can’t believe it’s been a year! feels like much longer, it’s already quite a mature community with a good set of rules enforced fairly. thanks to the mods and admins for all the hard work <3

I really hope this is what is happening, but I worry that Tom Hamilton is too much of a Labour insider to see this objectively. I know he cites some neutral (BBC) and right wing (Fraser Nelson / The Spectator) pick up of the lies, but I won’t feel comfortable until I see someone like Iain Dale talking about it on LBC.

Starmer’s really ballsed this up hasn’t he. First unambiguous unforced error (some might say letting Elphicke into the party was an error but it’s clear what the logic was there).

I’ve followed Robert Miles’ YouTube channel for years and watched his old numberphile videos before that. He’s a great communicator and a genuinely thoughtful guy. I think he’s overly keen on anthropomorphising what AI is doing, partly because it makes it easier to communicate, but also because I think it suits the field of research he’s dedicated himself to. In this particular video, he ascribes a “theory of mind” based on the LLM’s response to a traditional and well-known theory of mind test. The test is included in the training data, and ChatGPT3.5 successfully recognises it and responds correctly. However, when the details of the test (i.e. specific names, items, etc.) are changed, but the form of the problem is the same, ChatGPT3.5 fails. ChatGPT 4, however, still succeeds – which Miles concludes means that ChatGPT 4 has a stronger theory of mind.

My view is that this is obviously wrong. I mean, just prima facie absurd. ChatGPT3.5 correctly recognises the problem as a classic psychology question, and responds with the standard psychology answer. Miles says that the test is found in the training data. So it’s in ChatGPT4’s training data, too. And ChatGPT 4’s LLM is good enough that, even if you change the nouns used in the problem, it is still able to recognise that the problem is the same one found in its training data. That does not in any way prove it has a theory of mind! It just proves that the problem is in its training set! If 3.5 doesn’t have a theory of mind because a small change can break the link between training set and test set, how can 4.0 have a theory of mind, if 4.0 is doing the same thing that 3.5 is doing, just with the link intact?

The most obvious problem is that the theory of mind test is designed for determining whether children have developed a theory of mind yet. That is, they test whether the development of the human brain has reached a stage that is common among other human brains, in which they can correctly understand that other people may have different internal mental states. We know that humans are, generally, capable of doing this, that this understanding is developed during childhood years, and that some children develop it sooner than others. So we have devised a test to distinguish between those children who have developed this capability and those children who have not yet.

It would be absurd to apply the same test to anything other than a human child. It would be like giving the LLM the “mirror test” for animal self-awareness. Clearly, since the LLM cannot recognise itself in a mirror, it is not self-aware. Is that a reasonable conclusion too? I won’t go too hard on this, because it’s a small part of a much wider point, and I’m sure if you pushed him on this, he would agree that LLMs don’t actually have a theory of mind, they merely regurgitate the answer correctly (many animals can be similarly trained to pass theory of mind tests by rewarding them for pecking/tapping/barking etc at the right answer).

Indeed, Miles’ substantial point is that the “overton window” for AI Safety has shifted, bringing it into the mainstream of tech and political discourse. To that extent, it doesn’t matter whether ChatGPT has consciousness or not, or a theory of mind, as long as enough people in mainstream tech and political discourse believe it does for it to warrant greater attention on AI Safety. Miles further believes that AI Safety is important in its own right, so perhaps he doesn’t mind whether or not the overton window has shifted on the basis of AI’s true capability or its imagined capability. He hints at, but doesn’t really explore, the ulterior motives for large tech companies to suggest that the tools they are developing are so powerful that they might destroy the world. (He doesn’t even say it as explicitly as I did just then, which I think is a failing.) But maybe that’s ok for him, as long as AI Safety research is being taken seriously.

I disagree. It would be better to base policy on things that are true, and if you have to believe that LLMs have a theory of mind in order to gain mainstream attention on AI Safety, then I think this will lead us to bad policymaking. It will miss the real harms that AI pose – facial recognition used to bar people from shops that have a disproportionately high error rate for black people, resumé scanners and other hiring tools that, again, disproportionately discriminate against black people and other minorities, non-consensual AI porn, etc etc. We may well need policies to regulate this stuff, but focus on hypothetical existential risk of AGI in the future, over the very real and present harms that AI is doing right now, is misguided and dangerous.

