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I don't think AGI is right around the corner

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334 points mooreds | 4 comments | 06 Jul 25 20:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.731s | source
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raspasov ◴[06 Jul 25 23:54 UTC] No.44485275[source]▶
Anyone who claims that a poorly definined concept, AGI, is right around the corner is most likely:

- trying to sell something

- high on their own stories

- high on exogenous compounds

- all of the above

LLMs are good at language. They are OK summarizers of text by design but not good at logic. Very poor at spatial reasoning and as a result poor at connecting concepts together.

Just ask any of the crown jewel LLM models "What's the biggest unsolved problem in the [insert any] field".

The usual result is a pop-science-level article but with ton of subtle yet critical mistakes! Even worse, the answer sounds profound on the surface. In reality, it's just crap.

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0x20cowboy ◴[07 Jul 25 04:10 UTC] No.44486682[source]▶
LLM are a compressed version of their training dataset with a text based interactive search function.
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lexandstuff ◴[07 Jul 25 05:23 UTC] No.44487019[source]▶
Yes, but you're missing their ability to interpolate across that dataset at retrieval time, which is what makes them extremely useful. Also, people are willing to invest a lot of money to keep building those datasets, until nearly everything of economic value is in there.
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beeflet ◴[07 Jul 25 05:28 UTC] No.44487043[source]▶
not everything of economic value is data retrieval
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bluefirebrand ◴[07 Jul 25 05:40 UTC] No.44487118[source]▶
Most economic value is not data retrieval
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HaZeust ◴[07 Jul 25 06:18 UTC] No.44487265[source]▶
The stock market is the root for the majority of all the world's economic value, and has almost-exclusively been data retrieval since 2001.
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andsoitis ◴[07 Jul 25 06:53 UTC] No.44487419[source]▶
Come on. The stock market is not just data retrieval. The statement doesn’t even make sense.
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HaZeust ◴[07 Jul 25 07:27 UTC] No.44487602[source]▶
It makes perfect sense, and I meant what I said.

60% of all US equity volume is pure high-frequency trading, and ETFs add roughly another 20% that’s literally just bots responding to market activity and bearish-bullish sentiment analysis on public(?) press releases. 2/3 of trading funds also rely on external data to price in decisions, and I think it was around 90% in 2021 use trading algorithms as their determining factor for their high-frequency trade strategies.

At its core, the movements that make up the market really IS data retrieval.

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1. raspasov ◴[07 Jul 25 08:00 UTC] No.44487793[source]▶
Sure, the market, but HFT is relatively tiny as a market and the profit it brings. Not to mention, it's essentially a zero-sum game.

Brought to you by your favorite Google LLM search result:

"The global high-frequency trading (HFT) market was valued at USD 10.36 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach USD 16.03 billion by 2030"

(unverified by a human, use at your own risk).

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2. HaZeust ◴[07 Jul 25 08:07 UTC] No.44487842[source]▶
>"The global high-frequency trading (HFT) market was valued at USD 10.36 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach USD 16.03 billion by 2030"

>

> (unverified by a human, use at your own risk).

Honorable for mentioning the lack of verification; doing so would have dissolved the AI's statement, but jury's out on how much EXACTLY:

Per https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03784...:

"While estimates vary due to the difficulty in ascertaining whether each trade is an HFT, recent estimates suggest HFT accounts for 50–70% of equity trades and around 50% of the futures market in the U.S., 40% in Canada, and 35% in London (Zhang, 2010, Grant, 2011, O’Reilly, 2012, Easley et al., 2012, Scholtus et al., 2014)"

In my original reply, I used the literal median of that spectrum @ 60%

Jane Street - who has recently found themselves in hot water from the India ban - disputes that AI summary ALONE. Per https://www.globaltrading.net/jane-street-took-10-of-of-us-e... , Jane Street booked 20.5B in trading revenue, primarily though HFT's, just in 2024.

Brought to you by someone who takes these market movements too seriously for their own good.

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3. bdelmas ◴[07 Jul 25 09:37 UTC] No.44488435[source]▶
Revenue is not profit
4. rcxdude ◴[07 Jul 25 16:04 UTC] No.44491736[source]▶
20 billion is a tiny fraction of the value represented in the stock exchange (and a tiny fraction of the profits made on it). HFT by its nature makes for a lot of volume but that's just a lot of shuffling of things around to peel a tiny fraction of value off the top, it's far from driving the market and the market isn't what makes the value in the first place.