For OpenAI, o1 represents a step toward its broader goal of human-like artificial intelligence. More practically, it does a better job at writing code and solving multistep problems than previous models. But it’s also more expensive and slower to use than GPT-4o. OpenAI is calling this release of o1 a “preview” to emphasize how nascent it is.
The training behind o1 is fundamentally different from its predecessors, OpenAI’s research lead, Jerry Tworek, tells me, though the company is being vague about the exact details. He says o1 “has been trained using a completely new optimization algorithm and a new training dataset specifically tailored for it.”
OpenAI taught previous GPT models to mimic patterns from its training data. With o1, it trained the model to solve problems on its own using a technique known as reinforcement learning, which teaches the system through rewards and penalties. It then uses a “chain of thought” to process queries, similarly to how humans process problems by going through them step-by-step.
At the same time, o1 is not as capable as GPT-4o in a lot of areas. It doesn’t do as well on factual knowledge about the world. It also doesn’t have the ability to browse the web or process files and images. Still, the company believes it represents a brand-new class of capabilities. It was named o1 to indicate “resetting the counter back to 1.”
I think this is the most important part (emphasis mine):
As a result of this new training methodology, OpenAI says the model should be more accurate. “We have noticed that this model hallucinates less,” Tworek says. But the problem still persists. “We can’t say we solved hallucinations.”
So they slapped some reinforcement learning on top of their LLM and are claiming that gives it “reasoning capabilities”? Or am I missing something?
I think I’ve used it if this is the latest available, and it’s terrible. It keeps feeding me wrong information, and when you correct it, it says you’re right… But if you ask it again, it again feeds you the wrong information.
That’s not what reasoning is. Training is understanding what they’re talking about and being able to draw logical conclusions based on what they’ve learned. It’s being able to say, I didn’t know but wait a second and I’ll look it up," and then summing that info up in original language.
All Open AI did was make it less stupid and slap a new coat of paint on it, hoping nobody asks too many questions.
It’s a better prediction model. There’s no reasoning because it’s not understanding anything you’re typing. We’re not closer to general ai.
This article from last year compares LLMs to techniques used by “psychics” (cold reading, etc).
https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/
I think it’s a great analogy (and an interesting article).
OpenAI doesn’t want you to know that though, they want their work to show progress so they get more investor money. It’s pretty fucking disgusting and dangerous to call this tech any form of artificial intelligence. The homogeneous naming conventions to make this tech sound human is also dangerous and irresponsible.
It is literally artificial intelligence though. Just because chatGPT doesn’t perform as a layperson imagined it would, it doesn’t mean it’s not AI. They just have an unrealistic expectation of what counts as AI along with the common misconception of AI and AGI being the same thing.
A chess playing robot uses artificial intelligence as well. It’s a narrow AI, meaning it can do one thing really well but that doesn’t translate to other things. AGI on the other hand stands for Artificial General Intelligence. Humans are an example of general intelligence meaning that we have the cognitive ability to perform well on several unrelated tasks.
Their work is making progress. What is irresponsible or dangerous? Im not understanding what you mean.
It’s irresponsible because making it sound like it’s true AI when it’s not is going to make it difficult to pull the plug when things go wrong and you’ll have the debate of whether it’s sentient or not and if it’s humane to kill it like a pet or a criminal. It’s more akin to using rainbow tables to help crack passwords and claiming your software is super powerful when in reality it’s nothing without the tables. (Very very rudimentary example that’s not supposed to be taken at face value).
It’s dangerous because talking about AI like it’s a reasoning/thinking thing is just not true, and we’re already seeing the big AI overlords try to justify how they created it with copyrighted material, which means the arguments over copyrighted material are being made and we’ll soon see those companies claim that it’s no different than a child looking up something on Google. It’s irresponsible because it screws over creative people and copyright holders that genuinely made a product or piece of art or book or something in their own free time and now it’s been ripped away to be used to create something else that will eventually push those copyright holders out.
The AI market is moving faster than the world is capable of keeping up with it, and that is a dangerous precedent to set for the future of this market. And for the record I don’t think we’re dealing with early generations of skynet or anything like that, we’re dealing with tools that have the capability to create economical collapse on a scale we’ve never seen, and if we don’t lay the ground rules now, then we will be in trouble.
Edit: A great example of this is https://v0.dev/chat it has the potential to put front end developers out of work and jobless. It’s simple now but give it time and it has the potential to create a frontend that rivals the best UX designs if the prompt is right.
It may not be capable of truly understanding anything, but it sure seems to do a better job of it than the vast majority of people I talk to online. I might spend 45 minutes carefully typing out a message explaining my view, only for the other person to completely miss every point I made. With ChatGPT, though, I can speak in broken English, and it’ll repeat back the point I was trying to make much more clearly than I could ever have done myself.
I hate to say it bud, but the fact that you feel like you have more productive conversations with highly advanced autocomplete than you do with actual humans probably says more about you than it does about the current state of generative AI.
It’s a (large) language model. It’s good at language tasks. Helps to have hundreds of Gigs of written “knowledge” in ram. Differing success rates on how that knowledge is connected.
It’s autocorrect so turbocharged, it can write math, and a full essay without constantly clicking the buttons on top of the iphone keyboard.
You want to keep a pizza together? Ah yes my amazing concepts of sticking stuff together tells me you should add 1/2 spoons of glue (preferably something strong like gorilla glue).
How to find enjoyment with rock? Ah, you can try making it as a pet, and having a pet rock. Having a pet brings many enjoyments such as walking it.
I wish more people would realize this! We’re years away from a truly reasoning computer.
Right now it’s all mimicry. Mimicry that hallucinates no less…
I don’t think anyone is actually claiming this is AGI though. Basically people are going around going “it’s not AGI you idiot”, when no one’s actually saying it is.
You’re arguing against a point no one’s making.
Except that we had to come up with the term “AGI” because idiots kept running around screaming “intelligence” stole the term “AI”.
I think most people do understand this and the naysayers get too caught up on the words being used, like how you still get people frothing over the mouth over the use of the word “intelligence” years after this has entered mainstream conversation. Most people using that word don’t literally think ChatGPT is a new form of intelligent life.
I just love how people seem to want to avoid using the word lie.
It’s either misinformation, or alternative facts, or hallucinations.
Granted, a lie does tend to have intent behind it, so with ChatGPT, it’s probably better to say falsehood, instead. But either way, it’s not fact, it’s not truth, and people, especially schools, should stop using it as a credible source.
Being wrong is not the same as lying. When LLMs start giving wrong answers on purpose to mislead people we would have a big problem.
