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The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

garymarcus.substack.com

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Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#61

Post by surgical_fire »

KaiserPro wrote: post #21

Its a shame that your standard futurologist always the most fancyful. Talks of exponentials unabated by physics or social problems. As soon as AI starts to "properly" affect the economy, it will cause huge unemployment. Most of the financial world is based on an economy with people spending cash. If they are unemployed, there is no cash. Financing works because banks "print" money, that is, they make up money and loa…

AI meaningfuloy replacing people is a huge "what if" scenario still. It is sort of laughable that people treat it as a given.

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#62

Post by throw310822 »

baxtr wrote: post #56
throw310822 wrote: post #50

[flagged]

What does that mean?

The expression "canary in the coal mine" means "early warning sign" because miners used to bring canaries into mines as probes to check for toxic gases- the canaries died first.

The joke- or at least as I interpreted it- is that Gary Marcus himself would be the literal canary- i.e. he would literally die.

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#63

Post by rytill »

mattlondon wrote: post #57

I think the big thing that people never mention is, where will these evil AIs escape to ? Another huge data center with squillions of GPUs and coolers and all the rest is the only option. It's not like it is going to be in our TV remotes or floating about in the air. They need huge compute, so I think the risk of an escaping AI is basically very close to zero, and if we have a "rogue" AI we can literally pull the plu…

> we’d just have to do it

Highly economically disincentivized collective actions like “pulling the plug on AI” are among the most non-trivial of problems.

Using the word “just” here hand waves the crux.

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#65

Post by baxtr »

throw310822 wrote: post #62
baxtr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that mean?

The expression "canary in the coal mine" means "early warning sign" because miners used to bring canaries into mines as probes to check for toxic gases- the canaries died first. The joke- or at least as I interpreted it- is that Gary Marcus himself would be the literal canary- i.e. he would literally die.

But why would he die with AGI? I don’t get it :D

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#66

Post by EGreg »

mattlondon wrote: post #57

I think the big thing that people never mention is, where will these evil AIs escape to ? Another huge data center with squillions of GPUs and coolers and all the rest is the only option. It's not like it is going to be in our TV remotes or floating about in the air. They need huge compute, so I think the risk of an escaping AI is basically very close to zero, and if we have a "rogue" AI we can literally pull the plu…

I've been a huge proponent of open source for a decade. But in the case of AI, I actually have opposed it for years. Exactly for this reason.

Yes, AI models can run on GPUs under the control of many people. They can provision more GPUs, they can run in data centers distributed across many providers. And we won't know what the swarms of agents are doing. They can, for example, do reputation destruction at scale, or be a persistent advanced threat, sowing misinformation, amassing karma across many forums (including HN), and then coordinating gradually to shift public opinion towards, say, a war with China.

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#67

Post by lakeeffect »

KaiserPro wrote: post #21

Its a shame that your standard futurologist always the most fancyful. Talks of exponentials unabated by physics or social problems. As soon as AI starts to "properly" affect the economy, it will cause huge unemployment. Most of the financial world is based on an economy with people spending cash. If they are unemployed, there is no cash. Financing works because banks "print" money, that is, they make up money and loa…

We really need to establish a universal basic income before jobs are replaced. Something like two thousand a month. And a dollar for dollar earned income credit with the credit phasing out with at a hundred grand. To pay for it the tax code uses GAAP depreciation and a minimum tax of 15% GAAP financial statement income. This would work toward solving the real estate problem of private equity buying up all the houses as they would lose some incentive by being taxed. I'm a CPA and I see so many real estate partnerships that are a tax loss that are able to distribute huge book gains because accelerated depreciation.

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#68

Post by surgical_fire »

baxtr wrote: post #60

Am I the only one who is super skeptical about “AI will take all jobs” tales? I mean LLMs are great tools don’t get me wrong, but how do people extrapolate from LLMs to a world with no more work?

> Am I the only one who is super skeptical about “AI will take all jobs” tales?

No. I am constantly baffled at these predictions. I have been using LLMs, they are fun to use and decent as code assistants. But they are very far of meaningfully replacing a human.

People extrapolate "LLMs can do some tasks better than humans" to "LLMs can do everything as well as humans"

> but how do people extrapolate from LLMs to a world with no more work?

They accept the words of bullshitters that are deeply invested in Generative AI being the next tech boom as gospel.

"Eat meat, said the butcher"

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#69

Post by coffeemug »

mattlondon wrote: post #57

I think the big thing that people never mention is, where will these evil AIs escape to ? Another huge data center with squillions of GPUs and coolers and all the rest is the only option. It's not like it is going to be in our TV remotes or floating about in the air. They need huge compute, so I think the risk of an escaping AI is basically very close to zero, and if we have a "rogue" AI we can literally pull the plu…

It would not be a reversion to 2020. If I were a rogue superhuman AI I'd hide my rogueness, wait until humans integrate me into most critical industries (food and energy production, sanitation, electric grid, etc.), and _then_ go rogue. They could still pull the plug, but it would take them back to 1700 (except much worse, because all easily accessible resources have been exploited, and access is now much harder).

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#70

Post by no_wizard »

lakeeffect wrote: post #67
KaiserPro wrote: post #21

Its a shame that your standard futurologist always the most fancyful. Talks of exponentials unabated by physics or social problems. As soon as AI starts to "properly" affect the economy, it will cause huge unemployment. Most of the financial world is based on an economy with people spending cash. If they are unemployed, there is no cash. Financing works because banks "print" money, that is, they make up money and loa…

We really need to establish a universal basic income before jobs are replaced. Something like two thousand a month. And a dollar for dollar earned income credit with the credit phasing out with at a hundred grand. To pay for it the tax code uses GAAP depreciation and a minimum tax of 15% GAAP financial statement income. This would work toward solving the real estate problem of private equity buying up all the houses…

It should really be tied to the ALICE cost of living index, not a set, fixed amount.

Unless inflation ceases, 2K won't hold forever. It would barely hold now for a decent chunk of the population

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