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Comment by traverseda | Hacker News Reader

>They're not autonomous. They won't be autonomous.

https://github.com/Significant-Gravitas/Auto-GPT

>This program, driven by GPT-4, chains together LLM "thoughts", to autonomously achieve whatever goal you set. As one of the first examples of GPT-4 running fully autonomously, Auto-GPT pushes the boundaries of what is possible with AI.

>As an autonomous experiment, Auto-GPT may generate content or take actions that are not in line with real-world business practices or legal requirements. It is your responsibility to ensure that any actions or decisions made based on the output of this software comply with all applicable laws, regulations, and ethical standards. The developers and contributors of this project shall not be held responsible for any consequences arising from the use of this software.

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Let's ignore the fact that current state-of-the-art models will sit around and be stuck in its ReAct-CoT loop doing nothing for the most part, and when it's not doing jack shit it'll "role-play" that it's doing anything of consequence, while not really doing anything, just burning up API credits.

>existing or capable of existing independently

>undertaken or carried on without outside control

>responding, reacting, or developing independently of the whole

It fails all of those. Just because you put autonomous in the name, doesn't mean it's actually autonomous. And if it does anything of consequence, you quite literally governed it from the start with your prompt. I've run it, I know about it, I've built a much more capable browser, and assorted prompted functionalities with my own implementation. They're not autonomous.

At least it's not all of the other agentic projects on GitHub that spam emojis in their READMEs with mantras of saving the world and utilizing AI with examples that it literally can't do (they haven't figured out that whole agentic part yet.)

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the technology. But it's quite a bit too hyped. And I just personally don't believe there's actually X-risk from future possibilities, not before 50 or 100 years out, if then. But I'm not a prophet.

50 years out is still very concerning and something we should be considering what to do about now.

Most of the severe effects of climate change are 100 years out, but I still want it solved.

What's you're definition of autonomous? Am I autonomous? I probably can't exist for very long without a society around me and I'd certainly be working on different things without external prompts.

Certainly, you are. And you can adapt and generalize. Let's stop selling ourselves short, we're not a graph that looks vaguely like a neural network, yet isn't. We are the neural network.

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