If policymakers actually understood the tech and the risks even to the extent that Miles’s YouTube viewers did, maybe they’d come to the same conclusion that he does about the risk of AGI, and would be able to balance the imperative to act against all of the other things that the government should be prioritising. But, call me a sceptic, but I do not believe that politicians actually get any of this at all, and they just like being on stage with Elon Musk…

The summary is total rubbish and completely misrepresents what it’s actually about. I’m not sure why anyone would bother including that poorly AI-generated summary, if they had already watched the video. Useless AI bullshit.

The video is actually about the movement of AI Safety over the past year from something of fringe academic interest or curiosity into the mainstream of tech discourse, and even into active government policy. He discusses the advancements in AI in the past year in the context of AI Safety, namely, that they are moving faster than expected and that this increases the urgency of AI Safety research.

I’ve followed Robert Miles’ YouTube channel for years and watched his old numberphile videos before “GenAI” was really a thing. He’s a great communicator and a genuinely thoughtful guy. I think he’s overly keen on anthropomorphising what AI is doing, partly because it makes it easier to communicate, but also because I think it suits the field of research he’s dedicated himself to. In this particular video, he ascribes a “theory of mind” based on the LLM’s response to a traditional and well-known theory of mind test. The test is included in the training data, and ChatGPT3.5 successfully recognises it and responds correctly. However, when the details of the test (i.e. specific names, items, etc.) are changed, but the form of the problem is the same, ChatGPT3.5 fails. ChatGPT 4, however, still succeeds – which Miles concludes means that ChatGPT 4 has a stronger theory of mind.

My view is that this is obviously wrong. I mean, just prima facie absurd. ChatGPT3.5 correctly recognises the problem as a classic psychology question, and responds with the standard psychology answer. Miles says that the test is found in the training data. So it’s in ChatGPT4’s training data, too. And ChatGPT 4’s LLM is good enough that, even if you change the nouns used in the problem, it is still able to recognise that the problem is the same one found in its training data. That does not in any way prove it has a theory of mind! It just proves that the problem is in its training set! If 3.5 doesn’t have a theory of mind because a small change can mess up its answer, how can 4.0 have a theory of mind, if 4.0 is doing the same thing that 3.5 is doing, just a bit better?

The most obvious problem is that the theory of mind test is designed for determining whether children have developed a theory of mind yet. That is, they test whether the development of the human brain has reached a stage that is common among other human brains, in which they can correctly understand that other people may have different internal mental states. We know that humans are, generally, capable of doing this, that this understanding is developed during childhood years, and that some children develop it sooner than others. So we have devised a test to distinguish between those children who have developed this capability and those children who have not.

It would be absurd to apply the same test to anything other than a human child. It would be like giving the LLM the “mirror test” for animal self-awareness. Clearly, since the LLM cannot recognise itself in a mirror, it is not self-aware. Is that a reasonable conclusion too? Or do we cherry-pick the existing tests to suit the LLM’s capabilities?

Now, Miles’ substantial point is that the “overton window” for AI Safety has shifted, bringing it into the mainstream of tech and political discourse. To that extent, it doesn’t matter whether ChatGPT has consciousness or not, or a theory of mind, as long as enough people in mainstream tech and political discourse believe it does for it to warrant greater attention on AI Safety. Miles further believes that AI Safety is important in its own right, so perhaps he doesn’t mind whether or not the overton window has shifted on the basis of true AI capability or imagined capability. He hints at, but doesn’t really explore, the ulterior motives for large tech companies to suggest that the tools they are developing are so powerful that they might destroy the world. (He doesn’t even say it as explicitly as I did just then, which I think is a failing.) But maybe that’s ok for him, as long as AI Safety research is being taken seriously.

I disagree. It would be better to base policy on things that are true, and if you have to believe that LLMs have a theory of mind in order to gain mainstream attention on AI Safety, then I think this will lead us to bad policymaking. It will miss the real harms that AI pose – facial recognition used to bar people from shops that have a disproportionately high error rate for black people, resumé scanners and other hiring tools that, again, disproportionately discriminate against black people and other minorities, non-consensual AI porn, etc etc. We may well need policies to regulate this stuff, but focus on hypothetical existential risk of AGI in the future, over the very real and present harms that AI is doing right now, is misguided and dangerous.

