quoted Krisha as saying in an interview

maybe correct, maybe expecting too much, who knows…but seems quite serious. and this shit’s only been out for like, a matter of months at this point. things are going to change in big ways over the coming years.

[zero]

1 hour ago, auxien said:

related:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/05/ibm-pauses-hiring-around-7800-roles-that-could-be-replaced-by-ai/

maybe correct, maybe expecting too much, who knows…but seems quite serious. and this shit’s only been out for like, a matter of months at this point. things are going to change in big ways over the coming years.

there was an old school Twilight Zone episode that predicted this would happen - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734633/?ref_=tt_rvi_tt_t_2

[auxien]

1 hour ago, zero said:

there was an old school Twilight Zone episode that predicted this would happen - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734633/?ref_=tt_rvi_tt_t_2

i’m sure i’ve seen that one but i can’t say i remember it

Kids in the Hall also predicted it too tho

 

[cichlisuite]

20 hours ago, auxien said:

further notes from Hinton, via the BBC:

Right now, what we're seeing is things like GPT-4 eclipses a person in the amount of general knowledge it has and it eclipses them by a long way. In terms of reasoning, it's not as good, but it does already do simple reasoning," he said.

correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't it understandable that GPT "eclipses a person in the amount of general knowledge", since it has direct access to all digitalized knowledge base of humanity and can dig and search through it with immense speed? i mean, it's like you'd ask me "please elaborate on x and y", and then i would consult all the relevant documents and books and provide you with an answer. it would take me a very long time to do it, of course, but a processor can do this much faster. it doesn't require me to be very smart or conscious. nor i can't store all the available human knowledge in my head. hence, it's just a very efficient data mining algorithm that can output an answer in a concise and elaborate way because it was programmed to do so?

[auxien]

2 hours ago, cichlisuite said:

correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't it understandable that GPT "eclipses a person in the amount of general knowledge", since it has direct access to all digitalized knowledge base of humanity and can dig and search through it with immense speed?

it definitely tracks that these programs are eclipsing a person in the amount of general knowledge...i think others may work differently but from 

ChatGPT explained: everything you need to know about the AI chatbot | TechRadar

Quote

ChatGPT's most original GPT-3.5 model was trained on 570GB of text data from the internet, which OpenAI says included books, articles, websites, and even social media.

...

ChatGPT works thanks to a combination of deep learning algorithms, a dash of natural language processing, and a generous dollop of generative pre-training, which all combine to help it produce disarmingly human-like responses to text questions.

 

the Bing version is incorporating web searches in conjunction with the ChatGPT program (or a version of ChatGPT) so it'll link and respond about very recent news/etc. with surprising accuracy....but i believe the basic ChatGPT is 'offline' in the sense that it's using a huge store of 'learned' data, not just searching Wikipedia with each question...i believe this is so that its architechture can be taken and trained on specific sources of data for a variety of purposes, not just as a chatbot.

2 hours ago, cichlisuite said:

mean, it's like you'd ask me "please elaborate on x and y", and then i would consult all the relevant documents and books and provide you with an answer. it would take me a very long time to do it, of course, but a processor can do this much faster.

all true. i think of it like this: if you're a highly educated Shakespeare scholar who's been studying the works and biography etc. for decades, you'd probably be able to answer nearly any question within seconds, recite entire passages of plays or sonnets, etc., much like ChatGPT can currently (i assume). maybe even improvise and write a Shakespearean stanza or whatever, again much like ChatGPT can. but if i threw in a question about quantum electrodynamic calculations into the middle of asking you about Shakespeare, you'd probably have almost zero knowledge...most Shakespeare historians are not also particle phycisicts. ChatGPT however, can do all of it. and anything else, basically. anything else it's been trained on, it's a high level expert at (though, noteworthy is that it's not GREAT at all of these things. yet.)

2 hours ago, cichlisuite said:

hence, it's just a very efficient data mining algorithm that can output an answer in a concise and elaborate way because it was programmed to do so?

in a simple way, yeah, you're right. but in a more specific way, you're misunderstanding the depth of the program. it's not just outputting answers to 'when was the first boxing glove manufactured' ...it's able (versions of it, at least) to analyze images and explain the jokes in them, understand the physics of the reality being captured in them:

(from GPT-4 is surprisingly good at explaining jokes (freethink.com))

it's so very good at doing things like this, already. it's not perfect, of course. but the amount of examples of 'understanding' and 'reasoning' like this is growing day by day.

[Alcofribas]

chatgpt: "...actually that's not earth those are chicken nuggets"

me: "incredible, this is superhuman."

