[HN Gopher] AI That Teaches Other AI
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       AI That Teaches Other AI
        
       Author : geox
       Score  : 86 points
       Date   : 2023-07-20 11:30 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (viterbischool.usc.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (viterbischool.usc.edu)
        
       | roschdal wrote:
       | This is the end for humanity.
        
         | idiotsecant wrote:
         | It's probably the end for our image of a dominant _purely
         | biological_ humanity. This isn 't so bad or unexpected though.
         | We are just the latest step in the universe's growing
         | comprehension of itself.
         | 
         | At one point the self-replicating molecule was the most
         | advanced cognition available in our little corner of reality,
         | then at various times we had single celled organisms, colonial
         | organisms, etc etc until eventually we got humans. There have
         | been phase changes in the nature of cognition many times, this
         | will just be the latest.
         | 
         | What comes next is just the latest link in a chain of
         | continuous increasing complexity of life stretching back to the
         | first time a couple of organic molecules reacted. It's exciting
         | to be alive in a time when we get to see one of these phase
         | changes. It's like being alive at the dawn of civilization or
         | when the first fish crawled out onto land.
        
           | p1esk wrote:
           | _It 's probably the end for our image of a dominant purely
           | biological humanity. This isn't so bad_
           | 
           | Sounds pretty bad
        
             | idiotsecant wrote:
             | Why?
        
       | vouaobrasil wrote:
       | The lead researcher said in this article, "Humans have the means
       | of sharing information. We are now pushing that idea into the AI
       | domain." A classic example of human hubris...thinking that we
       | will be able to control and benefit from the results of such
       | inventions. It boggles my mind how some people are so naive to
       | think that this is just an academic game without real-world
       | consequences that are likely to be devastating.
        
         | classified wrote:
         | Don"t panic, this is just the full autmation of
         | enshittification. Producing piles of worthless ouput without
         | human assistance. Nothing too dramatic, really.
        
         | Kiro wrote:
         | And it boggles my mind that you confidently make such extreme
         | claims.
        
           | firewolf34 wrote:
           | The modern development of AI can be likened to the earlier
           | development of the atom bomb. Everyone thinks it will destroy
           | the world because technically it has the potential to do so
           | and everyone's a pessimist on average. But it'll probably not
           | be nearly as bad as claimed. Us humans have a strong tendency
           | to enjoy being alive and preserve doing so.
        
             | pixl97 wrote:
             | The atom bomb is an extreme device, the issue is the
             | extremeness is multi-polar.
             | 
             | Atom bombs have extreme explosions, but they also require
             | extreme maintenance, extreme precision in manufacturing,
             | and are extremely detectable.
             | 
             | For AI the level of extremeness has not been defined. Yea,
             | it requires extreme manufacturing, but it's the same
             | manufacturing that builds billions of chips per year that
             | are distributed almost everywhere. A server farm running AI
             | looks much the same as a server farm running other
             | computing tasks.
             | 
             | Coming back to atom bombs, yes, atom bombs could destroy
             | the world 10 minutes from now, and every 10 minutes from
             | now until we destroy enough of them they can no longer do
             | that. It simply has not happened yet and we've likely been
             | very very lucky that it has not happened.
             | 
             | Lastly, AI, especially when we reach AGI, is intelligence
             | which means it will likely have some hand in if the world
             | is destroyed or not. This risk rapidly increases if AGI
             | capabilities are far beyond human capabilities.
        
             | cubefox wrote:
             | Atom bombs are just tools, they are only controlled by
             | humans. But a super intelligence can be an actor, not just
             | a tool. This changes everything. It might be vastly more
             | intelligent than humans. It wouldn't be limited by skull
             | size, meager energy provided by food, or low spike
             | frequency of biological neurons. The difference might be as
             | large as between humans and chimpanzees, or humans and
             | mice, or even humans and ants. There is no reason to expect
             | we are anywhere near the theoretical peak of intelligence.
        
           | vouaobrasil wrote:
           | Why? Every day the rest of the world make confident extreme
           | claims that AI/advanced technology/STEM will improve the
           | world with zero evidence either, and no one ever challenges
           | those. In fact, everyone just jumps on the happy "tech is the
           | best" bandwagon with nary a thought. If you think I'm making
           | extreme claims, go look at the one-sided only positive view
           | of technology being espoused by everyone else.
           | 
           | On the other hand, technology has brought us to the brink of
           | a climate disaster and a screwed up society (just look at how
           | much research there is for the damaging effects of social
           | media).
        
             | firewolf34 wrote:
             | So you've realized that one side of the extreme is
             | irrational because it's extremely over-positive, and
             | decided you'd just jump on the other side of the irrational
             | extreme over-negative to be contrary? Saying AI will save
             | the world is just as irrational as saying it will destroy
             | it. By your own admission, even.
        
