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Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

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Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#251
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until now, I didn't think that poverty impacting mortality was a controversial statement. Poverty is the fourth greatest cause of US deaths[1]. Why would I hire a part time worker when I could hire an AI for cheaper? When I said categorically, I meant it. 1. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-04-poverty-fourth-greate...

Quite a goal post move from "just go unemployed, and then bankrupt, and then die" to "poverty impacts health"

I didn't say health; you did. I said mortality which is synonymous with death.

Misquoting someone to prove a point is intellectually bankrupt. Take a breath and calm down. Why don't you try stealmanning instead?

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#252
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people have nothing to contribute in the virtual/knowledge realm. Certainly not enough to live on.

Careful, we are not supposed to discuss how many human jobs will remain. The script clearly states the approved lines are "there will still be human jobs" and "focus on being adaptable". When it seems normal that Fortune 500 execs are living at sea on yachts, that's when you'll know OpenAI realized their vision for humanity.

I would think certain recent events in New York will probably be a bigger impetus for Fortune 500 execs living at sea on yachts

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#253
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is nobody in these very rich guys' spheres pushing back on their thought process? Yes, frequently and loudly. When Altman was collecting the award at Cambridge the other year, protesters dropped in on the after-award public talk/Q&A session, and he actively empathised with the protestors . > So far we are multiple years in with much investment and little return, and no obvious large-scale product-market fit, much l…

> The product market fit is fantastic. This isn't the first time I've heard random strangers discussing it in public. Hardly the evidence of PMF. There is always something new in the zeitgeist, that every one is talking about, some more so than others . 2 years before it was VR, few years before that NFTs and blockchain everything, before that it was self driving cars before that personal voice assistants like Siri a…

> 2 years before it was VR, few years before that NFTs and blockchain everything, before that it was self driving cars before that personal voice assistants like Siri and so on .

I never saw people talking about VR in public, nor NFTs, and the closest I got to seeing blockchain in public were adverts, not hearing random people around me chatting about it. The only people I ever saw in real life talking about self-driving cars were the ones I was talking to myself, and everyone else was dismissive of them. Voice assistants were mainly mocked from day 1, with the Alex advert being re-dubbed as a dystopian nightmare.

> AI is aiming for much higher bar of singularity and consciousness.

No, it's aiming to be economically useful.

"The singularity" is what a lot of people think is an automatic consequence of being able to solve tasks related to AI; me, I think that's how we sustained Moore's Law so long (computers designing computers, you can't place a billion transistors by hand, but even if you could the scale is now well into the zone where quantum tunnelling has to be accounted for in the design), and that "singularities" are a sign something is wrong with the model.

"Consciousness" has 40 definitions, and is therefore not even a meaningful target.

> Just in every hype cycles we are in peak of inflated expectations, we will reach a plateau of productivity where it is will be useful in specific areas (as it already is) and people will move on to the next fad.

In that at least, we agree.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#254
post #163

Important context: Elon Musk's close friend from the PayPal days and fellow libertarian tech billionaire David Sacks has been selected as the Trump admin's czar for AI and crypto. This is why OpenAI and Sam Altman are understandably concerned.

For additional context: These PayPal guys are very much contra Google and YC (Sam/pg).

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#255
post #58

I guess it's not news but it is pretty wild to see the level of millenarianism espoused by all of these guys. The board of OpenAI is supposedly going to "determine the fate of the world", robotics to be "completely solved" by 2020, the goal of OpenAI is to "avoid an AGI dictatorship". Is nobody in these very rich guys' spheres pushing back on their thought process? So far we are multiple years in with much investment…

> Is nobody in these very rich guys' spheres pushing back on their thought process?

It's more simple. They've found that the grander the vision, the bigger the lie the more people will believe it. So they lie.

Take Tesla's supposed full self-driving as an example. Tesla's doesn't have full self-driving. Musk has been lying about it for a decade. Musk tells the same lie year after year, like clockwork.

And yet there are still plenty of true believers who ardently defend Tesla's lies and buy more Tesla stock.

The lies work.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#256
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define everyone. I was delighted when they fired him. I don't believe he has humanity's best interest at heart.

745 of 770 employees responded on a weekend to call for his return, threatened mass resignations if the board did not resign; among the signatories was board member Sutskever, who defected from the board and publicly apologized for his participation in the board's previous actions.

745 of 700?

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine that's what he's doing. He's willing to put a lot of company money into getting the city on Mars started, because if he's first there, he's gonna set himself (or his dynasty?) up to make hundreds of billions of dollars. Being effectively in control of your own planet? Neat. Scary too.

Doing what exactly? What industry could Mars possibly support profitably?

perhaps the "not dying on earth industry" after climate catastrophy hits

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on your spreadsheet analogy? I think Joel Spolsky explained the main Office moat well here: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/02/19/why-are-the-micros... > ... it might take you weeks to change your page layout algorithm to accommodate it. If you don’t, customers will open their Word files in your clone and all the pages will be messed up. Basically, people who use Office have extremely specific expe…

"Basically, people who use Office have extremely specific expectations." Interesting point, but to OP's point- This wasn't true when Office was first introduced and Office still created a domineering market share. In fact, I'd argue these moat-by-idiosyncracy features are a result of that market share. There is nothing stopping OpenAI from developing their own over time.

Does office actually have a moat? I thought the kids liked Google docs nowadays. (No opinion as to which is actually better, the actual thing people should do is write LaTeX in vim. You can even share documents! Just have everybody attach to the same tmux session and take turns).

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#259
post #58

I guess it's not news but it is pretty wild to see the level of millenarianism espoused by all of these guys. The board of OpenAI is supposedly going to "determine the fate of the world", robotics to be "completely solved" by 2020, the goal of OpenAI is to "avoid an AGI dictatorship". Is nobody in these very rich guys' spheres pushing back on their thought process? So far we are multiple years in with much investment…

> Is nobody in these very rich guys' spheres pushing back on their thought process?

The moment someone does that they're no longer in the very rich guys sphere.

Re: Elon Musk wanted an OpenAI for-profit

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody seems to remember how the Segway was going to change our world, backed by many of the VC power figures at the time + Steve Jobs.

It reappeared as e-bikes and e-scooters - Lime, Bird, etc.

None of which is doing great.
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