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AI 2040: Plan A

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Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#21

Post by hollerith »

joshstrange wrote: post #6

I'm sure some people will have issue with my phrasing but, honest question: Are there examples of where we have collective decided not to pursue knowledge? Successfully? I guess nuclear weapons might be the best example though research doesn't seem have to actually "stopped" as much as gone underground and we still have country trying to climb that ladder. But I don't know how relevant that is to LLMs/AI. It almost f…

Yes, there are examples of where we have collective decided not to pursue a particular technology tree.

For one, Japan banned guns for a few centuries. (Its warrior class was politically powerful and judged that guns would disrupt class relations too much.)

And there have been successful world-wide bans.

For example, following the invention of recombinant DNA technology, scientists convened the Asilomar Conference in 1975. They established a voluntary self-moratorium on certain types of genetic engineering until strict laboratory containment protocols were created.

In the 1980s, bioethicists, theologians, and researchers established a hard ethical line between somatic editing (treating an existing patient's non-reproductive cells) and germline editing (altering future generations).

No one has performed the latter form of genetic engineering except for Chinese scientist He Jiankui in 2018. (Chinese society used to be more ambivalent about the technology than the West is.) In response, Beijing heavily tightened its laws, classifying heritable gene editing as a high-risk medical technology subject to the penal code, and He Jiankui was sentenced to three years in prison.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#22

Post by arethuza »

joshstrange wrote: post #6

I'm sure some people will have issue with my phrasing but, honest question: Are there examples of where we have collective decided not to pursue knowledge? Successfully? I guess nuclear weapons might be the best example though research doesn't seem have to actually "stopped" as much as gone underground and we still have country trying to climb that ladder. But I don't know how relevant that is to LLMs/AI. It almost f…

The decision to not go with the development of extremely large thermonuclear weapons might count - the US Sundial Project was supposed to be about 10 gigatons of TNT. Not the most practical weapons but once you get to a certain size delivery arguably stops being a problem - its going to kill everyone anyway so doesn't matter where you let it off!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundial_(weapon)

Edit: Mind you, I wonder if the design for Sundial is stored somewhere...

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#23

Post by kennywinker »

It seems to me we’re already at the top of the S curve, not at the toe of an exponential curve. At least with LLMs. Better training data will make small improvements, better architecture will make it less compute intensive, and all these “hyper-scale” data centers will make it cheap and ubiquitous. But none of that is it getting exponentially more intelligent.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#24

Post by a_vanderbilt »

I found the AI 2027 paper to be overly optimistic, but not wholly fantastical. This paper feels wildly speculative, and relies on premises I am not confident even pass surface reasoning. Even under optimistic conditions, we are not going to see robots "capable of 95% of all cognitive and physical tasks" by 2035. Nor do I think a 74% unemployment rate is even remotely possible. Economic collapse would implode AI development long before those figures were plausible.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#25

Post by kennywinker »

ibaikov wrote: post #7

People overestimate progress in physical world. 2035: robot population will soon be larger than the human one I'd bet that in most places 9 years is about the time needed to build a residential building. I think a good way to think about this is to think of this as producing a serial car. From pitching and capital acquisition to building a prototype to software, regulatory and then the final product which needs multi…

I mean, what is a robot? If you add up all the vacuum cleaners, 3d printers, and dishwashers, that’s probably close or more than the human population.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#27

Post by modeless »

This is dangerously naive and misguided. They claim to want to avoid centralization of control but propose a world police state of AI regulation. Governments exerting this much control will only end in war and tyranny.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#28

Post by oezi »

Forecasting that the GPU build-out will reach 100 trillion USD in 2034 is wild (that's triple the US GDP in 8 years). And another 10x within 2 years.

I am not sure where they believe that amount of capital could come from. It would require central bank level money printing never seen before.

https://ai-2040.com/supplements/compute-supplement

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#29

Post by joshstrange »

hollerith wrote: post #21
joshstrange wrote: post #6

I'm sure some people will have issue with my phrasing but, honest question: Are there examples of where we have collective decided not to pursue knowledge? Successfully? I guess nuclear weapons might be the best example though research doesn't seem have to actually "stopped" as much as gone underground and we still have country trying to climb that ladder. But I don't know how relevant that is to LLMs/AI. It almost f…

Yes, there are examples of where we have collective decided not to pursue a particular technology tree. For one, Japan banned guns for a few centuries. (Its warrior class was politically powerful and judged that guns would disrupt class relations too much.) And there have been successful world-wide bans. For example, following the invention of recombinant DNA technology, scientists convened the Asilomar Conference in…

I completely can see why we'd want to, for ethical reasons, ban germline editing, and I want to be clear that I agree doing so cannot be done ethically, but there is a part of me that is wistful for what could have been. Same with things like CRISPR but it's probably just fun to dream and the reality would be a nightmare.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#30

Post by icandoit »

modeless wrote: post #27

This is dangerously naive and misguided. They claim to want to avoid centralization of control but propose a world police state of AI regulation. Governments exerting this much control will only end in war and tyranny.

If the production, and distribution of the tech is confined to one or two companies, then those two companies and the resulting power that comes to them, makes them the de facto world government. (Democratic choice may be a farce but it is a useful friction on net.)

If they own all the RAM, models, and the means to do any work, then you are at their mercy. They will buy all the RAM, leaving you none, then all the transport, then all the electricity. You will be as boxed out of the current economy as the Amish and it will get its plug pulled.

Gradual Disempowerment is the default plan right now. War and tyrrany are not remotely the worst case scenario. I'll take Butlerian Jihad over being turned into cattle any day.

Imagine solving for equilibrium with two classes of beings. One requires agricultural land and 20 years to become individually productive and barely maintains a healthy population in a entertainment saturated landscape. The second eats only electricity and is ready to work on day 1. Round 1 goes to the strongest gorilla for sure, round 100?

If LLMs had come to earth in spaceships would you have welcomed them into your work and your home?

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