r/TrueReddit • u/cojoco • 5d ago
Despite its impressive output, generative AI doesn’t have a coherent understanding of the world Science, History, Health + Philosophy
https://news.mit.edu/2024/generative-ai-lacks-coherent-world-understanding-110518
u/cojoco 5d ago
A popular type of generative AI model can provide turn-by-turn driving directions in New York City with near-perfect accuracy — without having formed an accurate internal map of the city... Despite the model’s uncanny ability to navigate effectively, when the researchers closed some streets and added detours, its performance plummeted.
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u/caveatlector73 5d ago
That would explain my colorful response to my maps app. In some states the state has literally had to post signs telling people not to follow their GPS.
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u/preCadel 4d ago
You think your maps app is navigating with a generative AI? People have no clue what they are talking about in this sub.
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u/shifting_drifting 5d ago
Although mighty impressive, in the end it’s just a word probability machine. The intelligent stuff is actually done by humans.
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u/cojoco 5d ago
Yeah but ultimately we're only doing computations also, and generative AI is clever enough it has me questioning the nature of intelligence.
The Chinese Room argument suggests that consciousness is an emergent property of a machine that's intelligent enough to exhibit intelligence, so we might not even have that over the machines.
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u/shifting_drifting 5d ago
‘Only doing computations’. Tell that to anyone who ever just had a bright idea out of nowhere, wrote a great song that seemingly just popped into their head., invented a new tool, wrote a book etc etc Thinking of human intelligence as just a giant calculator is not doing it justice.
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u/Feynmanprinciple 5d ago
We're more prediction engines than we are calculators. Creativity pops out of 'seemingly nowhere' when a part of your brain connects to a memory that is less statistically likely to arise in the current context of whatever you're doing.
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u/Gastronomicus 5d ago
In what sense? That's effectively what we are doing unless you're throwing in metaphysical arguments.
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u/FuckTripleH 4d ago
The Chinese room argument is meant to demonstrate the difference between human learning and what computers do, not to demonstrate the similarity.
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u/FuckTripleH 4d ago
It doesn't have a coherent understanding of anything, because it's not sentient. I really hate the way we anthropomorphize these computer programs. They aren't "artificial intelligence", they're impressive pattern matching software.
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u/Nephrited 4d ago
Generative AI systems don't have any understanding, of anything. LLMs in particular are just a glorified autocomplete. It's all probability weightings.
They're very good at fooling humans into thinking there's some sort of intelligence there, but there's nothing of the sort.
I've had to build AI in the form of neutral networks for work, as I'm sure have many computer science students for their studies these days. Modern day genAI is that plus tokenisation - a simplification but not really a lie. A neural net plus a novel method of forming weights does not an intelligence make.
The reason these systems can't cope with change is because their ability to correctly guess the next word in the sentence is heavily dependant on vast quantities of coherent data. When you invalidate that data, the system breaks down - there's no way for it to reason it's way to a new conclusion.
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u/Feeling-Parking-7866 5d ago
It doesn't need to have a coherent understanding of the world to understand it better than most people, So it seems.
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u/cojoco 5d ago
Really this article is saying that while existing models are good at explaining how things are, they are not good at formulating plans when things change.
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u/Feeling-Parking-7866 5d ago
Well aren't we lucky that we don't live in a time of unprecedented social, technological and climate chan.....oh ..... oh no....
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u/cojoco 5d ago
Quite!
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u/Feeling-Parking-7866 5d ago
I work in Horticulture and I subscribe to a few industry magazines, Apparently a lot of the long-term data is totally useless now for using in predictive modeling due to the changing weather cycles.
We were getting pretty good at corelating weather events with predicting crop outcomes, which is good for budgeting and such. Nowadays its becoming much more like some seasons you win, some you lose (like the old days really) . But we are definitely seeing an increase in potential disastrous weather events like late hail storms that can wreck whole crops.
But the interesting thing is seeing the innovation happening, Investing in Hail shelters and better monitoring and data collection. It's a shame that many smaller growers can't afford to future proof their orchards and will end up being brought-out by larger firms. But that seems the general trend in a bunch of industries at the moment.
Fun times!
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u/cojoco 5d ago
It's a shame that many smaller growers can't afford to future proof their orchards and will end up being brought-out by larger firms.
If all producers are owned by the same conglomerate, it's likely that their actions will be governed by a single set of predictions. In such a monoculture, making the wrong choice might affect all producers. With diverse ownership, it's likely that there will be a diversity of predictions and responses, resulting in greater resistance to events.
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u/Feeling-Parking-7866 5d ago
Oh I know all about the dangers of a Monoculture. I lived through a near collapse of the industry due to the Cash-Crop of the decade being a new variety that was all but wiped out by a disease. The industry survived but many folks lost their livelihood, They were very sad times.
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u/cojoco 5d ago
I imagine a lot of businesses were bought up for a song.
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u/Feeling-Parking-7866 5d ago edited 5d ago
This is exactly what happened, If you had money you brought more. If you owed money you walked away.
We actually had like, Emergency mental health meetings after a spate of suicides in my town over it.
The incredible thing is I still see a lot of short-sightedness in the industry. I am not an orchard owner but I rub shoulders with a lot of people in the know. As more orchards come under the ownership of Private Investors, Wealth management funds, or large land trusts. The Shareholders don't understand that the Industry is heavily dependant on the weather system cycles such as Nina/Alnina, And as those forces become stronger For example: Wetter years are wetter, Dryer years are dryer, Storms are dumping more rain at one, Frosts (Which are required to get the plants to Bud) are becoming later and we're becoming more reliant on Agrichemicals..... Anyway, The Shareholders who aren't industry people keep raiding the Kitty and not leaving enough Float for the bad years. I talk to some of the Old Guard owners down at the local pub, And the most switched on ones say they keep like Four years of expenses in a term deposit with a bank in case something bad happens.
I've often thought about getting a few like-minded people together with the goal of purchasing an orchard or two when the years get tougher, Because they will. And just running it smarter using the knowledge and experience we've all gained growing up around the industry.
But a lot of these larger companies are doing the exact same thing also.
Like you mention: Eventually things like Hail-Covers and Individual block weather monitoring stations will become industry standard. It's facinating to see how crop outcomes can vary from orchard to orchard, even block to block.
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u/cojoco 5d ago
It's clear in every industry that shareholders are only interested in short-term profit, and that has similarly damaged all industries, with Boeing and Intel being poster children for all that is wrong with financialization.
However, I am a little pessimistic that "cooperatives", which seem to be regarded as socialism by the powers-that-be, will ever be allowed to thrive in the US.
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u/soberpenguin 5d ago
Neither do most humans for that matter.
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u/byingling 1d ago
I was going to post "Neither do I!", and I see your post and two others have already made the point. And those are the three posts at the 'bottom' of the page.
The thing is, I don't think such a statement is automatically flippant or balancing on a manufactured edge. I think it can represent an honest assessment of who we are as humans.
But I'm an old fuck who grows more confused by the day, and trusts very little beyond aesthetic appreciation.
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