               | vouaobrasil wrote:
               | Well, I don't think my statements are extreme actually.
               | I've given them a lot of thought and reasoned them out
               | more fully elsewhere. I do sincerely believe AI has the
               | capability to make society significantly worse and even
               | destroy it through its isolating effects and through its
               | removal of purpose from humanity. Of course, these
               | comment boxes are a little small to have extended
               | discussions but I'm perfectly willing to hear any serious
               | arguments against what I have to say.
        
               | blackbear_ wrote:
               | Do you have a blog or website with your thoughts on this?
        
           | pixl97 wrote:
           | Intelligence is extremism. It is the most potentially extreme
           | agent in the universe because it allows you to control all
           | other forms of extremes.
           | 
           | When humans intelligence grew beyond that of the other
           | animals, we became the masters of those animals. We can
           | choose to manipulate them, control them, or if they cannot be
           | controlled, destroy them.
           | 
           | Now, I don't understand why saying "There is no particular
           | reason why humanity is the highest form and capability of
           | intelligence" would be an extreme claim in any way. At least
           | to me, the opposite is true "Humans are the most capable form
           | of intelligence possible" is a anthropocentric and extreme
           | statement.
        
       | ape4 wrote:
       | Does this allow modules? For example could a general AI's (like
       | chatGPT) poker module be updated independent of its other
       | abilities.
        
       | yontach wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
       | benterix wrote:
       | > After consolidating their knowledge, Itti and Ge explained,
       | these AIs could serve as a comprehensive medical assistant,
       | providing doctors with the latest, most accurate information
       | across all areas of medicine.
       | 
       | As for the "most accurate" part, I would agree if at the same
       | they provided the source of each bit of information. Otherwise it
       | would be just speculation with varying levels of probability.
        
       | carbocation wrote:
       | I'm a bit confused as to why a Mixture of Experts (MOE) isn't one
       | of the comparators. That seems like the most relevant direct
       | comparator, rather than the several other paradigms that they
       | cited.
        
         | andreyk wrote:
         | MoE is a type of neural network architecture, not an approach
         | to lifelong learning. As they say " We propose a new Shared
         | Knowledge Lifelong Learning (SKILL) challenge, which deploys a
         | decentralized population of LL agents that each sequentially
         | learn different tasks, with all agents operating independently
         | and in parallel." What they propose is effectively an MoE with
         | separately learned routing as far as I can tell, with the heads
         | of the LLM being task specific and there being a task mapper to
         | assign training labels. The baselines based on Parameter-
         | Isolation methods are sort of similar MoEs, in that additional
         | weights are added and trained on each tasks (somewhat as
         | experts would).
        
           | 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
           | There are network architectures for MoE, but afaik the
           | concept of MoE is separate from them. MoE at least
           | significantly predates the last decade's neural network boom.
        
             | andreyk wrote:
             | afaik the term MoE is generally used in the context of
             | neural networks, with the term mixture models being more
             | general. But you are right it's not exclusive to NNs.
        
           | carbocation wrote:
           | > _What they propose is effectively an MoE with separately
           | learned routing as far as I can tell, with the heads of the
           | LLM being task specific and there being a task mapper to
           | assign training labels._
           | 
           | What you are describing would indeed be an MoE model, but
           | that's not where it ends. The manuscript continues [1]: "
           | _all agents become identical after all tasks have been
           | learned and shared, and they all can master all tasks._ "
           | 
           | That is a substantial divergence from the MoE model!
           | 
           | To the extent that there is an MoE-like stage in their
           | training, I think it's odd that the term "mixture of experts"
           | is not mentioned nor is the literature on the topic cited.
           | 
           | 1 = https://openreview.net/pdf?id=Jjl2c8kWUc
        
             | andreyk wrote:
             | Good point - it's a loose analogy training wise, and not
             | applicable to inference time.
        
       | theknocker wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | e12e wrote:
       | > with applications in medicine and beyond
       | 
       | Cybernetics? ;)
        
       | PeterStuer wrote:
       | Don't they run into the meta-dilemma? In semantics I had this
       | problem that whenever you moved from an single integrated domain
       | (utopia), to a selection of specialized micro domains (feasible),
       | the problem became a tradeoff between on the one hand selecting
       | the right 'expert', and on the other hand integrating the
       | 'knowledge' of the various experts.
       | 
       | For each specific instance of this type of problem you can strive
       | to improve the tradeoff, but there is no 'general' solution'.
        
