71–80 of 151 posts
But how is an individual supposed to "prepare" for AGI? The outcome of further automation will be to move even more capital under the control of an even smaller number of hands. It's that increasing inequality which is the problem, not AGI.
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Well if we have machines that can think, plan and reason and also exhibit incredible amounts of infinite empathy and patience and an IQ of a PHD physicist wtf is there for us to do exactly? Sure, we'll have work for people taking care of children and the elderly (and even this might start to fade away as we get humanoid robots that become cheaper and more capable, staff losing it and beating up children is a frequent…
> For now - we're not there at all. Both OpenAI and Anthropic think it’s a question of a couple of years at most. Gwern, who has a good track record of predictions, think so too. We’re pretty much here. I arrived at the same conclusion independently. Not because I’m a genius like Gwern and Could Work at a Big Lab if I Wanted, but because it is in fact pretty obvious. People focus way too much on the current limitatio…
Yes, of course. But it's also inevitable and overall good. If we stagnate then we are headed towards certain doom via climate change, nuclear war, an asteroid, a vulcano eruption leading to cooling and crop failure or a pandemic. If we are to survive and thrive long term we need to become true masters of our environment, and that means we need to be smarter, stronger and more productive. I think this is my main disco…
> If we are to survive and thrive long term we need to become true masters of our environment, and that means we need to be smarter, stronger and more productive.
Yes. I fundamentally agree with that vision. We want this for us. We/Us humans.
If we build AGI we won’t thrive. We won’t be smarter. We won’t be stronger. We won’t be more productive. We won’t be masters of our environment. The AI will be all of this. We’ll just be relegated to passive, helpless spectators.
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> Do you recognise the quote Yes, of course I did see the parallel, but I think raking over old quotes doesn't help keep a clear mind. Wikipedia - February Revolution describes Russia's failure to ...modernise its archaic social, economic, and political structures while maintaining the stability of ubiquitous devotion to an autocratic monarch. Sounds familiar?
I agree about not raking over old quotes, but people will. Any attempt to do what you are suggesting will be labelled "communism" or similar. Of course communism is not the only value system I remember an Yes Minister episode (I cannot recall which one) in which some one quotes that and Hacker guesses the source of the quote is Jesus. Not an unreasonable guess. The problem is that whatever values you base the justifi…
I am definitely not suggesting communism. What I laid out was the problem and how, without insurrection, it could be mitigated.
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> 3) Possible career pivot - there will be opportunities. Some parts of the labour market are starving for employees and I don't mean just the trades - there's a constant need for nurses, teachers, care etc. The problem is these jobs are notorious for burning their workers out; I don't have a solution for that. These jobs are also not scalable and not directly profitable, they require money from other sources to even…
Good question. My hunch is most functioning governments will step in and create these jobs - because they are badly needed. .Even now at least half of economic activity is government created in many developed countries - so it will be more like 80%. But I have no crystal ball, I'm just speculating.
It's not in the current sociopolitical/economical zeitgeist for governments to step in and create jobs, since the 80s we've moved towards privatisation, even very socially oriented governments like Western/Northern Europe are in it. To undo this flow into the other direction will take another generation or two of people under a new ideology voting for it.
We've been fed neoliberal policies for way too long, the contemporary Western world has been molded in it, I don't believe such a huge shift will happen fast enough if AI does actually develop that fast to replace jobs. We will live through a limbo of pain until newer generations fight against it, usually that only happens when our collective pain is way above the uncomfortable threshold.
> Even now at least half of economic activity is government created in many developed countries
I wasn't aware of this fact, where could I find statistics about it (if you have sources easily, if not I can do my own research).
Can we just admit many jobs either have very crappy parts to it or are entirely crappy and wouldn't it be nice if that could be replaced with technology?
Will technology replace your income?
