textninja

He’s proposing using LLMs (which model human behaviour) to study humans so the distinction is pedantic. You don’t call it speadsheetology just because someone opened Excel.

> The server that delivers the page never receives the content, never knows which site you are viewing, and has no way to find out.

Let me tell you about a thing called JavaScript.

> A site that was never put on a server can never be taken off one.

If you post a link on HN and the content is embedded in the link itself then HN is the de facto server.

> Doooooooooo dooodeeedoooodeeee doooooooooo doooooooooooo bshshhhhhzhhhhhhzhhhh

Anyone?

The purpose seems clear to me from the explanation provided. Here's what I read between the lines.

1. Send out thousands of letters expecting some to be returned. They may be returned due to deliverability issues, or they may be returned with a reply attached or (probably less commonly) scrawled on the pages of the letter itself. Replies to letters are of course common whether they're expressly requested or not.

2. Give each letter a unique number in your database so you can cross reference the letter to the recipient information (including but not limited to the address) you have stored in your system. The letter may be returned with something else (e.g. another letter) attached so it's important to keep that information correlated.

3. Scanning the original letter is a low cost way to maintain this correlation. When the letters are returned you scan them then send them through a program you have set up to update the system accordingly. The program uses some primitive OCR and probably a checksum to automatically recognize the codes in the original letters. I can imagine this being used to automatically mark bad addresses if a letter is returned without additional context, but its main purpose is probably to route the letter - and any attachments, like other letters - to the appropriate agent.

To support a workflow not unlike the one described above, it is requested that the unique number that identifies the letter be left unobscured. This way OCR can do its job, deliverability issues can be flagged with minimal human involvement, and replies to letters can be put in front of the right person without creating too much organizational overhead.

I took that to mean savings in developer hours (reduced, not eliminated) and assume the subscription price will be nominal at its lowest tier / usage.

No, you’re right, it was chosen because “trust me bro”.

Look, it may well be something he believes, and he’s free to prognosticate (or market) however he likes, but I see absolutely nothing to support the number outside of his own opinion.

Besides, there’s no time limit on p(doom), so it’s completely unfalsifiable (“on a long enough timescale…”), and it’s about the destruction of humanity which means it’s unprovable as well. That, in my view, makes his 70% guess a sensational statement lacking scientific merit.

> when compared against other 4b and 8b parameter models I would genuinely champion the quality of their responses

You clearly have some very specific models in mind. Even if the latest 4B and 8B models don’t move the needle on the “results you would champion” metric, this does not advance your argument that the state of the art hasn’t significantly progressed from 5 years ago.

> I would legitimately argue

I’ll bet you would!

He added a lesser option, catastrophically harming humanity, so whatever he meant by the first is immaterial (“there’s a 70% chance of a hurricane or strong winds”). Furthermore, if it wasn’t a high number chosen for dramatic effect the estimated percentage would be completely arbitrary.

No, the number is made up and the facts don’t matter so the statement can easily be reimagined as an ad lib.

> There’s a [arbitrary number] percent chance that [technology] will destroy or catastrophically harm humanity

Try these: social media, the Internet, the large hadron collider, Starlink, Neuralink, iPhones, iDrones, quantum computers, regular computers, the 2038 bug, the Y2K bug, electric cars, gasoline cars, the great firewall of China, the not so great firewalls of asbestos, mRNA technology, gain of function research, nuclear bombs, nuclear energy, paper clip manufacturers, scissors.

I’m not saying it’s true that these have a 70 percent chance of destroying or catastrophically harming humanity, but couldn’t you make the argument?

> Sam Altman is revered as a tech god in this forum

I don’t think that’s true.

> I will likely get downvoted, but there's something deep within his character that doesn't seem genuine or sit well with me

That’s actually an extremely popular opinion; see for example just about every recent article that’s been posted about him.

Can a collection of around 1.5 billion interconnected cells that predictably respond to signals in their environment using simple rules? How about 86 billion? 36 trillion?

These are ballpark counts of cells in crow’s brain, a human’s brain, and a human body. The question is, is it the cells themselves doing the reasoning and planning, or are they just the machinery this disembodied process happens to be running on? I’d argue intelligence is a distributed phenomenon that our DNA is as much a party to as our brains.

Certainly the question of whether humans use DNA to reproduce or DNA uses humans is a matter of perspective.

Well, yes, reasoning and planning abilities exist on a spectrum, so it isn’t so much a matter of where to draw the line as a question of degree. As for LLMs, I think their reasoning and planning is some of the most powerful and human-like we’ve seen so far, even if the hidden mechanisms and constraints are different (in some cases, more limited, but in others, vastly superior).

Our brains however are highly modular (a “committee of idiots”) so who’s to say a portion, and even a significant one, doesn’t operate on similar principles?

It’s been downgraded to “a preponderance of evidence” from “beyond a reasonable doubt”.

They absolutely can reason and plan; how do you suppose they predict the next token?

That they’re not autonomously solving complex tasks is a bit of a straw man though, and with a bit of creativity we can easily imagine them being combined with models and modalities that do provide executive function and autonomy.