devrandom

Karma: 40

devrandom 1 May 2024 12:01 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: snewman’s comment on: We are headed into an extreme compute overhang
The main advantage is that you can immediately distribute fine-tunes to all of the copies. This is much higher bandwidth compared to our own low-bandwidth/high-effort knowledge dissemination methods.
The monolithic aspect may potentially be a disadvantage, but there are a couple of mitigations:
- AGI are by definition generalists
- you can segment the population into specialists (see also this comment about MoE)

devrandom 1 May 2024 11:54 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: faul_sname’s comment on: We are headed into an extreme compute overhang
I think this only holds if fine tunes are composable [...] you probably can’t take a million independently-fine-tuned models and merge them [...]
The purpose of a fine-tune is to “internalize” some knowledge—either because it is important to have implicit knowledge of it, or because you want to develop a skill.
Although you may have a million instances executing tasks, the knowledge you want to internalize is likely much more sparse. For example, if an instance is tasked with exploring a portion of a search space, and it doesn’t find a solution in that portion, it can just summarize its finding in a few words. There might not even be a reason to internalize this summary—it might be merged with other summaries for a more global view of the search landscape.
So I don’t see the need for millions of fine-tunes. It seems more likely that you’d have periodic fine-tunes to internalize recent progress—maybe once an hour.
The main point is that the single periodic fine-tune can be copied to all instances. This ability to copy the fine-tune is the main advantage of instances being identical clones.

devrandom 27 Apr 2024 10:09 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: snewman’s comment on: We are headed into an extreme compute overhang
On the other hand, the world already contains over 8 billion human intelligences. So I think you are assuming that a few million AGIs, possibly running at several times human speed (and able to work ²⁴⁄₇, exchange information electronically, etc.), will be able to significantly “outcompete” (in some fashion) 8 billion humans? This seems worth further exploration / justification.
Good point, but a couple of thoughts:
- the operational definition of AGI referred in the article is significantly stronger than the average human
- the humans are poorly organized
- the 8 billion humans are supporting a civilization, while the AGIs can focus on AI research and self-improvement

devrandom 27 Apr 2024 10:00 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: ryan_greenblatt’s comment on: We are headed into an extreme compute overhang
Thank you, I missed it while looking for prior art.

We are headed into an extreme compute overhang

devrandom26 Apr 2024 21:38 UTC

38 points

21 comments2 min readLW link

devrandom 16 Nov 2023 15:18 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: jacob_cannell’s comment on: Evolution Solved Alignment (what sharp left turn?)
If we haven’t seen such an extinction in the archaeological record, it can mean one of several things:
- misalignment is rare, or
- misalignment is not rare once the species becomes intelligent, but intelligence is rare or
- intelligence usually results in transcendence, so there’s only one transition before the bio becomes irrelevant in the lightcone (and we are it)
We don’t know which. I think it’s a combination of 2 and 3.

devrandom 11 Aug 2023 10:27 UTC
2 points
0
on: Introducing AlignmentSearch: An AI Alignment-Informed Conversional Agent
The app is not currently working—it complains about the token.

devrandom 18 Jun 2023 13:03 UTC
3 points
on: LOVE in a simbox is all you need
and thus AGI arrives—quite predictably ^[17] - around the end of Moore’s Law
Given that the brain only consumes 20 W because of biological competitiveness constraints, and that 200 KW only costs around $20/hour in data centers, we can afford to be four OOMs less efficient than the brain while maintaining parity of capabilities. This results in AGI’s potential arrival at least a couple of decades earlier than the end of Moore’s Law.