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> For now - we're not there at all. Both OpenAI and Anthropic think it’s a question of a couple of years at most. Gwern, who has a good track record of predictions, think so too. We’re pretty much here. I arrived at the same conclusion independently. Not because I’m a genius like Gwern and Could Work at a Big Lab if I Wanted, but because it is in fact pretty obvious. People focus way too much on the current limitatio…
You could be right. I don't have enough knowledge in the field and I'm not sure 'trend predictions' work that well. Why aren't there autonomous vehicles already? Why does Waymo have to deploy them city by city? When I learned to drive I learned to drive - you didn't have to teach me how to drive in L.A , then San Francsisco, Then Pheonix etc. Is it only about Waymo being careful or are these things not yet good enoug…
There’s a lot of reasons. Not in the order of importance, just what in the order of what comes first in my mind :
1. While Real World Interactions (robotics, autonomous driving, factories automation,…) are somewhat parallelizable with Purely Digital AGI (games, text, videos, programming,…), it is way more easy to do AGI first and Real World Interactions second. This is why you see the Big Brains and the Big Money going to Anthropic/DeepMind/OpenAI. If you have AGI you have Waymo. So predictably, OpenAI/DeepMind/Anthropic will go faster than Waymo.
2. The source of the difficulty gap is easy to understand. It is hard to parallelize and scale experiments in the real world. It is trivial in the digital world, just takes More Money. AlphaZero is an AI engine doing dozens of millions of games playing against itself, eventually reaching super-human capabilities in chess and go. Good luck doing that with robotics/cars.
3. "I learned to drive faster" : It is unknown how much bits of priors evolution have put in the human brain (we don’t even know how genes encode priors — a fascinating question). It is certainly not zero. Evolution did that hard work of parallelizing/scaling the "learning to interact with the world" before you were even born. Hell, most of the work on this problem was probably already completed by the start of the mammalian line. No wonder you find this easy and Waymo find this hard. It is not that the problem is inherently easy and "how bad are AI are to fail this simple promble ?" It is that you are custom-tailored-built for it.
4. We have higher standards for AI than humans, and regulation reflect that.
> con: losing your job. pro: the best health care you can imagine. the best education for your kids. etc etc
The con is that humanity is going to lose pretty much any influence on the future. "losing you job" is a pretty bad way of picturing it.
It is a frustrating topic. Let me try to explain you the stakes in a few words, and let’s start with this image :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_revolution_of_1918%E2%8...
It’s a communist militia in Berlin at the early stages of the Weimar Republic. The specifics doesn’t matter, you don’t have to judge who was right or wrong. I could have taken a picture of the proto-nazis, or the SDP, or anyone really. The story is the same.
Why are those humans here ? In the cold, in a potentially dangerous situation ? What’s going on in their head ?
"This a an important moment. I have to be the Best Person I can be, take the Best Actions I can take. If I am right, and I do this right, my actions will help better my future. It will help my family. My neighbor. My community. The World. My actions and my choices here Matter. I Matter".
Those two words, "I Matter" is I believe a fundamental requirement of what is it to be human. To my great surprise, there are people who actually actively disagree with that. "Mattering does not matter very much". Maybe you are one of those, I don’t know, I don’t know you. Those people should indeed accept and welcome the AGI. No human will matter anymore but who cares ? Great healthcare, great education, great entertainments.
But AGI being way better in all cognitive domains : Business/Economy, Policy/Politics/Governance, Science, Arts,… means exactly this : humans will no longer have any place in those domains, and this "I Matter" feeling will be lost forever.
EDIT: I forgot a point :
> and I'm not sure 'trend predictions' work that well
It’s not trend prediction. It’s engineering. Roadblocks have been identified. Solutions to those roadblock have been identified. Now they are just the phase of "implement those solutions". Whether those solutions are sufficient to go all the way to AGI is a bit more speculative, but the odds are clearly in the "yes" side.
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How will they pay the bills when the 1%-hoarders are keeping all the profits for themselves, and now that the Oligarchy is in full reign in the US, taxes and "big bad socialism" is out of the question?
My country had socialism for 40 years. It is highly overrated.
It seems to me, that the path we are on will lead us closer to a Terminator-like future, and less likely to lead to a positive future.
Our leadership are greedy fools.
