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The Fallout from the Weirdness at OpenAI

economist.com

71–80 of 91 posts

Re: The Fallout from the Weirdness at OpenAI

#71
post #3

Why do I get a feeling we are going to see an explosion of secular cults that have weird beliefs in AI and worship AGI?

Sign me up. Its undeniable that we exist at or very near the point in time marking a phase change I'm the nature of complex thought in pur little corner of the universe. There have been many such phase changes - when we managed to capture mitochondria, when we formed complex multicellular life, when we began to construct tiered food chains, etc et. All the way up until we construct a machine capable of outthinking us…

What are you hoping will be understood? We've gone as far back as the big bang and as far down as the atom in understanding. Our bodies are made up of trillions of cells all cooperating, and no one is particularly impressed with it. It's just matter, energy and motion. Everything can be reduced to billiard balls on a table. Is there a way to understand something scientifically that is not ultimately put in those terms?

Re: The Fallout from the Weirdness at OpenAI

#72
post #21

Microsoft played the 5D chess so well they made it look seamless, like Kasparov playing 40 opponents simultaneously. 5 occurrences of "Microsoft" in the article body vs 9 "OpenAI". To make my point clear; this weirdness was definitely caused by the OpenAI board deviating from everybody's plans, including a member of the board themselves. From there, Microsoft strategically reacted to a black swan event. From MS's pov…

I mean arguably the event may have been triggered by microsofts manipulations.

Re: The Fallout from the Weirdness at OpenAI

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sign me up. Its undeniable that we exist at or very near the point in time marking a phase change I'm the nature of complex thought in pur little corner of the universe. There have been many such phase changes - when we managed to capture mitochondria, when we formed complex multicellular life, when we began to construct tiered food chains, etc et. All the way up until we construct a machine capable of outthinking us…

What are you hoping will be understood? We've gone as far back as the big bang and as far down as the atom in understanding. Our bodies are made up of trillions of cells all cooperating, and no one is particularly impressed with it. It's just matter, energy and motion. Everything can be reduced to billiard balls on a table. Is there a way to understand something scientifically that is not ultimately put in those term…

>no one is particularly impressed with it

If anyone has ever said anything cynical ever I think this beats it.

Biology is amazing.

>What are you hoping will be understood.

Understanding is like the apparent horizon. The closer you get the further away you realize it is. There will always be more to understand, we will just reach a point where our little monkey minds are incapable of holding enough 'state' to grasp for the next step. I say that as a monkey who is awfully fond of my own little monkey mind.

Re: The Fallout from the Weirdness at OpenAI

#74
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are quietly just using crypto right now. I'm sorry if this conflicts with your worldview but trustless programmable currency divorced from the economic levers and dials of world governments is a useful thing.

> trustless programmable currency divorced from the economic levers and dials of world governments https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2018/04/05/debunking-bu... > Ordinary person: “Your weird Internet money sucks to use. It’s slow and expensive. I lost my coins by mistake and it can’t be fixed. If I get hacked it can’t be fixed either.” > Bitcoin advocate: “But everyone wants [list of ideological aims held only by…

Call me weird, I guess. But the fact remains that ledgers are open to anyone, one can easily see it being used.

Re: The Fallout from the Weirdness at OpenAI

#75
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When has that ever stopped the march of technology? Fission reactors. Human cloning. Nuremberg code for medical ethics in general.

surely there are some countries on earth where fission reactors could be developed without government interference if that was all it took.

Don't we have them already?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressurized_water_reactor

> PWRs constitute the large majority of the world's nuclear power plants (with notable exceptions being the UK, Japan and Canada). In a PWR, the primary coolant (water) is pumped under high pressure to the reactor core where it is heated by the energy released by the fission of atoms.

When people say "fission reactor" do they mean something else?

Re: The Fallout from the Weirdness at OpenAI

#76
post #66

This post fell off the front page already, despite having more votes much more recently than some posts it is below.

HN downranks posts that have a high comment-to-vote ratio, in order to discourage flamewars.

By posting this additional comment you just made it sink even lower, good job!

Re: The Fallout from the Weirdness at OpenAI

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

surely there are some countries on earth where fission reactors could be developed without government interference if that was all it took.

Don't we have them already? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressurized_water_reactor > PWRs constitute the large majority of the world's nuclear power plants (with notable exceptions being the UK, Japan and Canada). In a PWR, the primary coolant (water) is pumped under high pressure to the reactor core where it is heated by the energy released by the fission of atoms. When people say "fission reactor" do they mean som…

no, fission reactor is any nuclear reactor where atoms become more, smaller atoms (fusion reactors are the opposite of that). There's plenty of fission reactors, most of them built with heavy government support.

Re: The Fallout from the Weirdness at OpenAI

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure the gods human being have made so far have done anything apart from persuade people to kill each other over scratchy bits of land. Whether feeling-less AGI will be better for us primates is very uncertain!

We don't know what will happen with AGI, but we can pretty easily guess what will happen without it. I'd take that risk any day!

You can easily guess, the issue is with being correct...

Re: The Fallout from the Weirdness at OpenAI

#79
post #21

Microsoft played the 5D chess so well they made it look seamless, like Kasparov playing 40 opponents simultaneously. 5 occurrences of "Microsoft" in the article body vs 9 "OpenAI". To make my point clear; this weirdness was definitely caused by the OpenAI board deviating from everybody's plans, including a member of the board themselves. From there, Microsoft strategically reacted to a black swan event. From MS's pov…

I mean arguably the event may have been triggered by microsofts manipulations.

Source?

Re: The Fallout from the Weirdness at OpenAI

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you hoping will be understood? We've gone as far back as the big bang and as far down as the atom in understanding. Our bodies are made up of trillions of cells all cooperating, and no one is particularly impressed with it. It's just matter, energy and motion. Everything can be reduced to billiard balls on a table. Is there a way to understand something scientifically that is not ultimately put in those term…

>no one is particularly impressed with it If anyone has ever said anything cynical ever I think this beats it. Biology is amazing. >What are you hoping will be understood. Understanding is like the apparent horizon. The closer you get the further away you realize it is. There will always be more to understand, we will just reach a point where our little monkey minds are incapable of holding enough 'state' to grasp fo…

People say they are impressed, but it has no real quality to it, it's just a word. Actual wonder is gone by the time a person reaches adolescence. From there it's just cramming more facts in. The basis of understanding the physical world is already given: it's a mechanical process involving matter, energy and motion. What is so interesting about learning another variation of those? If you could build an AI to give us all the valid variations, you're still stuck with the premise. It's like being a chess piece and being shown another position on the board. If you can be satisfied with that then good luck I guess.
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