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All of Sean McCarthy's Comments + Replies

GPT-Augmented Blogging
Sean McCarthy30

I thought each article revealed itself to be obvious garbage within the first paragraph or two. What do you think?

There was some nonsensical gibberish, like this:

In particular, I see the primary relationship as being more intense, but usually shorter in duration, rather than a question of “how much sex can we have?”

But mainly what I mean is that within a couple sentences you can tell it's in the "internet garbage" genre. E.g.

Some writers are better at discovery writing than others. Some are better at plotting. Many writers use a combination of both techniques. There are even writers who are good at both, but they are rare.

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Sean McCarthy60

You've improved the summary, thank you.

The main issue is still missing context. For example, if someone asks "is x possible" and he answers that it is, summarizing that was "x is possible" is misleading. Simply because there is a difference between calling out a thing unprompted, and answering a question about it. Former is what I meant by "Sam claims".

His answer about Turing test was that they were planning to not do it, though if they tried, they thought they could build that with a lot of effort. You summarized it as gpt5 might be able to pass it. I don't know what else to say about that, they seem pretty different to me.

Other people have mentioned some wrong things.

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3p.b.
At the very top it says "Q&A", i.e. all of these are answers to questions, none are Sam Altman shouting from the rooftop. I did not summarize it as "GPT-5 might be able to pass it". I said "GPT-5 might be able to pass it. But probably not worth the effort." Which to my mind clearly shows that a) there would be an engineering effort involved b) this would be a big effort and c) therefore they are not going to do it. He specifically mentioned GPT-5 as a model were this might become feasible. Also: In one breath you complain that in Sam Altman's answers there was a lot of hedging that is missing here, and in the next you say ""might" makes the whole sentence almost meaningless". Like, what do you want? I can't simultaneously hedge more and less.
3gwern
Yeah, it's a bit of an blind men/elephant thing. Like the Turing test thing was all of those, because he said something along the lines of "we don't want to aim for passing the Turing test (because that's pointless/useless and OA can only do a few things at a time) but we could if we put a few years into it and a hypothetical GPT-5* alone could probably do it". All 3 claims ("we could solve Turing test", "a GPT-5 would probably solve Turing", "we don't plan to solve Turing") are true and logically connected, but different people will be interested in different parts. * undefined but presumably like a GPT-4 or GPT-3 in being another 2 OOM or so beyond the previous GPT
Sean McCarthy*230

Reading through these notes I was alarmed by how much they misrepresented what Sam Altman said. I feel bad for the guy that he came on and so thoughtfully answered a ton of questions and then it gets posted online as "Sam Altman claims _____!"

An example:

GPT-5 might be able to pass the Turing test. But probably not worth the effort.

A question was asked about how far out he thought we were from being able to pass the Turing Test. Sam thought that this was technically feasible in the near term but would take a lot of effort that was better spent elsewhere, so... (read more)

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-1Rob Bensinger
Maybe some attendees could make a private Google Doc that tries to be a little more precise about the original claims/context/vibe, then share it after enough attendees have glanced over it to make you confident in the summary? I don't expect this would be a huge night-and-day difference from the OP, but it may matter a fair bit for a few of the points. And part of what bothers me right now is that I don't know which parts to be more skeptical of.
p.b.190

Nowhere did I write "Sam Altman claims ... !"

Instead I wrote: "These notes are not verbatim [...]While note-taking I also tended to miss parts of further answers, so this is far from complete and might also not be 100% accurate. Corrections welcome."

Talk about badly misrepresenting ...

I fail to see how "A question was asked about how far out he thought we were from being able to pass the Turing Test. Sam thought that this was technically feasible in the near term but would take a lot of effort that was better spent elsewhere, so they were quite unlikely to... (read more)

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Kelly Bet on Everything
Sean McCarthy130

This might not be for you, but I found http://mindingourway.com/ to be very helpful in terms of finding motivation.

The other main thing I'd target would be to spend time around people who make you feel excited about stuff. Don't try to do it alone.

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