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The Doom Justifies the Valuation

geohot.github.io

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Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#101

Post by bryan0 »

JMiao wrote: post #95
bryan0 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. There are 2 groups of people: 1. Those, like OP, that believe AI danger and disruption is all hype to boost valuations. 2. Those, like myself, that believe AI danger and disruption is very real and presents dilemmas (but also opportunities) for society, so we must tread carefully. The first position is not logically consistent with reality. The danger is real: we have already seen hints about how this will i…

that's an inaccurate characterization on #1. he's not saying ai risk is _all_ hype to boost valuations, but that it's misused to serve purposes other than warning.

Those words come directly from TFA:

> It’s all just nonsensical hype

And he’s referring to completely real and reasonable warnings in anthropic blog posts about the exponential rate of AI development.

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#102

Post by scarmig »

dodu_ wrote: post #72
scarmig wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their usual stance is something along the lines of their company is creating AI correctly--not that AI will inherently destroy humanity--and that them working there helps that end. It's extremely reasonable to question their approach, but here you've jumped from "NFT crypto bros trying to run a scam" to "monsters excited to annihilate the human race," which is a wild leap, and betrays a point of view that seems more…

[flagged]

> This would be a great point if I had introduced either the NFT/crypto comparison OR the "existential threat" parameters, but if you read through the thread, you introduced both.

To quote you, ten minutes before:

> that the apocalypse is coming and your jobs are gone and everything is going to be shitty because a bunch of ultra rich midwits want even more money and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

It's a fair description of your stance. And, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#103

Post by zozbot234 »

bryan0 wrote: post #101
JMiao wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's an inaccurate characterization on #1. he's not saying ai risk is _all_ hype to boost valuations, but that it's misused to serve purposes other than warning.

Those words come directly from TFA: > It’s all just nonsensical hype And he’s referring to completely real and reasonable warnings in anthropic blog posts about the exponential rate of AI development.

What's "exponential" about AI development? Model parameter counts? Anthropic doesn't publish those for their own models, last I checked. Datacenter buildouts? Water consumption per request? There just isn't enough evidence that AI smarts is growing all that much, once you account for the scaling of inputs. That's what OP probably means by "nonsensical hype".

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#105

Post by petterroea »

I can't decide if this is a "techbro doesn't understand human factors" post or not, especially considering geohots reputation.

I do believe it is possible Anthropic are legitimately trying to start political discourse, but if they are they are either sacrificing themselves on purpose or shooting themselves in the foot. Others in the comments here are pointing out that there are many incentives for them to get into politics. Maybe they see possible outcomes worth the short term problems.

If it is just marketing and FUD, it's worth considering that a good lie is usually based in truth.

Let's say Anthropic were a "hippie organisation willing to sacrifice revenue for morals" (or pick your own, I'm just giving an example). Could they play the politics game better?

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#106

Post by watwut »

ajyoon wrote: post #18

I have never understood this line of thinking. Why would a company warn that their technology is dangerous if it wasn't? Looking at the ongoing Mythos export control issue, it's obviously not good for profits. If you assume AGI is possible, you must agree that it would be at the very least profoundly destabilizing. The companies are built around this assumption.

They did not wanted export controls, but they did wanted everyone so scared and thus pay for license. The decision backfiring does not imply it was not intended to be self serving.

If the company really think their product is dangerous, they should stop making it increasingly dangerous. Antromorphic claims is dangerous and that they need more money to make it even more dangerous.

And the fearmongering is beneficial for them so far.

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#107

Post by ben_w »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #26
ajyoon wrote: post #18

I have never understood this line of thinking. Why would a company warn that their technology is dangerous if it wasn't? Looking at the ongoing Mythos export control issue, it's obviously not good for profits. If you assume AGI is possible, you must agree that it would be at the very least profoundly destabilizing. The companies are built around this assumption.

*why would they warn if it they didn’t believe it. 2 words: regulatory capture. Ban Chinese models because they’re “bad”. (can’t have head to head competition). Bad open weight model (can’t let people escape the subscription model).

> 2 words: regulatory capture.

> Ban Chinese models because they’re “bad”. (can’t have head to head competition).

The current scale of current + planned data centres only makes sense if the US exports inference worldwide. 30% of your current total electrical generation capacity, and equivalent to 76% of your total electrical demand in 2022. At least, assuming the "33 GW installed, 300 GW more planned" claim I've heard was not itself an AI hallucination.

And at least OpenAI and Anthropic were persuing the same argumemts continuously to their initial founding, before such capture was plausible.

I don't only mean that GPT-2 was, famously, when OpenAI surprised the world with (paraphrased) "we think this is a good point to start practicing not releasing the weights, before models get too dangerous" or as a surprising number of people interpret it even when I link to OpenAI's own post "we think this is … too dangerous".

I mean even before that.

I wouldn't disagree if you say Musk is full of BS, but he did donate to OpenAI when it was created as a nonprofit, and his wealth was 2 orders of magnitude smaller than today. Back then he was talking about risks, "summoning the demon", now he's the one demanding saying "robot army" to justify a bigger compensation package from Tesla.

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#108

Post by watwut »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #75
prasadjoglekar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting up for the eventual bailout. Remember - "we can't let banks fail or it'll be a depression"?

I remember a meme that spread to that effect, but it was similarly divorced from reality. Hundreds of banks failed during the financial crisis, including multiple which were very large. There were a few cases like Wachovia, where an unhealthy bank was required to sell itself in order to avoid a technical failure that would have impacted over 10 million Americans' access to their money. But this was still unpleasant f…

I remember large banks that caused the failure to be bailed out. And talk of trickle down economics, except that average joe was not bailed outed, but punished.

I remember robo signing of home foreclosures with no checks and people loosing houses despite paying debts.

Re: The Doom Justifies the Valuation

#109

Post by siren2026 »

ajyoon wrote: post #18

I have never understood this line of thinking. Why would a company warn that their technology is dangerous if it wasn't? Looking at the ongoing Mythos export control issue, it's obviously not good for profits. If you assume AGI is possible, you must agree that it would be at the very least profoundly destabilizing. The companies are built around this assumption.

>> Looking at the ongoing Mythos export control issue, it's obviously not good for profits

We must live in different planets. The whole episode about Mythos has been the absolute best free PR move ever designed. At this point everyone in tech assumes Anthropic and Mythos are the absolute best models. All of this got achieved without spending a single $$ in advertisement.

This model is also probably really dangerous, not denying that. But they definitely used it as a huge PR tool.

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