The author sounds like some generic knock-off version of Gary Marcus. And the thing we least need in this world is another Gary Marcus.
Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately
101–110 of 243 posts
Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately
#102> "This is purely an observation: You only jump ship in the middle of a conquest if either all ships are arriving at the same time (unlikely) or neither is arriving at all. This means that no AI lab is close to AGI." The central claim here is illogical. The way I see it, if you believe that AGI is imminent, and if your personal efforts are not entirely crucial to bringing AGI about (just about all engineers are in th…
Being part of the team that achieved AGI first would be to write your name in history forever. That could mean more to people than money. Also 10m would be a drop in the bucket compared to being a shareholder of a company that has achieved AGI; you could also imagine the influence and fame that comes with it.
"The grass is greener elsewhere" isn't inconsistent with a belief that AGI will happen somewhere.
It means you don't have much faith that the company you're working at will be the ones to pull it off.
Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately
#103I love how much the proponents is this tech are starting to sound like the opponents. What I can't figure out is why this author thinks it's good if these companies do invent a real AGI...
""" I’m basically calling the AI industry dishonest, but I want to qualify by saying they are unnecessarily dishonest. Because they don’t need to be! They should just not make abstract claims about how much the world will change due to AI in no time, and they will be fine. They undermine the real effort they put into their work—which is genuine! Charitably, they may not even be dishonest at all, but carelessly unintr…
But that isn't my point. Regardless of whether they're honest, have we even agreed that "AGI" is good?
Everyone is so tumbling over themselves even to discuss will-it-won't-it, but they seem to think about it like some kind of Manhattan project or Space race.
Like, they're *so sure* it's gonna take everyone's jobs so that there will be nothing left for people other than a life of leisure. To me this just sounds like the collapse of society, but apparently the only thing worse would be if China got the tech first. Oh no, they might use it to collapse their society!
Somebody's math doesn't add up.
Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately
#104Observe what the AI companies are doing, not what they are saying. If they would expect to achieve AGI soon, their behaviour would be completely different. Why bother developing chatbots or doing sales, when you will be operating AGI in a few short years? Surely, all resources should go towards that goal, as it is supposed to usher the humanity into a new prosperous age (somehow).
> Why bother developing chatbots or doing sales, when you will be operating AGI in a few short years? To fund yourself while building AGI? To hedge risk that AGI takes longer? Not saying you're wrong, just saying that even if they did believe it, this behavior could be justified.
There is no chat bot so feature rich that it would fund the billions being burned on a monthly basis.
Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
>your best move is to do whatever is most profitable in the near-term Unless you’re a significant shareholder, that’s almost always the best move, anyway. Companies have no loyalty to you and you need to watch out for yourself and why you’re living.
I read that most of the crazy comp Zuck is offering is in stock. So in a way, going to the place where they have lots of stock reflects their belief about where AGI is going to happen first.
Comp is comp, no matter how it comes (though the details can vary in important ways).
I know people who've taking quite good comp from startups to do things that would require fundamental laws of physics to be invalidated; they took the money and devised experiments that would show the law to be wrong.
Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately
#106Observe what the AI companies are doing, not what they are saying. If they would expect to achieve AGI soon, their behaviour would be completely different. Why bother developing chatbots or doing sales, when you will be operating AGI in a few short years? Surely, all resources should go towards that goal, as it is supposed to usher the humanity into a new prosperous age (somehow).
Related to your point: if these tools are close to having super-human intelligence, and they make humans so much more productive, why aren't we seeing improvements at a much faster rate than we are now? Why aren't inherent problems like hallucination already solved, or at least less of an issue? Surely the smartest researchers and engineers money can buy would be dogfooding, no? This is the main point that proves to…
anthropomorphization definitely sucks, hype is over the board.
But it is far from snake oil as it actually is useful and does a lot of stuff really.
Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being part of the team that achieved AGI first would be to write your name in history forever. That could mean more to people than money. Also 10m would be a drop in the bucket compared to being a shareholder of a company that has achieved AGI; you could also imagine the influence and fame that comes with it.
> Being part of the team that achieved AGI first would be to write your name in history forever. That could mean more to people than money. Uh, sure. How many rocket engineers who worked for moon landing could you name?
How many new species of infinite chattel slave did they invent?
Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/openai-is-a-systemic-risk-to-the...
This article isn’t particularly helpful. It focuses on a ton of specific OpenAI business decisions that aren’t necessarily generalizable to the rest of the industry. OpenAI itself might be out over its skis, but what I’m asking about is the meta-accusation that AI in general is heavily subsidized. When the music stops, what does the price of AI look like? The going rate for chat bots like ChatGPT is $20/month. Does t…
How much would OpenAI be burning per month if each monthly active user cost them $40? $400? $4000?
The numbers would bankrupt them within weeks.
Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately
#109Observe what the AI companies are doing, not what they are saying. If they would expect to achieve AGI soon, their behaviour would be completely different. Why bother developing chatbots or doing sales, when you will be operating AGI in a few short years? Surely, all resources should go towards that goal, as it is supposed to usher the humanity into a new prosperous age (somehow).
> If they would expect to achieve AGI soon, their behaviour would be completely different. Why bother developing chatbots or doing sales, when you will be operating AGI in a few short years?
What if chatbots and user interactions ARE the path to AGI? Two reasons they could be: (1) Reinforcement learning in AI has proven to be very powerful. Humans get to GI through learning too - they aren’t born with much intelligence. Interactions between AI and humans may be the fastest way to get to AGI. (2) The classic Silicon Valley startup model is to push to customers as soon as possible (MVP). You don’t develop the perfect solution in isolation, and then deploy it once it is polished. You get users to try it and give feedback as soon as you have something they can try.
I don’t have any special insight into AI or AGI, but I don’t think OpenAI selling useful and profitable products is proof that there won’t be AI.
Re: Problems the AI industry is not addressing adequately
#110Observe what the AI companies are doing, not what they are saying. If they would expect to achieve AGI soon, their behaviour would be completely different. Why bother developing chatbots or doing sales, when you will be operating AGI in a few short years? Surely, all resources should go towards that goal, as it is supposed to usher the humanity into a new prosperous age (somehow).
Related to your point: if these tools are close to having super-human intelligence, and they make humans so much more productive, why aren't we seeing improvements at a much faster rate than we are now? Why aren't inherent problems like hallucination already solved, or at least less of an issue? Surely the smartest researchers and engineers money can buy would be dogfooding, no? This is the main point that proves to…
> if these tools are close to having super-human intelligence, and they make humans so much more productive, why aren't we seeing improvements at a much faster rate than we are now? Why aren't inherent problems like hallucination already solved, or at least less of an issue? Surely the smartest researchers and engineers money can buy would be dogfooding, no?
Hallucination does seem to be much less of an issue now. I hardly even hear about it - like it just faded away.
As far as I can tell smart engineers are using AI tools, particularly people doing coding, but even non-coding roles.
The criticism feels about three years out of date.