14th_cylon

This seems wrong…

10^17 milligrams

(2^64−1) × 0.03 = 5.53 × 10^17 is weight in grams.

but i had an error in the second paragraph where i said this number is number of grains.

the ultimate result (712 times the annual production) is correct.

sorry for the confusion and thx for catching that.

oh sure. when someone says "you can't just blindly extrapolate a curve", there must be some conspiracy behind it, it absolutely cannot be because you can't just blindly extrapolate a curve 😂

it is a comic pointing to a problem. don't over-analyze it.

personally, i like this one better, but ultimately they both point to same issue.

makes alot of weird sense

it really does not (specifically putting flat-earthers together with the other two groups). maybe don't take psychiatry lessons from two paragraph lessons by author with unknown qualification on the internet 😆

AI made those discoveries. Yes, it is true that humans made AI, so in a way, humans made the discoveries, but if that is your take, then it is impossible for AI to ever make any discovery.

if this is your take, then lot of keyboard made a lot of discovery.

AI could make a discovery if there was one (ai). there is none at the moment, and there won't be any for any foreseeable future.

tool that can generate statistically probable text without really understanding meaning of the words is not an intelligence in any sense of the word.

your other examples, like playing chess, is just applying the computers to brute-force through specific mundane task, which is obviously something computers are good at and being used since we have them, but again, does not constitute a thinking, or intelligence, in any way.

it is laughable to think that anyone knows where the current rapid trajectory will stop for this new technology, and much more laughable to think we are already at the end.

it is also laughable to assume it will just continue indefinitely, because "there is a trajectory". lot of technology have some kind of limit.

and just to clarify, i am not some anti-computer get back to trees type. i am eager to see what machine learning models will bring in the field of evidence based medicine, for example, which is something where humans notoriously suck. but i will still not call it "intelligence" or "thinking", or "making a discovery". i will call it synthetizing so much data that would be humanly impossible and finding a pattern in it, and i will consider it cool result, no matter what we call it.

In general, “The technology is young and will get better with time” is not just a reasonable argument, but almost a consistent pattern. Note that XKCD’s example is about events, not technology.

yeah, no.

try to compare horse speed with ford t and blindly extrapolate that into the future. look at the moore's law. technology does not just grow upwards if you give it enough time, most of it has some kind of limit.

and it is not out of realm of possibility that llms, having already stolen all of human knowledge from the internet, having found it is not enough and spewing out bullshit as a result of that monumental theft, have already reached it.

that may not be the case for every machine learning tool developed for some specific purpose, but blind assumption it will just grow indiscriminately, because "there is a trend", is overly optimistic.

the lab leak theory is looking pretty solid

readers added context:

running out of o2 might not be, but having that o2 mixed with some fucking poison definitely is...

will therefore never be good enough?

no one said that. but someone did try to reject the fact it is demonstrably bad right now, because "there is a trajectory".

I appreciate the XKCD comic, but I think you’re exaggerating that other commenter’s intent.

i don't think so. the other commenter clearly rejects the critic(1) and implies that existence of upward trajectory means it will one day overcome the problem(2).

while (1) is well documented fact right now, (2) is just wishful thinking right now.

hence the comic, because "the trajectory" doesn't really mean anything.

For example, AI has discovered

no, people have discovered. llms were just a tool used to manipulate large sets of data (instructed and trained by people for the specific task) which is something in which computers are obviously better than people. but same as we don't say "keyboard made a discovery", the llm didn't make a discovery either.

that is just intentionally misleading, as is calling the technology "artificial intelligence", because there is absolutely no intelligence whatsoever.

and comparing that to einstein is just laughable. einstein understood the broad context and principles and applied them creatively. llm doesn't understand anything. it is more like a toddler watching its father shave and then moving a lego piece accross its face pretending to shave as well, without really understaning what is shaving.