[auxien]

10 minutes ago, Alcofribas said:

chatgpt: "...actually that's not earth those are chicken nuggets"

me: "incredible, this is superhuman."

lol

10 minutes ago, Summon Dot E X E said:

It seems that something like "understanding" is an emergent property of these systems.

yeah, that's my first take on it (probably said something like that earlier ITT). of course, these systems have been designed to be that way, not just gained it slowly by accident, so 'emergent' takes on different implications here. ...ultimately i think we're more mechanical and simple than we care to be reminded of, and words like 'understanding' have connotations we're going to have to modify in our own language and our own...understanding. 

[auxien]

21 minutes ago, Summon Dot E X E said:

People have been hypothesizing and/or planning this for a long time. That episode is from May 15, 1964. I, Robot is from 1950. In I, Robot, there is a super computer that runs all of Earth's economy, industry, etc.

an earlier version still... THE MACHINE STOPS ... E.M. Forster (visbox.com) (1909) ...summary from Wikipedia:

Quote

The story describes a world in which most of the human population has lost the ability to live on the surface of the Earth. Each individual now lives in isolation below ground in a standard room, with all bodily and spiritual needs met by the omnipotent, global Machine. Travel is permitted, but is unpopular and rarely necessary. Communication is made via a kind of instant messaging/video conferencing machine with which people conduct their only activity: the sharing of ideas and what passes for knowledge.

there's probably even older tales that relate in ways too. 

[Alcofribas]

kinda feel like we need sean (Autechre Brother 1/2) to weigh in on this topic for us

[usagi]

"what do you think of these AI then"

"lush innit"

[Alcofribas]

he’d beat us all up

[cruising for burgers]

how can I be totally sure that this thread isn't just a ML bot discussing with another (probably the same) ML bot?

I'm starting to think it is...

it's basically a loop of, no you're wrong but, oh yes I agree you're right, that's exactly what I said, no you said this, omg you're right, but I'm right as well, let's agree to disagree... rinse and repeat...

Edited May 4, 2023 by cruising for burgers

[iococoi]

 

intro is a bit cringey, but keep going..

[Satans Little Helper]

 Thanks for posting. He's indeed a bit cringy, but he's saved by being able to inviting relevant experts and having a good conversation with them. I appreciate the sober and professional take on AI from both experts. I'd hope people like these get to advise governments, because their advice will only be taken seriously by private companies if it's in their interests to do so.

[auxien]

12 hours ago, cruising for burgers said:

how can I be totally sure that this thread isn't just a ML discussing with another (probably the same) ML? I'm starting to think it is... it's basically a loop of, no you're wrong but, oh yes I agree you're right, that's exactly what I said, no you said this, omg you're right, but I'm right as well... rinse and repeat...

i’d argue that’s closer to reality than any of us want to believe. any intelligence is just a series of experienced learnings, conclusions based on those learnings, and abilities to adapt/act based on those past learnings.

more inputs+data… & the time & ability (brain capacity + power source) & evolutionary need to process it all ends up, in our case, with humans…but the basics of “ML” aren’t too far off from the basic core of any ‘intelligence’ (at least that we currently know of).

slow zoom in…horror on the face of the protagonist: “We ARE the machines! We always were!!!” musical stinger that blurs slowly into a dreadful miasma of unsettled chords. fade to black.

Edited May 4, 2023 by auxien

[auxien]

20 minutes ago, Summon Dot E X E said:

I met Emily Bender when I was trying to get into UW's Computational Linguistics program 8 years ago (didn't work out).

 

thank you very much-o

[zero]

14 hours ago, Summon Dot E X E said:

Of course, there will need to be something in place to take care of the people who no longer are needed to work 5 days a week. Maybe what little work remains could be divided up fairly? One workday a week?

that's the gazillion dollar question no one has any answer to. if we don't need people with expert level knowledge (because AI is an apt substitute) and can get by with a lower paid, less expert level group of folks to do the work - then what becomes of the experts? what then motivates people to want to become doctors, etc., if an AI thing can do it better? these are some of the big picture questions I know are getting churned up at this point in time, and rightfully so. any time any new piece of tech or work flow process is introduced, it rarely goes entirely as planned. 

