Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Intelligence Age

ia.samaltman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 447 posts

Re: The Intelligence Age

#431

Post by munksbeer »

w10-1 wrote: post #274

> a defining characteristic of the Intelligence Age will be massive prosperity That's the sales pitch, that this will benefit all. I'm very pro-AI, but here's the only prediction for the future I would ever make: AI will accelerate, not minimize, inequality and thus injustice, because it removes the organizational limits previously imposed by bureaucracy/coordination costs of humans. It's not AI's fault. It's not bec…

> AI will accelerate, not minimize, inequality and thus injustice

Your argument here seems to rely on hand waving away a bunch of stuff through this statement:

> Yes, the U.S. had a middle class after the war, and yes, China has lifted rural people out of technical poverty. But those are the exceptions against the background of consolidation of wealth and power world wide.

What? You cannot truly believe that the average person has worse injustice or a worse life than the average person 1000 years ago.

And for me, the entire crux of your argument depends on believing that. So it just falls down.

Re: The Intelligence Age

#432

Post by berniedurfee »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #20

> Deep learning works, and we will solve the remaining problems. We can say a lot of things about what may happen next, but the main one is that AI is going to get better with scale I'm not an AI skeptic at all, I use llms all the time, and find them very useful. But stuff like this makes me very skeptical of the people who are making and selling AI. It seems like there was a really sweet spot wrt the capabilities AI…

You should _always_ be skeptical of what’s said by anyone who is trying to sell something.

Like everything else being sold, the marketing is 95% BS.

LLMs are amazing and wonderful tools, but me thinks we’re near a plateau in capability. Now investors are pumping for ROI before that becomes evident.

After we reach the plateau in capabilities, the next phase is cutting production and operating costs to maximize margins.

I’m the meantime, expect the marketing to get increasingly cringe until the bubble bursts.

Re: The Intelligence Age

#433

Post by alt0_ »

tim333 wrote: post #397
w10-1 wrote: post #274

> a defining characteristic of the Intelligence Age will be massive prosperity That's the sales pitch, that this will benefit all. I'm very pro-AI, but here's the only prediction for the future I would ever make: AI will accelerate, not minimize, inequality and thus injustice, because it removes the organizational limits previously imposed by bureaucracy/coordination costs of humans. It's not AI's fault. It's not bec…

I kind of disagree with how it will play out - I'm more optimistic. A couple of points: >Virtually all the advances in technology and civilization have been aimed at people capturing resources, people, and value... Not really so - people invent new stuff because it's cool. Maybe eg Geoffrey Hinton and neural networks. Then the business types try to jump in and capture resources - maybe Sam? But that's not really work…

> it all gets open sourced shortly after

Ah, of course. OpenAI, the company famous for open-sourcing it's developments. How could I forget?

Re: The Intelligence Age

#434

Post by xjm »

> fixing the climate

I would be happy to be convinced that climate is an intelligence problem.

One could argue it could be solved with "abundant energy" but if this abundant energy comes from some new intelligence then we are probably several decades away from having it running commercially. I would also be happy to be convinced that we do have this kind of time to act for climate.

Re: The Intelligence Age

#435

Post by 7thaccount »

bamboozled wrote: post #183
dcchambers wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps ironically, Sam Altman is also big into Fusion. ( https://www.helionenergy.com/ ) I guess it makes sense, for deep-learning/LLMs to "scale to infinity" you basically need infinite amounts of power.

cant we use OA intelligence to figure out how to do more with less rather yhan "stupidly" accelerate the climate crisis? the climate crisis + AI is the nightmare

I don't think people on here who downvoted you understand the sheer scale of data center load growth. Utilities can handle some load growth sure, but the requests from the AI folks are crazy large to the tune of GW. I think it's fair to ask if training the next chat bot and related needs are worth doubling our electricity consumption.

Re: The Intelligence Age

#436

Post by jononor »

ben_w wrote: post #427
ForHackernews wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence that the "smarter" side wins wars? I'd put money on the faction with more soldiers and industry over more "intelligence" every single time. How many divisions does ChatGPT have?

