Everyone involved in AI should have read The Library of Babel [1].

It's about many things, but perhaps the most relevant idea here is that no information matters without understanding. We could generate all possible knowledge, but unless someone--a human--can verify and understand it, it doesn't count. The cure for mortality could be written on the moon, but if no one reads it, it hasn't really been discovered.

[1] https://maskofreason.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/0...

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tom_alexander 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> unless someone--a human--can verify and understand it, it doesn't count.

One counter-point: Humans have not figured out how general anesthesia works, but we use it every day to great effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_general_anaestheti...

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mettamage 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The part that does count is that we can verify that we does what we want it to do. We just don't know how.

Same with the black box part of AI. What the weights represent? Arcane dark magic if you ask me. What do they do? Well with LLMs we're all experiencing it.

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Kinrany 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I find it hard to distinguish between knowing how something works, and being able to predict its behavior (including ways to create and destroy it) with probability approaching 1

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pkulak 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Only because we understand everything _except_ how it works.

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mrheosuper 6 hours ago | parent [-]

how can we understand absolute everything and still don't know how it work ?

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ScoobleDoodle 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Trial and error :)

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mrheosuper 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I wouldn't say that is "understanding". We must fully be able to explain to say that we understand it.

	▲	SirSavary an hour ago \| parent [-]
		There are two types of understanding: knowing how a candle works and knowing how a candle works.

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uejfiweun 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Seems a bit nitpicky, we certainly understand how to use it with great effect, we just don't understand the biochemical mechanism.

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ralfd 21 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> but unless someone--a human--can verify and understand it

Why though a human? Mathematical proofs are very ivory-towery, but if OpenAI would solve a subkind of Cancer, without mortal humans understanding, cancer is still be healed.

	▲	sfn42 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Not unless humans were able to produce the medicine or perform the surgery or whatever is necessary to actually heal someone. In order for that to happen it has to be verified and understood by humans, like the other commenter said.

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looofooo0 19 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

But we have pretty good understanding of the logical foundations and the truth of computer generated math. So having a big library which humans could never produce or fully understand has still a value on its own. It is just another level of abstraction.

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somenameforme 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't think this necessarily follows. The point of the Library of Babel is more one of permutations/combinatorics than of knowledge accumulation itself. In 'our' Library of Babel, each book would be informative, if not perhaps flawed in some ways. That's quite different from one in which in which the number of books that contain anything coherent whatsoever cleanly rounds to zero.

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thomasfromcdnjs 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

While I get the point and it's true.

I'm a little more flexible, if the new knowledge (that human's don't understand) can be put into a mechanism and have an observable effect, I'd be happy enough. e.g. a new type of rocket fuel that burns 1000x more efficiently.

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spartacusnacho 8 hours ago | parent [-]

We already don't understand LLMs and they are having oberservable effects

	▲	codebje 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If some LLM somewhere managed to produce a coherent and _correct_ explanation of how it worked inside, but no human ever saw it, would it matter? We know how to apply LLms to problems, which is a subtly different thing to understanding how they do what they do. It's similar to fire: I can cook using fire, but I don't really understand how fire _works_. Heat+oxygen+fuel, sure, but what goes on chemically? I dunno. Doesn't stop me using it. (Pretty sure _humanity_ knows how fire works, though).

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matheusmoreira 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Doubt.

If I vibecode a video game and manage to sell it on Steam, the information definitely mattered even though I didn't understand any of it.

There are drugs that nobody truly understands how they work and they are being used by professionals in actual treatments literally right now. We know purely statistical facts like "if drug X is used for condition Y it will help Z% of patients" and can only speculate as to their mechanism of action. They are used anyway and still benefit a lot of people.

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undersuit 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah that information mattered when someone wrote it down, not when the LLM regurgitated an approximation.

	▲	matheusmoreira 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The regurgitated approximation can matter just as much depending on what results it accomplishes. If I somehow make money out of this, then it's mission accomplished. Arguably, they might even matter more than my artisanal hand crafted software projects which never paid me a living wage.

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goosejuice 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Ironies of automation might be better suited to explain the problem.

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dinfinity 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> but unless someone--a human--can verify and understand it, it doesn't count

Does it need to be a human or can it be some other form of life?

	▲	TwisterK 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It can be other form of life, but that other form of life need to be extremely aligned and keep humanity interest as top priority.

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esafak 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Some things can simply be beyond humans, but what if an AI could understand it? Just because we don't understand something, it does not mean that it does not matter.

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yubblegum 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Update:

"I own nothing, have no privacy, [never have to think, and am not required to solve any problems,] and life has never been better."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You'll_own_nothing_and_be_happ...

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aaron695 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]