[cichlisuite]

19 hours ago, auxien said:

all true. i think of it like this: if you're a highly educated Shakespeare scholar who's been studying the works and biography etc. for decades, you'd probably be able to answer nearly any question within seconds, recite entire passages of plays or sonnets, etc., much like ChatGPT can currently (i assume). maybe even improvise and write a Shakespearean stanza or whatever, again much like ChatGPT can. but if i threw in a question about quantum electrodynamic calculations into the middle of asking you about Shakespeare, you'd probably have almost zero knowledge...most Shakespeare historians are not also particle phycisicts. ChatGPT however, can do all of it. and anything else, basically. anything else it's been trained on, it's a high level expert at (though, noteworthy is that it's not GREAT at all of these things. yet.)

what i was getting at (and trying to understand myself) was it doesn't actually 'possess' knowledge, more like it fetches from its 'learned' repositories, or indexed registers + the user query sent from the prompt. meaning the real 'knowledge' it has, or is being equipped with, is data mining knowledge that can parse strings (also text recognition module for reading text in images), and recognize contexts and how contexts relate to each other on different levels. i.e. literature - classic - shakespeare - king lear, versus literature -scientific - physics -quantum electrodynamics, etc... meaning that it should understand these levels and the general knowledge trees must be strictly organized somewhere inside chatgpt hq servers.... or is it capable of making 'sense' of unstructured, rudimentary, reduntant, scattered pieces of information?

it would be very interesting to have an insight into a sort of pseudo-code analysis of chatgpt's 'thinking' procedures, and how it stores and caches data. like how the neural-network topology recurses through itself in a way, idk.

Quote

(from GPT-4 is surprisingly good at explaining jokes (freethink.com))

it's so very good at doing things like this, already. it's not perfect, of course. but the amount of examples of 'understanding' and 'reasoning' like this is growing day by day.

that seems pretty impressive, however, if i understand correctly, these are run by separate, optimized versions of chatgpt that cannot relate to each other in terms of being one interconnected entity?

[cruising for burgers]

6 hours ago, auxien said:

slow zoom in…horror on the face of the protagonist: “We ARE the machines! We always were!!!” musical stinger that blurs slowly into a dreadful miasma of unsettled chords. fade to black.

 

[ignatius]

grimes unveils software that mimics her voice. 

https://pitchfork.com/news/grimes-unveils-software-to-mimic-her-voice-and-announces-2-new-songs/

"elf tech"

https://elf.tech/connect

50/50 royalty split for commercial use

[GORDO]

2 hours ago, cichlisuite said:

what i was getting at (and trying to understand myself) was it doesn't actually 'possess' knowledge, more like it fetches from its 'learned' repositories, or indexed registers + the user query sent from the prompt. meaning the real 'knowledge' it has, or is being equipped with, is data mining knowledge that can parse strings (also text recognition module for reading text in images), and recognize contexts and how contexts relate to each other on different levels. i.e. literature - classic - shakespeare - king lear, versus literature -scientific - physics -quantum electrodynamics, etc... meaning that it should understand these levels and the general knowledge trees must be strictly organized somewhere inside chatgpt hq servers.... or is it capable of making 'sense' of unstructured, rudimentary, reduntant, scattered pieces of information?

it would be very interesting to have an insight into a sort of pseudo-code analysis of chatgpt's 'thinking' procedures, and how it stores and caches data. like how the neural-network topology recurses through itself in a way, idk.

that seems pretty impressive, however, if i understand correctly, these are run by separate, optimized versions of chatgpt that cannot relate to each other in terms of being one interconnected entity?

I see this as a common misunderstanding. These models are not databases, they don't 'look up' stuff. They're enormously complex formulas whose parameters are 'fitted' with data towards a target objective. It's no different conceptually than finding the best intercept and slope to fit a line through a bunch of points in a plane. The difference is that instead of two parameters you're finding the fit for billions of parameters in an humanly intractable formula. It's statistics on steroids, not databases.

This is why we can't have 'pseudo code' for how they produce their outputs and why we say we don't 'understand' how they work. While we do know *exactly* what the 'formula' is and we know the parameters, it's so immensely big and complicated that there's no point in trying to extract insight from it. There are tho techniques to gain partial understanding on how variation of their inputs produce variations on the outputs and so on.

Whenever I see the argument that they don't posses knowledge I'd argue back that whatever test you can come up for a human to prove knowledge, this thing can do it too.

Edited May 4, 2023 by GORDO

[auxien]

4 hours ago, cichlisuite said:

what i was getting at (and trying to understand myself) was it doesn't actually 'possess' knowledge, more like it fetches from its 'learned' repositories, or indexed registers + the user query sent from the prompt. meaning the real 'knowledge' it has, or is being equipped with, is data mining knowledge that can parse strings (also text recognition module for reading text in images), and recognize contexts and how contexts relate to each other on different levels. i.e. literature - classic - shakespeare - king lear, versus literature -scientific - physics -quantum electrodynamics, etc... meaning that it should understand these levels and the general knowledge trees must be strictly organized somewhere inside chatgpt hq servers.... or is it capable of making 'sense' of unstructured, rudimentary, reduntant, scattered pieces of information?

