> What makes this interview – and really, this paper — so remarkable is how thoroughly and aggressively it attacks every bit of marketing collateral the AI movement has. Acemoglu specifically questions the belief that AI models will simply get more powerful as we throw more data and GPU capacity at them, and specifically ask a question: what does it mean to "double AI's capabilities"? How does that actually make something like, say, a customer service rep better? And this is a specific problem with the AI fantasists' spiel. They heavily rely on the idea that not only will these large language models (LLMs) get more powerful, but that getting more powerful will somehow grant it the power to do...something. As Acemoglu says, "what does it mean to double AI's capabilities?"
I don't think claiming that pure scaling of LLMs isn't going to lead to AGI is a particularly hot take. Or that current LLMs don't provide a whole lot of economic value. Obviously, if you were running a research lab you'd be trying a bunch of different things, including pure scaling. It would be weird not to. I don't know if we're going to hit actual AGI in the next decade, but given the progress of the last less-than-decade I don't see why anyone would rule it out. That in itself seems pretty remarkable, and it's not hard to see where the hype is coming from.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/pop-culture/
> What makes this interview – and really, this paper — so remarkable is how thoroughly and aggressively it attacks every bit of marketing collateral the AI movement has. Acemoglu specifically questions the belief that AI models will simply get more powerful as we throw more data and GPU capacity at them, and specifically ask a question: what does it mean to "double AI's capabilities"? How does that actually make something like, say, a customer service rep better? And this is a specific problem with the AI fantasists' spiel. They heavily rely on the idea that not only will these large language models (LLMs) get more powerful, but that getting more powerful will somehow grant it the power to do...something. As Acemoglu says, "what does it mean to double AI's capabilities?"