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AI 2040: Plan A

ai-2040.com

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Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#361

Post by 27183 »

sudb wrote: post #351
27183 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd call it what it is: a good enough stochastic search result extracted from the model's embedding space.

Is an implication of this that models are incapable of producing entirely novel code? Also, not to get too reductionist about this, but what do you posit is special about what is happening when humans think? Intelligence is hard to define so clearly, I reckon.

> Is an implication of this that models are incapable of producing entirely novel code?

No, it does not imply that at all. Google "temperature in LLMs".

> what do you posit is special about what is happening when humans think?

I don't. And IIUC nobody knows, but I'm not a brain scientist. There have been some wild theories over the years (recall Penrose's). I don't really have a dog in the hunt, except that probably whatever is happening is physical. It doesn't really matter, except insofar as whatever is happening very probably isn't what LLMs are doing. We know enough about what an LLM does, and what a brain does, to be quite certain they don't work the same.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#362

Post by fragmede »

bglazer wrote: post #359
fragmede wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not useless. We know enough about DNA to be able to make better humans, but people get real squickly real fast when you talk about that. It has stalled because of that. If we go in and just check the DNA for Downs or Parkinson's, we can't have a conversation on aborting the foetus without religious beliefs coming into play. Designer children aren't a thing, despite the ability to edit DNA to do specific things.…

> If we go in and just check the DNA for Downs or Parkinson's You should consider reading the wikipedia page about Parkinson’s disease.

You should consider reading more deeply than Wikipedia to be properly informed on a subject. There are a handful of very rare mutations that confer a high risk of getting it that we can detect. They are very rare. This isn't the same thing as being able to give a risk score if the DNA doesn't have all the rare mutations. But the science is there for those unlucky rare cases to say there is a high chance that a specific coding of DNA will result in Parkinson's.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#363

Post by 27183 »

derektank wrote: post #360
27183 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used the example of 1G constant acceleration space flight in another thread which got downvoted to oblivion, but I think it's a good one. That's a technology we know how to build. We just need superconducting electronics and miniaturized fusion reactors, or a ship which is built like Project Orion to use nuclear bombs for propulsion. Now write down a blueprint for superintelligence. So I've given you two impossible…

As early as the late 19th century, Louis Pasteur’s work had inspired a belief in the scientific community that it must, in principle be possible to selectively exterminate bacteria. The German physician Paul Ehrlich expounded on this in greatest detail in 1907 when he described his “magic bullet” (or Zauberkugel) theory for effectively targeting pathogens without harming the human host, similar to the immune system.…

Yes I think the drug discovery analogy is apt. I've spent a bunch of time playing with evolutionary algorithms, they're great fun. And when they work they can do surprising things! [edit] I think the drug discovery analogy does have some limits though. Drug discovery isn't a blind search through fitness space, it's informed by physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine. We have many guiding lights to illuminate the space and identify regions (still high-dimensional infinite regions!) that are likely to be productive. There are fewer lights to guide the way on a search for fitness in intelligence. Hell, we don't even know how to write down a decent objective function.

I wouldn't bet on evolving an intelligent, sentient being-in-a-box on a computer any time soon though. I'm of course prepared to be pleasantly surprised.

That said, I think it's pretty clear that LLMs are not going to get us there.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#364

Post by wavemode »

Grombobulous wrote: post #197
skybrian wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "and physical" is the part I'm particularly skeptical of. Sure, drones are scary, but nobody's really solved getting a robot to deliver a package to your front porch in a civilian setting, and it seems unlikely to be solved quickly.

Nobody’s even solved a self-driving vehicles yet, not in in the sort of “they took over everything and put every uber and truck driver out of business” kind of way. Maybe they will soon but it’s massively far behind the kind of timeframe AI 2027 would have implied.

I actually think self-driving is one of the easier paths of development. The main thing holding it back right now is regulation and liability.

But, if you could wave a wand and eliminate all legal and liability hurdles to self-driving, automobile deaths would plummet. They're way safer than the average human driver. The technology is definitely capable, our society just isn't ready for it.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#365

Post by jvanderbot »

Loic wrote: post #253
aarondong wrote: post #212

I would not like to be dismissive, but to me this article feels like an exercise in creative writing rather than a report to be taken seriously. The entire experience feels like a choose your own adventure game, seems like their stylistic intent. I am not sure if alternative reality fiction is the best way to approach real and serious AI risks. I am also not sure, with the amount of emdashes and the style of prose, t…

I love to model and simulate. As the dead economy theory[0] (discussion [1]) was submitted here, I decided to simulate it. It was really hard to figure out a path "good for the humanity", in the sense of a balanced system, not a winner take all situation, etc. I think this is the reason why you have the tendency to propose some freeze-all policies, full control or similar. If you want to find the equilibrium, you nee…

One counterpoint is that the "labor as TAM" argument is far larger than it needs to be. Only a fraction of it needs to be captured to justify all the capex and make 5 new companies displace FAANG, and this does not have to translate to unemployment to succeed.

https://jodavaho.io/posts/ai-jobpocolypse.html

The difference in the unemployment vs efficient employment model is mostly user driven adoption vs company mandated adoption, or centaurs vs reverse centaurs.

https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/02/canonization/#operate-ite...

