531–540 of 623 posts
Despite all the negativity in replies, I try to remain optimistic that this investment in AGI-related research is going to be a net positive. Congrats to the team, and break a leg!
HN had more positive comments regarding that announcement.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. We've not gone back to having well funded research facilities like this one since Bell Labs. Those were amazing days where we saw a lot of amazing breakthroughs. I wish companies like Microsoft and the rest would invest in external research institutes more.
I often think that if I were a billionaire,I'd rather spend hundreds of millions on some cool R&D projects rather than having some 100 meter boat that one uses a only a few times a year. I could at least walk around in 20 or so years and say "I funded this" rather than pointing at a rusting boat nobody will ever care about.
Billionaires buy cars and boats because they're stores of value. For instance, a Mclaren from the 90s is worth more today than when it was sold.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And so has every other big idea that didn't become reality, and that was the majority. This is a really good point. Would be a fascinating read if someone were to collect all those examples and explore that a bit.
The most famous is the Philosopher's Stone: a substance that can convert base metals into gold. But in itself, that was not the point. It would also transform the owner or user -- it was a hermetic symbol, a mechanical means to "pierce the veil" and to see the deep mystical and magical truths, the Real Reality. It was immanent , a thing in the world, that enabled the transcendent , to go beyond , above , outside of t…
I'm not sure the reference you are making. Red pill/blue pill? I wasn't aware of the symbolism in the Philosopher's Stone.
> But the operators have not, so far as I can deduce, ascended to any higher planes of existence.
I guess I'm unfamiliar with this non-literal aspect to the philosopher's stone.
I'm missing the allusions you are making. To ascend to higher planes of existence, no need for AGI, some acid will do.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think discussions of AI safety at this stage -- when we're already having problems with what passes for AI these days that we're not handling well at all -- is a bit silly, but I don't have something particularly intelligent to say on the matter, and neither, it seems, does anyone else, except maybe for this article that shows that the AGI paranoia (as opposed to the real threats from "AI" we're already facing, lik…
I agree with you in a way, if AGI ends up being 300yrs out then work on safety now is likely not that important since whatever technology is developed in that time will probably end up being critical to solving the problem. My main issue personally is that I'm not confident if it's really far out or not and people seem bad at predicting this on both sides. Given that, it probably makes sense to start the work now sin…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I often think that if I were a billionaire,I'd rather spend hundreds of millions on some cool R&D projects rather than having some 100 meter boat that one uses a only a few times a year. I could at least walk around in 20 or so years and say "I funded this" rather than pointing at a rusting boat nobody will ever care about.
In many cases people will be more interested in your boat rather than a bunch of startups nobody's ever heard of.
If I were a billionaire, that's exclusively where I'd be putting my money, selfishly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a flawed analogy. The conceptual basis of nuclear weapons was well understood as soon as it was learned that the atom has a compact nucleus. The energy needed to bind that nucleus together gives a rough idea of the power of a fission weapon. If that energy could be liberated all at once, it would make an explosive orders of magnitude more powerful than anything known. It was hard to predict when or if such a…
1932 neutron discovered 1942 first atomic reactor 1945 fission bomb Now for AI 1897 electron discovered 1940's vacuum tube computers 1970's integrated circuits 1980's first AI wave fails, AI winter begins 2012 AI spring begins 2019 AI can consistently recognize a jpeg of a cat, but still not walk like a cat ???? Human level AGI It doesn't seem comparable one way or the other, in many ways. But if we do compare them,…
1943 First mathematical neural network model
1958 Learning neural network classifies objects in spy plane photos
1965 Deep learning with multi-layer perceptrons
2010 ImageNet error rate 28%
2011 ImageNet error rate 25%
2012 ImageNet error rate 16%
2013 ImageNet error rate 11%
2017 ImageNet error rate 3%
2019 Pre-AGIEarlier quoted context omitted.
Really? I thought by 1940 physicists generally understood fission and theoretically understood how to build a bomb - they just needed to find enough distilled fissile material (which was hard to do). And indeed, once they had enough U235, they had such a high degree of confidence in the theory, that they built a functioning U235 bomb without ever having previously tested one.
They did understand it theoretically. This is the key flaw in any analogy between AI risk and nuclear weapons.
Almost nobody really knows how developed is the state-of-the-art theory / applied technology in confidentials advances that the usual suspects may have already achieved. I.E. deepmind, openai, baidu, nsa, etc.
AGI could have already been achieved - even theoretically - somewhere, and like when Edison got to make work a light bulb, we're still using oil and not knowing anything about electricity, or light bulbs or energy distribution networks / infrastructure.
The actual current - new, mostly unimplemented yet - technology level.
Back then you wouldn't have believed if someone had said you "hey, city nights in ten years won't be dark anymore"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
1932 neutron discovered 1942 first atomic reactor 1945 fission bomb Now for AI 1897 electron discovered 1940's vacuum tube computers 1970's integrated circuits 1980's first AI wave fails, AI winter begins 2012 AI spring begins 2019 AI can consistently recognize a jpeg of a cat, but still not walk like a cat ???? Human level AGI It doesn't seem comparable one way or the other, in many ways. But if we do compare them,…
Beer * beets * bears * Battlestar Galactica
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They did understand it theoretically. This is the key flaw in any analogy between AI risk and nuclear weapons.
Quite fair, but not 100% certain. Almost nobody really knows how developed is the state-of-the-art theory / applied technology in confidentials advances that the usual suspects may have already achieved. I.E. deepmind, openai, baidu, nsa, etc. AGI could have already been achieved - even theoretically - somewhere, and like when Edison got to make work a light bulb, we're still using oil and not knowing anything about…
There's no way to disprove it, but given that in the open literature people haven't even found a way to coherently frame the question of general AI, let alone theorize about it, it becomes just another form of magical thinking.