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Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

ycombinator.com

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Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, now it's asking me to sign up to Dropbox. Thanks for noting my request, and consider just including the text in the body of the page. It will blow people's minds.

I didn't notice it at first, but there was a link at the bottom of the popup for me that said "No thanks, continue to download." Clicking it triggered the download.

How do you get transcripts done? In house,outsourced to a transcription service,voice recognition software?

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#102
post #87

Why does Elon continuously talk about AI as if it's taking over the world? At this point, Siri can barely understand me saying the word 'salad'. Slow down Elon... slow down..

I guess Kurzweil and Elon spend some time on WhatsApp. But since Elon thinks in terms of first principles. He probably has this reasoning:

1. Are the any laws of physics that stop us from creating AI ? Answer is No. Nature already built it so its possible.

2. Is it possible to improve AI significantly ? Yes, because if we can build AI, AI can build better AI.

3. How soon can it happen? Since the trend is exponential. It can happen within 100 years.

4. Is it good idea to start worrying about it now? Sure why not.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#103
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, it's really excessive to take simple text content and trap it within a PDF that's then trapped inside Scribd, which requires a Scribd account and login to download.

Scribd is a YC company. What you're experiencing is called "growth hacking".

When i stumble upon it from time to time, scribd is the strange thing that wants to stand between me and information. This is very annoying.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk isn't the kind of person I thought he was. > "Politically, Musk has described himself as "half Democrat, half Republican". In his own words: "I'm somewhere in the middle, socially liberal and fiscally conservative."[116] > Musk is a self-described American exceptionalist and nationalist, describing himself as "nauseatingly pro-American". According to Musk, the United States is "[inarguably] the greatest cou…

> I thought he was like John Carmack or something, but at the end of the day he's mostly a sales guy with big dreams. The self-taught rocket engineer stuff is mostly self-promotion. Where do you get that impression? Except maybe from not following anything about him. Unless you think that the following quote from this interview is an outright lie: "I think a lot of people think I must spend a lot of time with media o…

Musk isn't the most reliable source of information about himself: ' Musk sells himself as a singular mover of mountains and does not like to share credit for his success. At SpaceX, in particular, the engineers “flew into a collective rage every time they caught Musk in the press claiming to have designed the Falcon rocket more or less by himself,” '

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/539861/techs-enduring-gre...

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#105
It always saddens me when I see a slew of Debbie Downer comments from the HN crowd.

"Yes, he ushered in the electric car revolution, but the production carbon footprint is still huge!"

"Yes, he's building rockets, but he took a bunch of government money!"

"Yes, he's paving the way to Mars, but what has he done for world hunger?"

And it not just with Musk, but really with anyone who has been successful. I would have thought that the technologists were above such petty envy. We're here to improve humanity's lot, aren't we?

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#106
Why do they discuss the speed of the line? Isn't the finalized output a much more useful metric? (e.g. one car per hour)?

If there's a ton of work done at the various checkpoints, the pace is slow but maybe the length of the line isn't very far?

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#107
post #7

How would one go about meaningfully contributing to solving problems in genetics without having done the work leading to a MD or PhD (or both)?

Consider computational biology. There are lots of problems which hinge on understanding the impact of genetics on populations and variations in genetics and that effect. As there are already sources of genetic data sets and infrastructure to generate those data sets, genetic research becomes more of a data science problem than a medical problem.

This is the part I somewhat disagree. I've seen lots of strong computational biologists make the leap into generic data science, but I've seen way too many CS/data science types struggle. They take the data at face value, not recognizing the fact that biological data has flaws. A sound understanding of biology/chemistry helps a lot with identifying those flaws and generally with designing experiments/research.

Admittedly that's a bit of a generalization and I am sure there are a decent number of exceptions but consistent with my experience.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#108
This was a bunch of fun.

Notes:

Be useful, that's fine, no need to alter the world drastically.

Big Next shifts: AI & Genetic Modification (oh and a faster connection to our minds)

High probability of failure, not a problem. Tesla, Space X. Push the ball forward.

Democratization of AI is a best possible outcome (direct connection, we are the AI)

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#109
post #87

Why does Elon continuously talk about AI as if it's taking over the world? At this point, Siri can barely understand me saying the word 'salad'. Slow down Elon... slow down..

FWIW, the Android speech recognition (the default you get when clicking the microphone on home screen) has improved by leaps and bounds in the past 2-3 years. I have a very unusual mixed accent in English and it understands perfectly almost anything I throw at it
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