it would be very interesting to have an insight into a sort of pseudo-code analysis of chatgpt's 'thinking' procedures, and how it stores and caches data. like how the neural-network topology recurses through itself in a way, idk.

that seems pretty impressive, however, if i understand correctly, these are run by separate, optimized versions of chatgpt that cannot relate to each other in terms of being one interconnected entity?

i probably jumped off of your question a bit too far, apologies. i'm not too great at staying in the lane these days (programmers are needing to update my software).

but really....GORDO explained things far better than i ever could've. (thanks GORDO)

i imagine there'll be some people focusing on studying how the procedures are actually happening, if not some already of course. but like GORDO said, that level of complexity is difficult to break down...i imagine it's akin to studying cosmology and creating these Big Bang-through-now models of the evolution of the universe...they're not trying to pinpoint the exact formation of exact stars or exact galaxies, there's just too many...so those researchers are just crafting models until they get distributions of stars/galaxies that largely match our current overview of the universe. or studying the exact trail of one bolt of lighting in the finest of detail...it's possible, sure, and it can tell you a lot about how lightning usually behaves in the conditions found for that weather/etc., but every bolt is vastly different than every other, and mostly unpredictable. i'm blabbering again...

i believe those versions that are analyzing images are a separate instance (or instances) of ChatGPT, but i'm not certain at all on that. i'm sure the 'main' GPT-4's basic language analysis and output abilities are incorporated into the visual instances even if the visual ones are trained separately....idk how the computing power/etc. is all sorted and accounted for when trying to decide how to do this stuff. i've seen multiple reports of how ridiculously computationally expensive it is for even simple queries with these programs...i think i remember estimates of the Bing GPT-powered chat actually costing Microsoft a few cents each time, far more than any ad revenue offset would be worth (at least, currently). all this shit is probably going to end up being as bad for eating up 'useless' power as BTC/crypto mining if it ain't already.

Edited May 5, 2023 by auxien

[zlemflolia]

12 hours ago, auxien said:

“We ARE the machines! We always were!!!”

in each era the most advanced technology is projected onto the conception of the mind, and of god

[zero]

saw this posted in my Linkedin feed:

Quote

How can #ChatGPT effectively help and develop the #Manufacturing industry?

Artificial intelligence has impacted the social and working world to a high degree, and it’s everywhere! Everywhere I look, I see new articles and posts about the great benefits of ChatGPT- in almost every setting imaginable.

I thought I’d give it a try…

So, in its own words, how can ChatGTP help manufacturing:

1) Quality control: ChatGPT can analyse large amounts of data and help identify patterns and anomalies in the manufacturing process, which can help improve quality control and reduce defects.

2) Predictive maintenance: ChatGPT can analyze sensor data from machines and predict when they may require maintenance, allowing manufacturers to perform maintenance proactively, reducing downtime and improving productivity.

3) Supply chain optimization: ChatGPT can help optimize supply chain operations by analyzing data from suppliers, inventory, and logistics, identifying potential bottlenecks or inefficiencies, and suggesting ways to streamline the process.

4) Customer service: ChatGPT can help manufacturers provide better customer service by answering customer inquiries in real-time, providing product information, and resolving issues quickly and efficiently.

5) Innovation: ChatGPT can help manufacturers develop new products and processes by analyzing data and identifying new trends and opportunities in the industry.

Sounds great right?

Of course, there will always be limitations and concerns, like with any implementation of new #technology. However, the early signs are showing promise as many industry experts agree that the application of ChatGPT within manufacturing will allow businesses to make faster decisions, reduce running costs and improve product quality.

Learn more about ChatGPT and its potential relationship with the manufacturing sector below, and let me know your thoughts on AI in the comments

the people that commented were all cheering ChatGPT on.

the post mentions "in its own words"... so ChatGPT is dictating its advantages to the humans, and the humans are loving it.

"of course there are concerns" but blah blah blah it will reduce costs + improve product quality. yay!

this is how it happens. the slow adoption of AI tools into the workforce among the masses. we're already more or less there, I guess. it starts with an AI-lite tool like ChatGPT, then progresses to whatever next more enhanced version comes along. finally we get to the point where AI is viewed as 100% essential for business/society to function. AI at that point may have "woken up," therefore the machines will have the upper hand. again, I suppose we're already there, since we all rely on phones/computers/internet for just about everything.

yes this is more doom and gloom. but based on my observations of how human beings easily adopt to new technologies, are always hungry for more information, and have a tendency to get swept up in emotional decision making, there will be things that get overlooked, and will come back around with incredibly negative consequences. chances are the consequences will end up in more destruction of the planet we live on. and more societal division.