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Problems that attract smart people

medium.com

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Re: Problems that attract smart people

#31

Post by chatmasta »

ajuc wrote: post #26
chatmasta wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of the fear of AI is really a fear of concentrated increase in power of those controlling it. Decentralizing models mitigates that risk by spreading the power amongst a more diffuse population. I don't see how it should be any different from the PC revolution. We've all got a 1970s supercomputer in our pocket now, for better or worse. But it's certainly preferable to only the richest and most powerful having one…

Would you feel safer if somebody made it easy to make nuclear weapons in your garage?

No, and I frequently encounter this analogy about AI, but it's completely absurd. AI is not a nuke. I don't see the point of even entertaining the idea of it.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#32

Post by designium »

chatmasta wrote: post #22
Simran-B wrote: post #6

Does enabling to run LLMs at home really strengthen democracy? People may believe that, but it potentially enables AI to run on any device with a low footprint for surveillance purposes as well, and governments don't even have to pay for the development...

Much of the fear of AI is really a fear of concentrated increase in power of those controlling it. Decentralizing models mitigates that risk by spreading the power amongst a more diffuse population. I don't see how it should be any different from the PC revolution. We've all got a 1970s supercomputer in our pocket now, for better or worse. But it's certainly preferable to only the richest and most powerful having one…

I believe you've touched on the crux of the matter. Corporations can not only censor, but also train AI models utilizing biased data, granting them significant influence over shaping the AI discourse among the general populace. This warrants serious contemplation and discussion.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#34

Post by eternalban »

ajuc wrote: post #26
chatmasta wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of the fear of AI is really a fear of concentrated increase in power of those controlling it. Decentralizing models mitigates that risk by spreading the power amongst a more diffuse population. I don't see how it should be any different from the PC revolution. We've all got a 1970s supercomputer in our pocket now, for better or worse. But it's certainly preferable to only the richest and most powerful having one…

Would you feel safer if somebody made it easy to make nuclear weapons in your garage?

Google and Microsoft (read: corporations) don't have nukes. But if they could and did, yes, why not Joe Schmoe? A little deterence for those days when your Google account suddenly stops working. Just send a stern letter to Mountain View.

More seriously: Corporations have fiduciary obligations only to the shareholders. Civilization disrupting technology can not, must not, be trusted to sole custodianship of such decision making regimes.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#35

Post by themitigating »

ckemere wrote: post #28

The premise of this is ridiculous. The smartest people I know personally and that I'm aware of generally are not attracted by AI. Person 1 was interested in fundamental physics (dark matter) but had to leave physics due to lack of job opportunities. Person 2 is Terrence Tao. Person 3 is Ed Witten, etc etc. This reflects the hubris of the tech world that overestimates its own intelligence....

"This reflects the hubris of the tech world that overestimates its own intelligence."

This Medium blog post is not the PR person for the "tech world".

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#36

Post by HardlyCurious »

zarzavat wrote: post #23
chatmasta wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of the fear of AI is really a fear of concentrated increase in power of those controlling it. Decentralizing models mitigates that risk by spreading the power amongst a more diffuse population. I don't see how it should be any different from the PC revolution. We've all got a 1970s supercomputer in our pocket now, for better or worse. But it's certainly preferable to only the richest and most powerful having one…

Computers can’t think for themselves. It’s more like if everybody had a trained police dog - one of those dogs that will bite and not let go, would you feel safer walking around? “Hey OpenChatGPT, find a list of every person who has ever wronged me and constantly harass them with death threats from behind seven proxies” Yeah that will make the world better.

What is this fear mongering? With logic like this we would have banned the internet in the early 90s.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#37

Post by mattgreenrocks »

ckemere wrote: post #28

The premise of this is ridiculous. The smartest people I know personally and that I'm aware of generally are not attracted by AI. Person 1 was interested in fundamental physics (dark matter) but had to leave physics due to lack of job opportunities. Person 2 is Terrence Tao. Person 3 is Ed Witten, etc etc. This reflects the hubris of the tech world that overestimates its own intelligence....

Good catch.

Also consider: if LLMs weren't as big as they were, would the people pursuing this still be the "smartest engineers?" Would their efforts still be as brilliant? If you answered no to any of those, why not?

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#39

Post by mattgreenrocks »

agentultra wrote: post #38

I wonder how many of the developers in the groups denigrated in the author also thought they were the, "smart ones attracted to interesting problems." You can find interesting problems in many banal situations. You only have to look.

Definitely getting crypto vibes here: "the real hackers are the ones staying up late improving Merkle tree implementations!" Probably read something like that three years ago or so, likely on Medium as well.

The narratives people tell themselves to self-justify their involvement are weird.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#40

Post by BiteCode_dev »

namaria wrote: post #17
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The washing machine is one of the biggest game changer in the world, allowing people to suddenly have, like a noble used to have, the equivalent of a servant to do a tremendously costly chore. Without the slavery part. I think AI has the same potential: filling administrative work, walking the complexity of an information overloaded world, keeping up to date with laws you can't ignore but have no way to know about, p…

You're just extending the lines in a way you like to imagine. Kinda like wishing for flying cars when we can't even make them navigate 2D city streets autonomously.

I don't have to imagine anything since I'm already delegating part of the job I used to send to my own secretary to AI, such as:

- reading boring documents and giving me the gist of it

- classifying my emails

- checking for typos and problems in my writing

- writing the boiler plate of documents

- translating doc

- doing basic search on a topic, such as legal obligations that haven't change in the last 2 years

It's cheaper than my secretary, faster, and has roughly the same error rate for those tasks. I have to double check her work anyway.

With plugins, people are already making stuff like booking a plane, another thing my secretary does.

It will expend.

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