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Rich Sutton joins John Carmack's Keen Technologies

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Re: Rich Sutton joins John Carmack's Keen Technologies

#21
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Carmack + Sutton working on AGI tells me it is 100% going to happen. Yeah but if it's anything like the oculus it will take valve or htc to actually make it wow.

Having watched the announcement the (literally) singular question that was presented was essentially "Why should the man on the street care about AGI now?", to which the answer was "They shouldn't". But key to that answer was Carmack's assertion that Keen will probably never release a "product" like ChatGPT that aims to specifically wow people, that's not Keen's goal.

Weird take on ChatGPT.

Re: Rich Sutton joins John Carmack's Keen Technologies

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it was announced on the (relatively brief) live stream.

Thanks, is there a better link then that would let someone not up to speed understand the announcement and significance?

Press release post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37654684

Re: Rich Sutton joins John Carmack's Keen Technologies

#25

Wow This is massive, Rich is probably the singular guy that legitimately has a realistic and long term vision for AGI (and has been mostly correct his whole career) Notably he left the US because he did not want to support the Iraq war and established Alberta as THE reinforcement learning hub since then. Also he did just expand the lab so I'm curious how this will be integrated. Carmack + Sutton working on AGI tells…

It’s amazing how one person can make a relatively unknown place a hub in an academic field.

Makes me really think that sometimes the great man theory has merit.

Re: Rich Sutton joins John Carmack's Keen Technologies

#26
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having watched the announcement the (literally) singular question that was presented was essentially "Why should the man on the street care about AGI now?", to which the answer was "They shouldn't". But key to that answer was Carmack's assertion that Keen will probably never release a "product" like ChatGPT that aims to specifically wow people, that's not Keen's goal.

Weird take on ChatGPT.

Why do you think is that a weird take on ChatGPT?

Re: Rich Sutton joins John Carmack's Keen Technologies

#27

I have studied Rich's RL book (both editions), and enjoy his work and occasional talks on YouTube. Carmack is obviously talented. In the referenced YouTube announcement Carmack basically said that the average person should not really care about what they are doing right now, and the way they are funded they can take their time, not rush out any public systems or projects, etc. - at least that is the way I interpreted…

If a breakthrough in reasoning could occur in "a year or less" then why do you still have such a conservative upper bound of 2030?

Re: Rich Sutton joins John Carmack's Keen Technologies

#28

For context, Rich Sutton is one of the founding fathers of reinforcement learning. He is also known for his 2019 essay, "The Bitter Lesson": http://incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html

cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:euiaXRQ...

Re: Rich Sutton joins John Carmack's Keen Technologies

#29

I have studied Rich's RL book (both editions), and enjoy his work and occasional talks on YouTube. Carmack is obviously talented. In the referenced YouTube announcement Carmack basically said that the average person should not really care about what they are doing right now, and the way they are funded they can take their time, not rush out any public systems or projects, etc. - at least that is the way I interpreted…

If a breakthrough in reasoning could occur in "a year or less" then why do you still have such a conservative upper bound of 2030?

I think integrating better reasoning is just the next step. Thank you for considering my 2030 prediction to be “conservative.” That is refreshing for me.

In 1982 I came home from AAAI with a bumper sticker “AI, It’s for Real” that I embarrassingly had on my car for years.

Re: Rich Sutton joins John Carmack's Keen Technologies

#30
Clearly Rich Sutton is a giant in AI for his contributions in RL, but his recent brief talk "AI Succession" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgHFMolXs3U) made me worry a bit about the sort of perspective he has on what the "good" outcome here looks like. I say this as someone who is generally optimistic about the promise of AGI. I have no love for the machines as a "species", and by Rich's definition here, yeah, I am "specist" in favor of humans. I think we should use technology for our own benefit, and that it's not inevitable that machines "replace" us.

I also think his framing of the counterarguments is not charitable. The serious AI-risk arguments do not argue that a super-intelligent AI will necessarily be evil. They only argue that its motivations will be unaligned with ours, that it will be more competent in achieving goals than us, and that this will be bad for humans as a side effect. I think a good comparison is humans building a highway that incidentally crushes an ant colony. They didn't set out on an evil mission to destroy ants because they hate them, it just happened as a side effect of something the humans wanted. No evil required.

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