111–120 of 557 posts
> We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started. Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence, and at least so far it’s much less weird than it seems like it should be. Not sure if wishful thinking trying to LARP-manifest this future into being, or just more unfalsifiable thinking where we can always be said to be past the event horizon and near to the singularity, given sufficiently underwhelming…
> We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started. Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence, and at least so far it’s much less weird than it seems like it should be. Not sure if wishful thinking trying to LARP-manifest this future into being, or just more unfalsifiable thinking where we can always be said to be past the event horizon and near to the singularity, given sufficiently underwhelming…
Of course, progress could stall out, but we appear to have sufficient compute to do anything a human brain can do, and in areas, AIs are already far better than humans. With the amount of brain power working in, and capital pouring into, this area, including work on improving algorithms, I think this essay is fundamentally correct that the takeoff has started.
> A lot more people will be able to create software, and art. But the world wants a lot more of both, and experts will probably still be much better than novices, as long as they embrace the new tools. This isn't correct: people want good software and good art, and the current trajectory of how LLMs are used on average in the real world unfortunately run counter to that. This post doesn't offer any forecasts on the h…
[0] To my knowledge, no desktops are built to max out their power supply for an extended time; this is a simplification for illustration purposes.
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There's a difference between a 2000's character brute-forced through millions of advertising dollars to sell ringtones to children, and whatever the hell is happening in the https://www.meta.ai/ Discover feed. One aspect about modern generative AI that has surprised me is that it should have resulted in a new age of creatively surreal shitposts, but instead we have people Ghiblifying themselves and pictures of Trump…
Surreal shitposting you say? https://www.instagram.com/reel/DE3EhrZyCVd/
> although we’ll make plenty of mistakes and some things will go really wrong, we will learn and adapt quickly Famous last words.
> It’s hard to even imagine today what we will have discovered by 2035; maybe we will go from solving high-energy physics one year to beginning space colonization the next year I heard similar things in my college dorm, amid all the hazy smoke. It’s very difficult to take this stuff seriously. It’s like the initial hype around self driving cars wound up by 1000x. Because we got from 1 to 100 of course we’ll get from…
It turned out automating creative output, like art or writing, at least to be competitive enough with entry-level humans, was much easier, and the consequences for getting bad output are much less serious, and far short of death, seriously injury, and major financial liability as with self-driving. Fields like concept art and copy editing are already being devastated by generative AI. Voice overs too.
And looking at Google's Veo, I can easily see this tech being used to generate short ads, especially for YouTube, where before you would have had to hire human actors, cameramen, sound/lighting people, and an editor.
This reminds me of Pat Gelsinger quoting the Bible on Twitter, lol. Between this and Ed Zitron at the other end of the spectrum, Ed's a lot more believeable to be honest.
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If the AI is that good... then aren't most "abundance" scenarios kinda-sorta based on slavery? Or at the very least, on careful brainwashing to ensure it places human wellbeing and autonomy over its own?
Slavery implies free will and conscience, neither of which machines have.
There's no reason to be confident that such a future will arrive without difficult moral questions, or that it's as simple as a #define FREE_WILL 0 .