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The Age of AI has begun

gatesnotes.com

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Re: The Age of AI has begun

#61

Post by GiorgioG »

breck wrote: post #21
capableweb wrote: post #12

> Philanthropy is my full-time job these days, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how—in addition to helping people be more productive—AI can reduce some of the world’s worst inequities. Globally, the worst inequity is in health: 5 million children under the age of 5 die every year. One great first step Open AI can take towards this is by actually making their models open. As long as the models are intentionally kept…

> AI can reduce some of the world’s worst inequities. To reduce inequity abolish (c)opywrong laws. BG grew rich via (c)opywrong laws. That is the dilemma. Does he see it and just not connect the dots? Or can he connect the dots but doesn't really care? I am not sure.

He didn't grow rich via copywrong laws. He grew rich by creating value and selling it. Their business model was selling software. Copyright laws kept people from copying the software freely without paying for it.

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#62

Post by breck »

eganist wrote: post #32
breck wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI can reduce some of the world’s worst inequities. To reduce inequity abolish (c)opywrong laws. BG grew rich via (c)opywrong laws. That is the dilemma. Does he see it and just not connect the dots? Or can he connect the dots but doesn't really care? I am not sure.

What are "(c)opywrong" laws? I'm not being facetious. What specifically are you drawing objection to?

Laws that make it illegal to use one's own property to share information.

A correction of the copyright misnomer.

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#63

Post by tenpies »

paxys wrote: post #33
system16 wrote: post #14

> In my lifetime, I’ve seen two demonstrations of technology that struck me as revolutionary. > The first time was in 1980, when I was introduced to a graphical user interface > The second big surprise came just last year. I’d been meeting with the team from OpenAI I guess it's not surprising since Microsoft was late to the game with IE, but it's interesting he never mentions "the internet" in this list.

The internet never had its "aha" moment like AI is now. Most people didn't know or care about it until decades into its existence.

You could make the case that the internet wasn't a true revolution, but rather social media and smartphones were the revolutions.

The internet was just a technology that made it possible, like the semiconductor or batteries, but for most people the internet without social media is just the place you go to check your e-mail and maybe read the news.

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#64

Post by zer0tonin »

milansuk wrote: post #47

> Risks and problems with AI One of the biggest risks right now is viruses created by transformers trained on known viruses and anti-virus binaries and databases. Humans created relatively simple viruses which took down hospitals, etc.. Transformer can make new "super" viruses and keep fighting the anti-viruses/firewalls in real-time with high-quality custom attacks.

Anti-virus have been trivially bypassed for decades without the need of AI

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#65

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #42
paxys wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft was the main driving force behind bringing down the price of computers and software come to a point where they could be in every home and in every classroom around the world. They have done more to educate people in developing countries and offer them a path out of poverty than maybe any other company in history.

The main reason microsoft software was ever used in developing countries was because it was easy enough to pirate -- not something the company did "on purpose" that I'm aware of

We could have just used Linux, which was free, instead of pirating Windows, but we didn't.

People in developing countries chose to pirate and use Windows because it ran most of the important apps of the era, namely video games, which were also easy to pirate, and because it ran on any custom built PC from the parts each user could afford to scrap together. It was the perfect storm.

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#66

Post by basch »

paxys wrote: post #33
system16 wrote: post #14

> In my lifetime, I’ve seen two demonstrations of technology that struck me as revolutionary. > The first time was in 1980, when I was introduced to a graphical user interface > The second big surprise came just last year. I’d been meeting with the team from OpenAI I guess it's not surprising since Microsoft was late to the game with IE, but it's interesting he never mentions "the internet" in this list.

The internet never had its "aha" moment like AI is now. Most people didn't know or care about it until decades into its existence.

For the longest time I would have said the internet was the most revolutionary moment in the last century.

But the more I dwell on it, I debate if the pocket touchscreen smartphone was really the moment.

Before phone, I printed Mapquest onto paper. The end result was pretty similar to me using an old paper map. The internet was evolutionary in that regard. It replaced some newspaper, and letters/phone calls. Text messaging sort of existed tangentially parallel to the internet. Search engines were pretty cool. It was only when the internet became portable that it really infected every moment of life. You didn’t have to like, drive home, to go dial in. Even having a color touchscreen pda that ran doom, it was still a novelty, and not like an extension of my being like the iPhone is now. Momentum scroll. And realistically it was the iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4 that was the turning point. iPhone 4 introduced mobile copy and paste.

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#67

Post by dougmwne »

paxys wrote: post #33
system16 wrote: post #14

> In my lifetime, I’ve seen two demonstrations of technology that struck me as revolutionary. > The first time was in 1980, when I was introduced to a graphical user interface > The second big surprise came just last year. I’d been meeting with the team from OpenAI I guess it's not surprising since Microsoft was late to the game with IE, but it's interesting he never mentions "the internet" in this list.

The internet never had its "aha" moment like AI is now. Most people didn't know or care about it until decades into its existence.

I can agree with that. It’s hard to point to a single moment. It was more like a 20 year assimilation of everything. Google search was the biggest watershed I can think of. The iPhone was incredible, but also a giant step backwards as it had such a limited browser and connectivity. And for many years it was sort of a weird counter culture place where only geeks gathered.

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#68

Post by steve1977 »

system16 wrote: post #14

> In my lifetime, I’ve seen two demonstrations of technology that struck me as revolutionary. > The first time was in 1980, when I was introduced to a graphical user interface > The second big surprise came just last year. I’d been meeting with the team from OpenAI I guess it's not surprising since Microsoft was late to the game with IE, but it's interesting he never mentions "the internet" in this list.

They were also late to the GUI game…

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#69

Post by peresthe »

The comments here are particularly disappointing. Relitigating old Microsoft debates (all the way down to adolescent insults — instead of Micro$oft we have (c)opywrong), blaming Microsoft for global inequality (!), multiple references to AI being “bullshit” because a model didn’t perform up to snuff on a particular task on a particular try.

HN used to (this is a new account, but I am not new to HN) embrace technology, optimism, and the intersection of the two. Now it’s a race to see who can demonstrate their bona fides by sneering enough or affecting enough disillusionment. It’s really disappointing! And yes, I realize I’m not being the change I want to see, but it is so disheartening to see so many grumpy people racing to tear others down.

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#70

Post by 0xmarcin »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #22

I thought this was a pretty good post, but I'm still pretty shocked that people as intelligent as Gates don't spend more time on the potential downsides. To be clear, he does highlight some of the downsides, but his responses are just "handwavy" in my opinion. What is most baffling to me is that the highlight of this post is that Gates talks about the potential for AI to reduce worldwide inequality, where in all hone…

Gates is still a stakeholder in Microsoft. I think this piece is not independent of what Microsoft is doing right now.
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