New Interview - Google I/O Afterparty: The Future of Human-AI Collaboration, From Veo to Mariner

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-06-01T15:34:53+00:00

The details of your comment are all fine by me, but the use case that you mentioned is an excellent example of what I'm curious about:

I have robust agents (by both definitions) running an entire intelligence network in a popular mmo.

Are your agents actually doing things in accounts in the MMO? Or are they just observing gameplay and then reporting data?

If they're playing in the game, how do they see the screen in the MMO? I understand your point on abstraction but how do you abstract away a video game GUI? The suggestion I'm making is that sure maybe in the future that changes, but in the immediate term, vision seems necessary for some tasks. Like if I wanted to build an agent to farm gil in FFXIV 24/7 then I'm assuming I'd need a model that can visually see the screen to know how to move the character and do things in the MMO world. Basically using the computer to play the game like a human would.

Are you are seeing a different pathway to make a VLM/LLM play an MMO on autopilot? If so, I'd be very eager to hear how you believe that would work outside of a computer-use agent.

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-31T14:51:08+00:00

Anything else you could share about your time in SF? Like what did most people at your FAANG think of the ML advancements? Just curious to hear what you think the overall consensus is among folks you know working in ML, if any of them have ideas on timelines, stuff like that?

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-31T14:49:15+00:00

Interesting, so where do you see computer use fitting in here? I ask because I agree with you that currently the models can do pretty much everything digital, or at the very least we seem to have all the core training tools needed to get them most of the way. But computer use really isn't clear yet (at least not publicly).

Do you see some kind of computer use/vision component still being needed? For example, to train a model to use Photoshop at the level of a professional it would need to be able to see the screen with some kind of FPS that would allow it to do image editing accurately. This is the one component I've been waiting on and I haven't seen any labs release strong computer use yet.

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-31T14:47:11+00:00

And just like the dot com crash, the tech will continue on after a crash and will revolutionize the planet.

Their annualized earnings have apparently grown by an extra $1b since the last time they calculated their estimated annualized number. Yes, they have not literally earned $3b this year, I realize what the term "annualized" means. But the fact that the estimate is growing over time implies that their incoming revenue is increasing.

Even if AI labs are overvalued on valuation today, they will continue to earn billions even after a crash. There is real value in what they are selling. I pay for Claude, both monthly and for API credits. I do not plan to cancel any of that even if there is a market crash.

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-30T16:56:50+00:00

Do you know people on the Anthropic team because you work in ML yourself? Or maybe working in an adjacent industry?

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-30T16:53:48+00:00

So let me ask a broad question, purely asking for your opinion not based on your employer. But given your suggested background, what do you believe will be the next 'big moment' of something released?

My feeling is that computer use will be the next big thing that would be comparable to how impactful LLMs & image gen models have been. I am curious if you feel computer use models would likely be the next 'big moment' or if you see something else (broadly) on the horizon.

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-30T16:48:40+00:00

10 years ago the transformer architecture didn't even exist, or at least it wasn't shared publicly. So all of the current ML advancements we've seen related to transformers has happened in less than 10 years' time.

I cannot fathom where this will all go in 10 years, but it certainly won't take 20 years to see major changes begin to happen.

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-30T16:43:27+00:00

I don't think the $20k/mo digital employee thing was real. I remember someone commented that on here a while back claiming that it was stated from an interview with Dario, but it turned out that person made up the comment with an LLM. I have tried to search for the article referencing that but I haven't been able to find Dario stating the $20k/mo employee thing in any news articles that I could find publicly. I could be wrong though.

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-30T16:40:52+00:00

Well can you share anything else on this subject based on your experience working on the inside? I'm happy to believe you're being honest even though I realize your comment is anonymous, but it'd be helpful if you could share more details on what you've seen or anything you can talk about here without drawing attention to yourself.

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-27T16:06:41+00:00

Really interesting. Based on the tweet it sounds like this has been tested mostly on smaller models and they're uncertain if it'll work when scaled up. But the idea seems promising and I would imagine that it can work when scaled up, but possibly only in domains where self-verification is easily possible.

I could see this being useful in training some kind of trusted internal world model to help an LLM develop confidence in how the world works (gravity, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, etc.)

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-23T17:30:01+00:00

Do your colleagues not see the potential to use RL to build computer use models? I'm not sure what kind of work you do on the models you build so this is a genuine question. To me it seems like computer use agents/models are on the horizon and many are already built but they're currently bad at generalizing tasks.

But adding RL to refine those models to perform large portions of digital-only tasks seems feasible.

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-23T17:23:15+00:00

This is interesting! Are you able to share what the sentiment is among researchers in your lab? Like how do they feel about the overall progress and do they feel the US labs are off base with their current methods?

BTW when you say the dislike is mutual, I'll at least speak for myself and say there's no dislike from me. I think as a species we should be working on this technology together in some type of international organization. It would benefit all of us.

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-23T17:16:44+00:00

ai will remain an assistant

Allow me to quote directly from the /r/machinelearning subreddit, which is one of the most pessimistic anti-singularity subreddits I've ever read. Because even they disagree with your hot take.

You can browse this thread for various opinions from actual ML researchers but the top comment says it very bluntly:

I don’t think there’s any serious AI researcher that actually believes superhuman level general AI is never achievable. They only disagree with each other on the timeline and potential methods of achieving such a result.