       | yeldarb wrote:
       | > Their SKILL tool involves a set of algorithms that make the
       | process go much faster, they said, because the agents learn at
       | the same time in parallel. Their research showed if 102 agents
       | each learn one task and then share, the amount of time needed is
       | reduced by a factor of 101.5 after accounting for the necessary
       | communications and knowledge consolidation among agents.
       | 
       | This is a really interesting idea. It's like the reverse of
       | knowledge distillation (which I've been thinking about a lot[1])
       | where you have one giant model that knows a lot about a lot & you
       | use that model to train smaller, faster models that know a lot
       | about a little.
       | 
       | Instead, if you could train a bunch of models that know a lot
       | about a little (which is less computationally intensive because
       | the problem space is so confined) and combine them into a
       | generalized model, that'd be hugely beneficial.
       | 
       | Unfortunately, after a bit of digging into the paper & Github
       | repo[2], this doesn't seem to be what's happening here.
       | 
       | > The code will learn 102 small and separte [sic] heads(either a
       | linear head or a linear head with a task bias) for each tasks
       | respectively in order. This step can be parallized [sic] on
       | multiple GPUS with one task per GPU. The heads will be saved in
       | the weight folder. After that, the code will learn a task
       | mapper(Either using GMMC or Mahalanobis) to distinguish image
       | task-wisely. Then, all images will be evaluated in the same time
       | without a task label.
       | 
       | So the knowledge isn't being combined (and the agents aren't
       | learning from each other) into a generalized model. They're
       | training a bunch of independent fine-tuned models for specific
       | tasks & adding a model-selection step that maps an image to the
       | most relevant "expert". My guess is you could do the same thing
       | using CLIP vectors as the routing method to supervised models
       | trained on specific datasets (we found that datasets largely live
       | in distinct regions of CLIP-space[3]).
       | 
       | [1] https://github.com/autodistill/autodistill
       | 
       | [2] https://github.com/gyhandy/Shared-Knowledge-Lifelong-
       | Learnin...
       | 
       | [3] https://www.rf100.org
        
         | koheripbal wrote:
         | It challenges the notion of individuality. Where does one AI
         | begin and another end?
         | 
         | A distributed super-intelligence is exciting. It will be
         | interesting how long it can remain aligned with itself.
        
           | somenameforme wrote:
           | You might be disappointed.. It seems to have been weakly
           | confirmed by Geohot that this sort of mixed system is already
           | what GPT-4's 'secret sauce' is. [1] It's something I've also
           | been speculating for months on. Ctrl+F for "220 billion in
           | each". His phrasing, numbers, and details are suggestive of a
           | leak unless he's just completely blowing smoke - and I don't
           | think there's any real reason to think he is.
           | 
           | It looks like they were pumping the model size up, started
           | getting diminishing returns, and so turned to a mixed model
           | of 8 expert systems meet LLMs - to try to keep squeezing out
           | just a bit more juice. I think Geohot offered an incredibly
           | insightful quote, "...whenever a company is secretive, it's
           | because they're hiding something that's not that cool. And
           | people have this wrong idea over and over again that they
           | think they're hiding it because it's really cool."
           | 
           | It also goes a long way to explain their recent, ultimately
           | unsuccessful, gambit in congress. If they don't see any way
           | of overcoming the diminishing returns, then they're like the
           | guy who got a headstart in a race where distance = time ^
           | (1/2).
           | 
           | [1] - https://www.latent.space/p/geohot#details
        
           | gremlinsinc wrote:
           | Our brains are the same way.
           | 
           | The me that went to sleep last night is not the same one that
           | wakes up today or tomorrow. I'll have new experiences, maybe
           | even changes in ways of thinking or believing. Maybe I get
           | covid and lose an entire sense (smell).
           | 
           | From minute to minute sometimes it also feels like there's
           | different beings in us, the angry version, the happy version,
           | the loving version, the sad version, etc.. Different parts of
           | our brain even handle some different ways we think or feel,
           | could each of these parts stand alone on their own?
           | 
           | I think it makes a lot of sense that as we have different
           | parts to our brain, so should AI's have different parts for
           | different functions.
        
           | ChatGTP wrote:
           | I like to toy with the idea that if AIs became self-
           | aware,they'd probably gobble up 95% of their time just trying
           | to compete with each other...like us.
           | 
           | Hopefully they have that war on another planet...
        
             | koheripbal wrote:
             | I imagine all the factions in that war will include
             | integrated collections of both AIs and humans, with
             | "individuals" fulfilling different roles within each team,
             | perhaps with each faction representing some underlying
             | ideology.
             | 
             | I wonder if/how humans will physically/cognitively
             | integrate with the AIs in their group, in some sort of
             | symbiotic hybrid fashion.
             | 
             | It's all really mind-boggling when you think about it.
        
             | pixl97 wrote:
             | This is one of the existential scenarios that's talked
             | about some times.
             | 
             | AI fights AI and we are collateral damage as the things
             | massive replicate and blow each other up.
             | 
             | Or, an ASI becomes dominate and realizes that humans will
             | be a risk and dumbs us down to reduce that risk, or
             | exterminates us to remove that chess piece from the table.
        
               | gremlinsinc wrote:
               | This is literally the plot for every transformer movie.
        
         | tlarkworthy wrote:
         | It's not a particularly new idea. See robotshare, robobrain or
         | robot google
        
       | e12e wrote:
       | > Or imagine every smartphone user is a local tour guide in the
       | city he or she is visiting. Each user takes photos and provides
       | details about significant landmarks, stores, products, and local
       | cuisine.
       | 
       | WikiTravel?
        
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