Why would you call your company Thinking Machines if you believe this, by calling them that you're already framing them as replacing the human act of thinking.
Feels like they appropriated the name first, then pivoted ideologically to differentiate themselves from everyone else.
While I understand this is a PR talk for a startup, I think the text itself contains a number of interesting observations.
Regarding the idea of distributed models communicating with each other, I have also been thinking (and writing [1]) along those lines, where I see that the data amounts needed to fully digitalize ourselves and our society requires far too much storage if just serialized (limited by bandwidth if nothing else), while smart, updateable models are actually a much better storage medium for such information, as it can communicate only the important bits (any new information) on a higher level, with each other.
The other observation here that rings bells for me is how I think lessons from trying to develop intelligent systems should upvalue the human mind rather than devalue it, as we start to treat it less like an ad-hoc thing, and more like the finely tuned machine it is, which also benefits greatly from optimizing what data we feed it with, the architecture of solution strategies etc. All of which is an area where humans and machines can do wonders together [2].
That was my thought, but I also think we're at the point that the iconic companies that have come and gone 30+ years ago are unknown to the current crop of young-ish startup founders.
I would be really curious to know if the current Thinking Machines team had any awareness of the prior company, or if they landed on that name completely unaware.
IMO this shows how we have been pursuing many of these goals for half a century now.
They're making a "few hundred million of ARR" - not bad for a company who only launched their first product, a training platform called Tinker in October last year.
so in this new AI LM / agent world , AI is only going to be as good as the "AI Conductor". The human which can build the rules, validate the output , and Conduct the AI properly
My experience is that AI is just that, a “mech suit for your brain.” It has no creativity or volition but has superhuman memory, superhuman speed, and superhuman context in some narrow cases.
So it takes a thought and unfolds it, looks up relevant thoughts and information, elaborates, works through implications, and in some cases can execute.
You could do all that but like doing math manually it would take forever. You could manually calculate a spreadsheet too.
Inevitably yes, the question is whether the combined cyborg is still better than the original human.
E.g. I'm sure we are generally less skilled in mental arithmetic since the advent of the calculator, but it has allowed us to solve vastly more complex problems in the end.
Feels like they appropriated the name first, then pivoted ideologically to differentiate themselves from everyone else.
Regarding the idea of distributed models communicating with each other, I have also been thinking (and writing [1]) along those lines, where I see that the data amounts needed to fully digitalize ourselves and our society requires far too much storage if just serialized (limited by bandwidth if nothing else), while smart, updateable models are actually a much better storage medium for such information, as it can communicate only the important bits (any new information) on a higher level, with each other.
The other observation here that rings bells for me is how I think lessons from trying to develop intelligent systems should upvalue the human mind rather than devalue it, as we start to treat it less like an ad-hoc thing, and more like the finely tuned machine it is, which also benefits greatly from optimizing what data we feed it with, the architecture of solution strategies etc. All of which is an area where humans and machines can do wonders together [2].
[1] https://livingsystems.substack.com/p/the-future-of-data-less...
[2] https://livingsystems.substack.com/p/ai-progress-should-upgr...
(I know, Corp vs. Lab).
I would be really curious to know if the current Thinking Machines team had any awareness of the prior company, or if they landed on that name completely unaware.
IMO this shows how we have been pursuing many of these goals for half a century now.
Where? When? Unless I missed any of their models
https://x.com/deedydas/status/2072340532718887068
So it takes a thought and unfolds it, looks up relevant thoughts and information, elaborates, works through implications, and in some cases can execute.
You could do all that but like doing math manually it would take forever. You could manually calculate a spreadsheet too.
E.g. I'm sure we are generally less skilled in mental arithmetic since the advent of the calculator, but it has allowed us to solve vastly more complex problems in the end.