It’s a pity, because if AI Safety had just stayed an academic curiosity (as Rob says it was for him), maybe we’d have the policy resources to tackle the real and present problems that AI is causing for people.

Green policies really don’t make sense. You have Green councillors opposing wind farms.

People who say there’s no difference between Tories and Labour can get in the sea. Or do some national service, idk.

I think nearly everyone was thinking that - pundits, fans, other teams’ supporters, everyone. Goalkeeper would have been last on my list of upgrades last summer, but I’m pleased to say I was wrong on that.

Exactly, if their claims were processed faster and more competently (i.e. with very low likelihood of successful appeal), then the ones who are not genuine asylum seekers can be deported legally and quickly, which is surely a greater deterrent than the Rwanda scheme.

Am I just a naive lefty? What am I missing?

Used electrics are good value now. I have an electric car which I lease, and so far the depreciation on the car has outstripped the cost of the lease by a factor of 2, meaning I will definitely be “up” vs having bought it outright. I’ll definitely buy a used electric once the lease expires.

There’s no way the cost of new electrics won’t come down, economic gravity will force it.

Not really a fan of her being in the Labour party. Think that was quite unnecessary – Starmer is going to win the next election with or without this woman. And what specifically about the Labour Party’s aims and values resonate with her? When you join the Labour party as a member, it’s not like subscribing to Amazon Prime. It means you have to actually agree to the aims and values of the Labour Party as described in Clause IV, which begins “The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party,” and includes things like “promotes equality of opportunity” and “delivers people from … prejudice”. Does she agree with any of that? I’m very confused as to how a right wing ERG member could possibly want to join a democratic socialist party, let alone agree with its broader aims and values.

The merit of permitting her to cross the aisle and sit as a Labour MP is obvious, but so is the cost. I didn’t like it when all those antisemites joined under Corbyn’s leadership, and I don’t like this now.

I don’t name my servers anything special, but I do name my various Zigbee sensors in Home Assistant after Egyptian gods. Atum-Ra, Tefnut, Shu, etc. I’ve avoided the ones that also coincide with Stargate gods, as I thought that would be too exciting for me.

Yeah, my general philosophy on phones these days is to use the OEM rom until either it gets slow and rubbish, or it stops getting updates, then switch to LineageOS or something. OnePlus has done a pretty decent job of not making my phone shitter every time it gets an update, so the OEM rom has lasted much longer than I expected. I reckon with a custom rom it’ll last me another 2-3 years at least, which is great value for a phone I bought 3 years ago for £290.

Honestly this is better than nothing and very welcome for me. Not often I say good things about Michael Gove but he’s done a great job on this and the cladding fiasco.

The real thing that cripples me as a leaseholder though is the service charges, which have doubled since I bought the place. The whole thing is a total con.

Say that to a tube driver, he’ll land a really good punch on your face.

The tube drivers, who famously never go on strike.

I am now a motorway nerd, having first seen Jay Foreman’s “Unfinished London” series with the stuff on the Ringways, and then found this channel a month or so ago. Every time we pass the M25/M26 interchange, I comment on the fact that, to exit the motorway, you have to use the right two lanes (!!!). It’s a whole thing with my wife now, where she is a little bit interested but doesn’t want to encourage any further motorway history conversation. I’ve got to really tread a careful line.

Thanks, that at least makes some sense!

Even in her “apology” and longer “clarification” it’s incredibly hard to understand what her substantial point is. I bet you could give her 10 years to try to explain how the Sydney stabbing was in any serious way related to pro-Palestine marches and it still wouldn’t make sense. Does she tweet the same thing any time there is a stabbing somewhere in the world? “Oh look, a stabbing in South Korea – perfect time to tweet about intifada?”

I have a similar printer but with duplex printing, which I bought because it fits under my sofa. It does everything I wanted it to do; namely, to print double-sided black and white documents and fit under my sofa.

BTW I also recommend the Brother ADS-2xxx series of document scanners, which I bought to scan multi-page double-sided documents automatically. I put the stack of papers in the top, press Go, and it scans to PDF in a few seconds.

I had assumed it was a Uniqlo style thing using tags. That truly is magical, like living in the future. This Amazon stuff with the cameras and constant surveillance, not so much…