Where does this guy live that most people smoke
Evolution of AI and Amara's Law
11–20 of 37 posts
Re: Evolution of AI and Amara's Law
#12Amara’s law aptly captures the dichotomy in our perception of technological advancements like AI. As we navigate the short-term challenges and excitement, it’s crucial to maintain a balanced perspective, acknowledging both the current limitations and the vast potential.
Even as meta commentary this hand is so over-played it's already cliche - and going up one level in meta doesn't improve it.
Re: Evolution of AI and Amara's Law
#13It does seem that this current AI summer is very hot. This does start to seem like a nee tech revolution.
Apart from Amara’s law, we’re also very bad at visualizing exponential growth.
Key ideas from the very early ages of computers and a few new tweaks only recently found the compute power to become useful.
Re: Evolution of AI and Amara's Law
#14This law is true in some cases, but I think is too often used as the tech industry's version of "first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win". The argument is that, sure, a technology's promise may have not panned out, but under Amara's law, we can expect a commensurately massive impact later. As Carl Sagan pointed out, "…the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply…
100%… not using it to advocate for anything in particular. Just find the phenomenon interesting… you can apply this retroactively to several innovations.
Re: Evolution of AI and Amara's Law
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amen. I wonder what "underestimating" something like AGI actually means though...
Assuming it's aligned and we're still around… AGI? Lots of people are still talking like it will be an assistant, perhaps using the "centaur" metaphor, and refusing to believe that it could[0] result in everyone's mental capacities having all the economic relevance of equine muscle power. ASI? We don't know how far above us IQ can go, but it seems reasonable to guess that the smallest possible margin above us is such…
Why do we act like people all have an approximately uniform intelligence that will be surpassed by AI intelligence by orders of magnitude in all dimensions? In my experience, different people are smart about different things, sometimes yes by orders of magnitude. Couldn't an AI being smarter than some people be no more surprising than some people being smarter than some other people?
Re: Evolution of AI and Amara's Law
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
By the time AGI arrives, the world will have already been transformed in ways we cannot fathom by intelligence much lower than AGI. Look at the impact that computing has already had, and that is mostly accounting and simulation. Building and factory automation is on the order of a couple if statements. Most programmers can't implement a PID loop. I am not scared by AGI. But to get to AGI you have to pass through a co…
Agree, the path might be quite bumpy but so could the endgame. Whether AGI wants to help or kill the human race will depend on how aligned it is to our goals. Now, since "our" goals will depend on whoever has the metaphysical ear of such AI this could be problematic.
I think I read this kind of discussions too many times, imagine how the training set of GPT-5 will look like? all sorts of theories of "whether AGI wants to help or kill the human race" spread over the internet and analyzed to death. It is going to know this topic in-and-out. Will be able to write a masterful dissertation on the topic.
Re: Evolution of AI and Amara's Law
#17This law is true in some cases, but I think is too often used as the tech industry's version of "first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win". The argument is that, sure, a technology's promise may have not panned out, but under Amara's law, we can expect a commensurately massive impact later. As Carl Sagan pointed out, "…the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply…
Ever since I was a little kid I was always hearing those inspirational stories about how someone would get into an accident and then "The doctor told me I would never walk again" or "I wouldn't make it to my next birthday" and then the person made a miraculous recovery and "proved them wrong" or something along those lines.
It always seemed like an attention bias to me. Because for sure there are many more stories about the doctor being right and the person did never actually walk again. And we don't really pay attention to the stories about the doctor saying they would walk again. Those aren't interesting.
It can also be a bias with the triumphant person overestimating the negativity of the past. Like did the doctor really say you will never walk again, or that it will be tremendously difficult and unlikely?
People like an underdog story and will hold it with more attention than other stories in which the expectations met reality.
Re: Evolution of AI and Amara's Law
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assuming it's aligned and we're still around… AGI? Lots of people are still talking like it will be an assistant, perhaps using the "centaur" metaphor, and refusing to believe that it could[0] result in everyone's mental capacities having all the economic relevance of equine muscle power. ASI? We don't know how far above us IQ can go, but it seems reasonable to guess that the smallest possible margin above us is such…
Why do we act like people all have an approximately uniform intelligence that will be surpassed by AI intelligence by orders of magnitude in all dimensions? In my experience, different people are smart about different things, sometimes yes by orders of magnitude. Couldn't an AI being smarter than some people be no more surprising than some people being smarter than some other people?
> Why do we act like people all have an approximately uniform intelligence that will be surpassed by AI intelligence by orders of magnitude in all dimensions?
I at least don't consider people to be uniform. If I act like I do, that's illusory.
For orders of magnitude higher performance by AI: all have a massive intrinsic speed advantage already (which is currently balanced by an almost but not quite equally massive training set required disadvantage — they can read the entire internet, but they need to too), and the go and chess AI have already vastly exceeded human capacity.
I think this kind of thing is also part of why AGI means different things to different people.
By my standards, ChatGPT is already an AGI, it's able to operate on text-based tasks in general (the G in AGI) at a level higher than some humans and lower than others — if I'm right, a lot of people are already no longer capable of being economically viable, and their only hope in the current economic system is that the market for their labour doesn't act with perfect information. I may also just be wildly over-estimating the capabilities of ChatGPT.
Re: Evolution of AI and Amara's Law
#19https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara > We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run. Amara's Law is a good one, esp in these circles where we have many people working on cutting edge technology. They often give up because it doesn't see adoption, and then move on to something else. Two or three cycles later, when that technology is finally gaining…
Python's popularity is more tragedy than success story.
I love Python and I agree. Standard ML or OCaml would have been far superior on nearly every axis. Every language is slowly becoming OCaml anyway.
Re: Evolution of AI and Amara's Law
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
By the time AGI arrives, the world will have already been transformed in ways we cannot fathom by intelligence much lower than AGI. Look at the impact that computing has already had, and that is mostly accounting and simulation. Building and factory automation is on the order of a couple if statements. Most programmers can't implement a PID loop. I am not scared by AGI. But to get to AGI you have to pass through a co…
Agree, the path might be quite bumpy but so could the endgame. Whether AGI wants to help or kill the human race will depend on how aligned it is to our goals. Now, since "our" goals will depend on whoever has the metaphysical ear of such AI this could be problematic.
AGI doesn't matter, because the world will have been turned upside down multiple times before it even arrives. AI due to its extreme breadth is already smarter than any individual human across all of AIs competencies.