Crudely and slowly, ChatGPT has already been demonstrated controlling a humanoid robot. The current humanoid robot startups are talking about 100s of thousands of units, and if they're attached to an AI that's even merely normal human level (or can fake it in practice) then they can run every step of logistics and manufacturing to make more of themselves. At 100kg/unit, Starship could pop a thousand or so on the moon…

Modern industrial manufacturing is not done by humans but specialized machines. You cannot outcompete CNC, injection molding, and lathes with humanoid robots.

Re: The Intelligence Age

#437

Post by ben_w »

jononor wrote: post #436
ben_w wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crudely and slowly, ChatGPT has already been demonstrated controlling a humanoid robot. The current humanoid robot startups are talking about 100s of thousands of units, and if they're attached to an AI that's even merely normal human level (or can fake it in practice) then they can run every step of logistics and manufacturing to make more of themselves. At 100kg/unit, Starship could pop a thousand or so on the moon…

Modern industrial manufacturing is not done by humans but specialized machines. You cannot outcompete CNC, injection molding, and lathes with humanoid robots.

Sure, but there's usually someone who replies "but humans do some of it!", which I was trying to preempt here.

(IMO humanoid robots are a sign that the startup/VC market is following Musk, who in turn happened to see one on TV just before declaring to whoever the Optimus model was going to happen: they obviously could work for all this, but equally obviously aren't the sensible choice for almost anything).

Re: The Intelligence Age

#438

Post by n2d4 »

gwern wrote: post #150

> If we want to put AI into the hands of as many people as possible, we need to drive down the cost of compute and make it abundant (which requires lots of energy and chips). If we don’t build enough infrastructure, AI will be a very limited resource that wars get fought over and that becomes mostly a tool for rich people. Translation for the rest of us: "we need to fully privatize the OA subsidiary and turn it into…

Well predicted. Just two days later:

> OpenAI to remove non-profit control and give Sam Altman equity

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41651548

Re: The Intelligence Age

#439

Post by bjornnn »

zer8k wrote: post #369
slantedview wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Labor organizers mostly make things worse for laborers Nonsense, unless you're prepared to argue that the existence of weekends is "much worse" than working every day.

Labor unions in America were largely controlled by organized crime and likely still are today. They didn't do this to help the worker they did it as an extension of a collection racket. AKA - their own interests. Despite this they did accomplish some historical good. Yet, I am still working a 40+ hour week bullied by my employer and jobs continue to be shipped overseas. How many more decades before the unions do thei…

>How many more decades before the unions do their job?

You're ignoring over a hundred years worth of history of the American labor movement being relentlessly battered into the ground by private power and its enormous influence over state and federal government. There hasn't been a real labor movement in the US for a very long time, the percentage of unionized workers in the US is only 10% and most of them work in the public sector.

>Labor unions are also the reason the police are untouchable even when they commit horrendous crimes.

Then why are the states with the highest levels of police violence Republican anti-union states with right-to-work laws and no collective bargaining?

>Anecdata, but

Then why bother typing it?

>Rarely unions do their jobs. During COVID hospitals in my hometown were

Again, why?

Re: The Intelligence Age

#440

Post by sumedh »

tim333 wrote: post #400
slantedview wrote: post #235

> If a lamplighter could see the world today, he would think the prosperity all around him was unimaginable None of that shared prosperity was freely given by the Sam Altmans of the world, it was hard won by labor organizers and social movements. Without more of that, the progress from AI will continue the recent trend of wealth accumulating in the hands of a few. The idea that everyone will somehow prosper equally f…

Places like HK and Singapore had free markets and not much unions and became pretty prosperous, during my lifetime having GDP per capita go from something like a third of the UK to nearly twice it in Singapore in spite of us in the UK having the benefit of unions fighting to keep everyone coal mining and the like.

> Places like HK and Singapore had free markets and not much unions and became pretty prosperous

Doesnt Singapore have a working class doing job at low pay which most Singaporeans dont want to do.

Post reply on HN