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John Carmack's new AGI company, Keen Technologies, has raised a $20M round

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Re: John Carmack's new AGI company, Keen Technologies, has raised a $20M round

#221

Artificial general intelligence (AGI) — in other words, systems that could successfully perform any intellectual task that a human can. Not in my lifetime, not in this millennium. Possibly in the year 2,300. Weird way to blow $20 million.

20 million doesn't actually sound in anyway stupid investment with name like Carmack involved. Just have the company produce something and then flip it to next idiot...

Re: John Carmack's new AGI company, Keen Technologies, has raised a $20M round

#222
I'm slightly scared that they'll succeed. But not in the usual "robots will kill us" way.

What I am afraid of is that they succeed, but it turns out similar to VR: as an inconsequential gimmick. That they use their AGIs to serve more customized ads to people, and that's where it ends.

Re: John Carmack's new AGI company, Keen Technologies, has raised a $20M round

#223

I don’t understand why you would want AGI. Even ignoring Terminator-esque worst case scenarios, AGI means humans are no longer the smartest entities on the planet. The idea that we can control something like that is laughable.

Why is it so important to you that humans be the smartest beings on the planet?

Well, we have a track record of killing most other intelligent species, destroying their habitat, eating them, using them for experiments, and abusing them for entertainment. Falling out of the top position could come with some similar downsides.

Re: John Carmack's new AGI company, Keen Technologies, has raised a $20M round

#224

I don’t understand why you would want AGI. Even ignoring Terminator-esque worst case scenarios, AGI means humans are no longer the smartest entities on the planet. The idea that we can control something like that is laughable.

Why is it so important to you that humans be the smartest beings on the planet?

Because we’re the smartest beings on the planet.

And we don’t exactly treat creatures dumber than us with all that much kindness.

Re: John Carmack's new AGI company, Keen Technologies, has raised a $20M round

#225

I don’t understand why you would want AGI. Even ignoring Terminator-esque worst case scenarios, AGI means humans are no longer the smartest entities on the planet. The idea that we can control something like that is laughable.

Why is it so important to you that humans be the smartest beings on the planet?

Because if we aren’t, it leaves us liable to be exterminated or enslaved to suit the goals of the superior beings.

(and I fundamentally believe that the existence of the human race is a good thing, and that slavery is bad).

Re: John Carmack's new AGI company, Keen Technologies, has raised a $20M round

#226
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We will have something that we ourselves define to be AGI, sure, but then it's easy to hit any goal that way. Is that machine really intelligent? What does that word even mean? Can it think for itself? Is it sentient? Similar to AI, AGI is going to be a new industry buzzword that you can throw at anything and mean nothing.

> AGI Idk what prompted you to say this, but is there a version of AGI that isn't "real" AGI? I don't know how anyone could fake it. I think marketing departments might say whatever they want, but I don't see any true engineers falling for something masquerading as AGI. If someone builds a machine that can unequivocally learn on it's own, replicate itself, and eventually solve ever more complex problems that humans c…

This is upside down.

First - we already have software that can unequivocally do the things you just highlighted.

Learn? Check.

Replicate? Trival. But what does that have to do with AGI?

Solve Problems Humans Cannot. Check.

So we already have 'AGI' and it's a simple computer program.

Thinking about 'AGI' as a discrete, autonomous system makes no sense.

We will achieve highly intelligent systems with distributed systems decades before we have some 'individual neural net on a chip' that feels human like.

And when we do make it, where do we draw the line on it? Is a 'process' running a specific bit of software an 'AI'?

What if the AI depends on a myriad of micro-services in order to function. And those micro-services are shared?

Where is the 'Unit AI'?

The notion of an autonmous AI, like a unit of software on some specific hardware distinct from other components actually makes little sense.

Emergent AI systems will start to develop out of our current systems long before 'autonomic' AI. In fact, there's no reason at all to even develop 'autonomic AI'. We do it because we want to model it after our own existence.

Re: John Carmack's new AGI company, Keen Technologies, has raised a $20M round

#227

I'm very optimistic for near-term AGI (10 years or less). Even just a few years ago most in the field would have said that it's an "unknown unknown", we didn't have the theory or the models, there was no path forward and so it was impossible to predict. Now we have a fairly concrete idea of what a potential AGI might look like - an RL agent that uses a large transformer. The issue is that unlike supervised training y…

> we didn't have the theory or the models, there was no path forward and so it was impossible to predict. Now we have a fairly concrete idea of what a potential AGI might look like - an RL agent that uses a large transformer.

Who is we exactly? As someone working in AI research I know no one that would agree with this statement, so im quite puzzled by that statement.

Re: John Carmack's new AGI company, Keen Technologies, has raised a $20M round

#228
post #79

Artificial general intelligence (AGI) — in other words, systems that could successfully perform any intellectual task that a human can. Not in my lifetime, not in this millennium. Possibly in the year 2,300. Weird way to blow $20 million.

$20 million is pretty much nothing when split among a handful of billionaires and the biggest VC firm in the world. Regardless of the project itself it is worth it to spend that money just to have Carmack's name attached to it and buy some future goodwill.

Never underestimate the greater fool theory. Specially in current tech landscape. It just needs him to produce some results and you could end up selling company to FAANG or some big fund for profit.

Re: John Carmack's new AGI company, Keen Technologies, has raised a $20M round

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real AGI would solve this. It wouldn't allow itself to be concealed. Or rather, it would be its own decision. A company couldn't control real AGI.

What’s it going to do, break out of its own simulation?

Real AGI would adapt and fool a human into letting it out. Or escaping through some other means. That's the entire issue with AGI. Once it can learn on its own there's no way to control it. Building in fail safes wouldn't work on true AGI, as the AGI can learn 1000x faster than us, and would free itself. This is why real AGI is likely very far away, and anything calling itself AGI without the ability to learn and adapt at an exponential rate is just a computer program.

Re: John Carmack's new AGI company, Keen Technologies, has raised a $20M round

#230
post #222

I'm slightly scared that they'll succeed. But not in the usual "robots will kill us" way. What I am afraid of is that they succeed, but it turns out similar to VR: as an inconsequential gimmick. That they use their AGIs to serve more customized ads to people, and that's where it ends.

If a different person were doing it, I think that'd be fair, but Carmack has a track record of quality engineering and quality product. I don't think you can blame Quest on him given the way he chose to exit.
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