“Teaching AI to reason: this year’s most important story” by Benjamin_Todd

This is a link post.<p> I wrote this to try to explain the key thing going on with AI right now to a broader audience. Feedback welcome.</p><p> Most people think of AI as a pattern-matching chatbot – good at writing emails, terrible at real thinking.</p><p> They've missed something huge.</p><p> In 2024, while many declared AI was reaching a plateau, it was actually entering a new paradigm: learning to reason using reinforcement learning.</p><p> This approach isn’t limited by data, so could deliver beyond-human capabilities in coding and scientific reasoning within two years.</p><p> Here's a simple introduction to how it works, and why it's the most important development that most people have missed.</p><p><strong> The new paradigm: reinforcement learning</strong></p><p> People sometimes say “chatGPT is just next token prediction on the internet”. But that's never been quite true.</p><p> Raw next token prediction produces outputs that are regularly crazy.</p><p> GPT only became useful with the [...]</p> <p>---</p><p><strong>Outline:</strong></p><p>(00:51) The new paradigm: reinforcement learning</p><p>(02:32) Reasoning models breakthroughs</p><p>(04:09) A new rate of progress?</p><p>(07:53) Why this is just the beginning</p><p>(11:02) Two more accelerants</p><p>(16:12) The key thing to watch: AI doing AI research</p> <p>---</p> <p><b>First published:</b><br/> February 13th, 2025 </p> <p><b>Source:</b><br/> <a href="https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZuWcG3W3rEBxLceWj/teaching-ai-to-reason-this-year-s-most-important-story?utm_source=TYPE_III_AUDIO&utm_medium=Podcast&utm_content=Source+URL+in+episode+description&utm_campaign=ai_narration" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZuWcG3W3rEBxLceWj/teaching-ai-to-reason-this-year-s-most-important-story</a> </p> <p>---</p> <p>Narrated by <a href="https://type3.audio/?utm_source=TYPE_III_AUDIO&utm_medium=Podcast&utm_content=Narrated+by+TYPE+III+AUDIO&utm_term=ea_forum&utm_campaign=ai_narration" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">TYPE III AUDIO</a>.</p> <p>---</p><div style="max-width: 100%";><p><strong>Images from the article:</strong></p><a href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a2bca85-3313-4534-b077-07b5e07ed2a4_876x230.png" target="_blank"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a2bca85-3313-4534-b077-07b5e07ed2a4_876x230.png" alt="undefined" style="max-width: 100%;" /></a><hr style="margin-top: 24px; 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