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About that OpenAI “breakthrough” – by Gary Marcus

About that OpenAI “breakthrough” – by Gary Marcus

2023-11-23 10:59:13

[Newscaster]: We interrupt your Thanksgiving to carry you this bulletin.

Yesterday at The Data, within the persevering with drama surrounding OpenAI:

Later, at Reuters, additional developments:

The approach in query seems to be one thing OpenAI is asking each ominously, as Q*, pronounced “Q-Star.”

Get it? Good grist for anybody who needs to freak concerning the Dying Star killing us all. (In actuality, although, it appears to be named in reference to a intelligent however not significantly ominous AI approach often called A* that’s usually used to energy character actions in video video games..)

The board could properly have genuinely have been nervous concerning the new methods. (It’s additionally probably that they had different stuff on their thoughts; according to the same story in Reuters, the dealing with of Q* is allegedly “[just] one issue amongst an extended listing of grievances by the board resulting in Altman’s firing, amongst which have been issues over commercializing advances earlier than understanding the implications”.)

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Me? I’m fairly skeptical; I used to be solely half-kidding once I wrote this:

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A part of the joke is that I don’t truly suppose Bing is powered already by the alleged breakthrough. A single fail on Bing a number of months after mentioned putative breakthrough isn’t going to inform us a lot; even when it have been actual, whipping Q* (or some other algorithm) it into manufacturing that quick could be extraordinary. Though there’s some discuss of OpenAI already making an attempt to check the brand new approach out, it wouldn’t be sensible for them to have totally modified the world in a matter of months. We will’t actually take Bing 2023 to inform us something about what Q* would possibly do in 2024 or 2025.

However then once more I’ve seen this film earlier than, usually.

OpenAI may in actual fact have a breakthrough that basically adjustments the world.

However “breakthroughs” hardly ever flip to be common to stay as much as preliminary rosy expectations. Usually advances work in some contexts, not in any other case. Arguably each putative breakthrough in driverless automobiles has been of this kind; any person finds one thing new, it appears good at first, possibly even helps a bit, however on the finish of the day, “autonomous” automobiles nonetheless aren’t dependable sufficient for prime time; no breakthrough has gotten us over the threshhold. AV’s nonetheless aren’t common sufficient that you would be able to simply plop down a automotive that was tuned in pilot research in Menlo Park, SF and Arizona and anticipate it to drive gracefully and safely in Sicily or Mumbai. We’re in all probability nonetheless many “breakthroughs” away from true stage 5 driverless automobiles.

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Or ronsider what was touted at OpenAI as a rare breakthrough in 2019, after they launched a slick video and weblog submit about how they’d gotten a robotic to resolve a Rubik’s dice::

To many, the consequence sounded wonderful. VentureBeat gullibly reported OpenAI’s PR pitch wholesale; “OpenAI — the San Francisco-based AI analysis agency cofounded by Elon Musk and others, with backing from luminaries like LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman and former Y Combinator president Sam Altman — says it’s on the cusp of fixing one thing of a grand problem in robotics and AI techniques.”

Me being me, I known as bullshit, slamming OpenAI on Twitter a number of days later:

Most likely probably the most related bullet level on the proper (not less than for current functions) was the one about generalization; getting their algorithm to work for one object (which, cheesily, turned out to be a particular Dice instrumented with sensors and LEDS, not like a Rubik’s dice you’d purchase in a retailer) in rigorously managed lab circumstances hardly assured that the answer would work extra broadly within the complicated open-ended actual world.

However my issues, OpenAI acquired an incredible quantity of press, and possibly some funding or recruiting or each off the press launch. Appeared good on the time.

However, what? It went nowhere. A yr or two later, they quietly closed down the robotics division down.

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See Also

The factor that cracked me up probably the most concerning the Reuter’s piece was the wild extrapolation on the finish of this passage:

If I had a nickel for each extrapolation like that—at present , it really works for grade college college students! subsequent yr, it’s going to take over the world!—I’d be Musk-level wealthy.

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All that mentioned, I’m scientist. The truth that loads of previous efficiency has been overhyped no assure that each future advance will fail to pan out. Generally you get nonsense about room-temperature superconductors (such narratives all the time play properly initially), and a few issues actually do pan out.

It’s all nonetheless an empirical query; I for one definitely don’t but know sufficient concerning the particulars of Q* to guage with certainty.

Time will inform.

However, as for me, properly… I acquired 99 issues I’m nervous about (most particularly the potential collapse of the EU AI Act, and the probably results of AI-generated disinformation on the 2024 elections).

A minimum of to date, Q* ain’t one.

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Gary Marcus has been resisting hype for 3 a long time; solely very hardly ever has he been improper.

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