My own take (not meant to be strong evidence of anything, mostly just kinda documenting my internal updating experience)
I had already updated towards fairly shortish (like, maybe 20% chance of AGI in 20 years?). I initially had a surge of AAAAUGH maybe the end times around now right around the corner with GPT-3, but I think that was mostly unwarranted. (At least, GPT-3 didn’t seem like new information, it seemed roughly what I’d have expected GPT-3 to be like, and insofar as I’m updating shorter it seems like that means I just made a mistake last year when first evaluating GPT-2)
My largest update came from the bit where it figured out that it was expected to produce Harry Potter parodies in different styles. Previously GPT had felt cool, but basically a very advanced version of a Markov chain. But the HP thing felt like it would have required some kind of reasoning.
I’m not sure how exactly reasoning should be defined and whether that part really requires reasoning or not. But if it’s just very advanced and incredible recognition and mimicry abilities, it still shifts my impression of what can be achieved using just advanced and incredible recognition and mimicry abilities. I would previously have assumed that you need something like reasoning for it, but if you don’t, then maybe the capacity for reasoning is slightly less important than I had thought.
My own take (not meant to be strong evidence of anything, mostly just kinda documenting my internal updating experience)
I had already updated towards fairly shortish (like, maybe 20% chance of AGI in 20 years?). I initially had a surge of AAAAUGH maybe the end times around now right around the corner with GPT-3, but I think that was mostly unwarranted. (At least, GPT-3 didn’t seem like new information, it seemed roughly what I’d have expected GPT-3 to be like, and insofar as I’m updating shorter it seems like that means I just made a mistake last year when first evaluating GPT-2)
I’m also interested in more of Kaj’s thoughts.
My largest update came from the bit where it figured out that it was expected to produce Harry Potter parodies in different styles. Previously GPT had felt cool, but basically a very advanced version of a Markov chain. But the HP thing felt like it would have required some kind of reasoning.
I’m not sure how exactly reasoning should be defined and whether that part really requires reasoning or not. But if it’s just very advanced and incredible recognition and mimicry abilities, it still shifts my impression of what can be achieved using just advanced and incredible recognition and mimicry abilities. I would previously have assumed that you need something like reasoning for it, but if you don’t, then maybe the capacity for reasoning is slightly less important than I had thought.