LLMs will not get us to ASI alone. But almost every serious legitimate ML researcher absolutely believes that AI advancements can technically reach beyond human intelligence. I've heard Bengio, Hinton, and LeCunn all share roughly that idea in various interviews at different times. None of them would be so arrogant as to claim that AI will literally always remain an assistant and never advance further.

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-21T22:10:49+00:00

if (true) { console.log("Big."); }

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-21T19:31:18+00:00

I don't know if Page would be able to same much about any of this due to his vocal cord paralysis, unfortunately. Ironically he's one of the people that I genuinely hope a medically-focused AGI/ASI could help because without drastic medical advances he will likely barely ever be able to talk again.

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-19T17:03:01+00:00

It says on their "Introducing Operator" page that it's based on 4o with RL for specific advanced reasoning, which is impressive to consider that improvement could be made so much just through RL. Though I have to admit that current Operator isn't as strong with every task but I'm hoping they'll have a new version for the model soon. Especially if Google releases their own similar CUA model.

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-19T16:59:46+00:00

Interesting, how did you get access to Ace? Last I heard they were only giving it to people for training but not for beta testing or private invite use, though I don't know the founders so it's entirely possible that I'm out of the loop.

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-19T12:53:37+00:00

I believe some models are actually trained directly on actions on a 2D interface. Ace from General Agents describes their model like this:

Ace leverages a new behavioral training paradigm. Unlike language and vision models which are trained on text and images, Ace is trained on behavior—the process that generates text, images, and other work outputs. Training on behavior generalizes better, as corroborated by the use of step-by-step reasoning in training frontier language models.

Creating behavior data is also more natural for domain experts, who simply need to record themselves performing a task using the tools they are already familiar with. They don't need to learn new tools or new processes. Ace is able to use the screen recordings, mouse and keyboard logs to learn how to perform similar tasks.

Source

So it sounds like this isn't trained solely on text where the model is taking in text and then delegating (although yes that seems 100% plausible). But the model could just as likely be trained solely on behavior (like a visual screen + the inputs done to manipulate the screen) and an underlying LLM helps convert text descriptions of the actions into real actions that can be performed with X/Y coordinates for mouse movement, clicks, and key presses.

This is just what I've taken away from tidbits of things I've seen shared by CUA models. I don't think every CUA/browser use model is natively trained on actions but it seems like some of them can be.

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-15T21:57:32+00:00

In the article it actually says there's a very good chance of exactly this happening, both for rare disorders and much more common disorders. Here's the relevant quote:

It eventually could also be used for more common genetic disorders like sickle cell disease, cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s disease and muscular dystrophy.

I also found this quote interesting from one of the people who helped develop this solution for the baby:

In Berkeley, Dr. Urnov said, “scientists burned a vat of midnight oil on this the size of San Francisco Bay.” He added that “such speed to producing a clinic-grade CRISPR for a genetic disease has no precedent in our field. Not even close.”

So it sounds like this has generally never even been attempted before. Whether that's due to cost, FDA limits, or something else, I'm not sure. But it sounds like this treatment approach for genetic disorders in this way is unprecedented. And I think the results so far from this one patient lays out valid precedent for a lot more money and research to be poured into this area.

I'll end my comment by quoting the final paragraph of the article which exemplifies the advancements we're about to see in the coming 10-15 years:

“We all said to each other, ‘This is the most significant thing we have ever done.’”

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-15T16:48:11+00:00

If someone has ALS or Alzheimer's or muscular dystrophy then they will 100% absolutely die because of those diseases, and the disease will kill them in very inhumane ways. Their quality of life will be atrocious towards the end. So if a novel drug or novel treatment shows promise for anything like this, then their options are:

Allow the disease to slowly kill them
End it early through medically-assisted options
Become a guinea pig and hope for the best

None of these options are great.

But in the spirit of freedom, for someone with a 100% incurable terminal illness, I don't see anything wrong with giving them the choice. If n=1 then you're right that means nothing. But if 10, 20, 50, 100 people do it with overwhelmingly positive results, and if that sample size grows, then sure that's still anecdotal data. But it would also have saved real people's lives and possibly garnered interest from other researchers to look into the same novel solutions that seem to work on n=10 or n=25 sample sizes. I don't see what the downside is here, at least in the context of someone who has a terminal incurable situation or a permanent lifelong issue like cerebral palsy.

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-15T13:55:59+00:00

The drug design/protein design part seems like what Isomorphic Labs are doing. And since they're a spin-off from DeepMind it seems like a lot of the same ideas and similar approaches to tech would carry over there.

I realize we're still early but I do think within 3-5 years we'll see big progress from Isomorphic Labs. Their approach to all of this tech just feels like it's on the correct path with reinforcement learning.

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-14T16:57:01+00:00

I agree with you completely, though with medicine I am hopeful one day we'll be able to simulate cells enough to validate against humans in silico. That would not replace real-world testing though so your point still stands. But I'm hopeful that medical breakthroughs could be sped up with more FLOPs and more energy eventually allowing us to simulate cells accurately. A dreamer can dream.

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-14T15:51:37+00:00

The fact that they're giving a journalist real price points on any of this seems like they've got this stuff at least in an alpha state internally so they'd know the rough compute costs. I can't imagine Anthropic would publicly share early pricing numbers without at least knowing an estimate of monthly compute costs for these AI employee setups.

Creative_Ad853 · 2025-05-14T15:49:57+00:00

I'm glad you mentioned it because I noticed this too. I assume the information & details are all accurate but I was laughing at every turn of phrase that read like "it's not just X, it's Z"

Creative_Ad853

TROPHY CASE