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The Age of AI has begun

gatesnotes.com

131–140 of 228 posts

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gates favored an approach he (and others) referred to as the information superhighway vs the post 1980s modern Internet. He regarded the Internet as a precursor to what he called the information superhighway in the book. It's not that he didn't see something equivalent to the Internet happening, he disagreed with exactly how it would look (who would own/control it is more likely what he had in mind given the context;…

He absolutely wanted a closed, proprietary network, and that’s also what he built: MSN. But it didn’t work, so they recycled the name into the MSN we know today. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Dial-up

Which of course got commingled with “Live”, MSN the dialup, “MSNBC”, and even active desktop (IIRC)… probably way more I’m forgetting too.

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#133
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if humans would behave better - or at least, be more reigned-in - if we could only interact with people we are physically close to.

You have thousands of years of human history to look back on to figure out whether that is true or not. I'm going to go ahead and say that the answer is a pretty clear "no".

I'm not so sure about that. We have more information at our fingertips than ever before, and we can talk to people on the other side of the planet in real time.

However, all it takes is a couple minutes of browsing social media or playing an online game to see that humanity has some pretty poor ideas of what constitutes acceptable social behavior.

I don't think we've advanced socially all that much. I've read a fair number of history books (my degree is in history), and while our data on daily social behavior of the common person is woefully incomplete, I haven't seen much evidence that we're all that much more polite than our ancient Babylonian cousins.

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#134

Bill also said most meetings would be happening in the metaverse in two years

Most meetings likely do happen over Zoom/WebEx/Jitsi/FaceTime at this point, so that would make him correct (minus the VR part, but I think the sentiment was "virtual meetings").

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#135
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has done some research on AI in the last 25 years I find this current iteration amazing. 25 years ago when I was just starting my Bachelor's degree, AI was in a sort of "hiatus". The "great" AI procedures were mostly rule based systems. We read about MYCIN and similar expert systems and how they could do amazing stuff. We also read about AI generating new strategies for Backgammon. That was amazing. Bu…

Well, the 70's AI is out there optimizing the software you write; making sure you can use all the bandwidth on your network links; routing people over the maps they have on their pockets. The 90's AI is out there making trucks and ships cheaper to run; reducing the amount of wood, steel, plastics, etc our industries use; helping design bridges or microprocessors; optimizing your code at runtime inside the CPU. The 10…

People might not call them AIs, but the big AIs of the 2010's are definitely recommendation algorithms and they have had a huge influence on society (facebook, youtube, twitter, tiktok, instagram, etc.).

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me be facetious here. If GPT-4 was truly all that, it would be classified and at work in Ukraine (or somewhere) right now. Not running Akinator-tier promo marketing gigs.

I would actually assume there is something more powerful than ChatGPT-4 at work helping the US military right now. Likewise for Russia. There's even a possibly that's the reason the conflict is dragging on so long.

You only think the conflict is dragging on for tomorrow long time because of the media hype that one of the sides is going to win... any day now!

The fact is that most wars tend to drag on for years.

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#137
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.

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.

Joshua Ward didn't grow rich via slavery. He grew rich by creating cotton and selling it. Their business model was selling cotton. Slavery laws kept people from breathing freely without paying for it.

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#138

> 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…

Before this happens AI will be utilized to better navigate billing at hospitals to maximize the profits.

Let’s play a game of “conservative impacts of AI on the labor force”

- the Bureau of Labor Statistics thinks we should have 15% more software engineers in 10 years. What if we had 10% fewer?

-800k project managers - how about 650k in 10 years?

-nearly 4 million executive assistants and admins - let’s take 1M off that total

-millions combined (still) in clerical roles across industries, including financial, medical, warehouse, etc. let’s take 1-2M off that total

- journalists, writers, editors, graphic designers, interior designers, illustrators, …

… and the list goes on. These are intentionally conservative numbers (no 50% cuts or jobs going away entirely) but they still add up to millions.

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#140
post #80

I like Bill Gates - out of the major iconic tech personas, he is one of the most interesting to me. Yes he kind of didn't see internet or phones coming, so it's not like he is an oracle, but he is right on many issues too. I think he is right on this one as well. The most intriguing prediction was the medical one. He envisions training "medical AIs" that can act as a source of knowledge in poorer countries. Honestly,…

> Yes he kind of didn't see internet or phones coming

Microsoft, led by Gates, were far ahead on pursuing smartphones. They picked the wrong approach (Gates was certain it'd use a stylus for interaction; Jobs was certain the finger was the ideal tool) and lost to the path Apple pursued.

They absolutely saw it, at least a decade before the iPhone was launched.

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