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A comment on AI’s big rift is like a religious schism. Parent comment

Re:AI’s big rift is like a religious schism by __loam on Tuesday December 12, 2023 @07:09PM (#38620782)
AI is real too, but the computational capacity of the human race is not limitless. AI is expensive as hell to run, and more advanced systems might require more and more computation. We can only build so many GPUs, and the rate at which those GPUs get faster is likely to slow down over the next decade in the absence of new physics. Infinite is impossible.

I also have to wonder how far throwing a shitload of data at a statistical machine will get us, without a much stronger understanding of how these systems work and what the goals should be to achieve "AGI", whatever that means.

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Re:AI’s big rift is like a religious schism by lazide on Tuesday December 12, 2023 @07:19PM (#38620870)
That depends on what you mean by AI, no?
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Re:AI’s big rift is like a religious schism by __loam on Tuesday December 12, 2023 @07:22PM (#38620895)
Sure, but it seems fairly safe to assume that better models or more sophisticated training algorithms will require more compute.
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Re:AI’s big rift is like a religious schism by consumer451 on Wednesday December 13, 2023 @02:14AM (#38623696)
I agree with you about thermodynamics. When people use words like “limitless,” it’s hard to take what they are saying seriously.

But,

> AI is expensive as hell to run, and more advanced systems might require more and more computation. We can only build so many GPUs

While certainly not using techniques like LLMs, we do know you can get some decent intelligence out of a 23 watt analog computer, the human brain.

So it is plausible that we could find algos + hardware which use 100W of power, and are quite a bit smarter than a human. Multiply that times a multi-megawatt datacenter, and the availability of some level of super intelligence might appear to be relatively “limitless.”

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Re:AI’s big rift is like a religious schism by kridsdale3 on Wednesday December 13, 2023 @06:24PM (#38635670)
Unfortunately the human brain can't be powered by a 23 W windmill. We have to run an enormous infrastructure project (agriculture and logistics) that most of the world seems to be dedicated to, so people can think about making fart-joke TikToks.
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