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#366

Post by MichaelDickens »

taurath wrote: post #267

This is religious fervor folks, as AI 2027 was. I grew up in evangelical christianity, and to them the end of the world is just around the corner, the same way it has been since I was a small child and likely will be when we are all gone. This isn't science. This isn't hypothesis experiment record results. This is very expensive astrology, shiny rock collecting, ritualistic meaning-making and self-justification. Yall…

I would rather see you engage with the substance of the article rather than skipping right to insulting the authors. I don't think this sort of comment is up to the standard I have come to expect from HN.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#367

Post by throw310822 »

27183 wrote: post #352
throw310822 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We know how these machines work, it's not mysterious, there's nothing "extra" happening. Lol. This is more telling about your implicit unscientific preconceptions that you wanted to reveal. Of course there isn't anything "extra". Where do you think intelligence comes from, some mysterious realm? It's physical, computational. The fact that at the bottom we produced it via matrix multiplication is irrelevant. Maybe h…

> Where do you think intelligence comes from, some mysterious realm? It's physical, computational. Well, no. I don't think it comes from some mysterious realm. I think that which is not physical does not exist [edit: and if you like I'll follow that one right down the rabbit hole--continuity and infinity are useful delusions ]. But that eminently does not mean we know what intelligence is, let alone how to build one.…

You do realise then that "we know how it works, there is no "extra" there" is an argument that can be used against any artificial intelligence, now or in a thousand years, as well as (at some level) against human intelligence (no magic, it's all physics, just dumb cells exchanging signals). This should be enough to give you pause- you immediately reached for an argument that is entirely empty.

> I see a lucky stochastic search result

Again you're reaching for a mechanistic explanation of some kind (let's leave for the moment whether it makes sense or not) as if having an explanation somehow contradicted a display of intelligence. It doesn't. Yes of course we made it, we know how it works (ar some level) and there is no magic. But what matters is the result- this machine, matrix multiplier, stochastic parrot, consistently displays intelligence, to the point of being able to perform very complex, open-ended tasks that integrate discovery, planning, tool usage, decision and even some aesthetic sense, understanding and using natural language, context awareness, you name it.

> This is nothing new, we've been playing with these toys for like 70 fucking years

Lol no. For god's sake. Hundreds of billions of parameters organised in a specific architecture and trained with unimaginable amounts of data and compute? Unless by "these toys" you mean "any computer program vaguely AI-related".

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#368

Post by romanhounds »

MichaelDickens wrote: post #366
taurath wrote: post #267

This is religious fervor folks, as AI 2027 was. I grew up in evangelical christianity, and to them the end of the world is just around the corner, the same way it has been since I was a small child and likely will be when we are all gone. This isn't science. This isn't hypothesis experiment record results. This is very expensive astrology, shiny rock collecting, ritualistic meaning-making and self-justification. Yall…

I would rather see you engage with the substance of the article rather than skipping right to insulting the authors. I don't think this sort of comment is up to the standard I have come to expect from HN.

> I intend to donate (at least) 20% of my lifetime income to effective charities. I publish my donations on my Donations page.

From your bio I suspect you're already in the cult.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#369

Post by KaiserPro »

fulafel wrote: post #291
KaiserPro wrote: post #251

The biggest issue with 2027 was that it didn't understand the economy. For AI2027 to be real, the money has to come from somewhere to carry on building the economy. If >10% of the workers suddenly become unemployed, and the rest taking paycuts, then money supply dries up. (unless central banks do something, but then that can be highly inflationary) Without massive amounts of investment, AI development stops dead. In…

The economy doesn't need workers as consumers necessarily. It would of course be a huge shock to the economy but the economy could adjust to it eventually. Maybe it compromises the 2040 timeline. Still, billionaires are increasingly holding the assets. The money supply drying up can be countered, as it is controlled by central banks and can be arbitrarily increased.

> as it is controlled by central banks and can be arbitrarily increased.

Its really not controlled by central banks. Its influenced, but not controlled.

When central banks "print" money, they effectively just add money to the accounts of investment banks

But investment banks are also "printing" money. Double accounting effectively uses assets to double the available pool of money. If you then sell off those loans based on those assets, then you crystallise that new money. Investment banks are inflationary.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#370

Post by fragmede »

27183 wrote: post #357
fragmede wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First you have to give a specific definition for thinking and reasoning before determining if they definitely do or don't do such a thing.

Fair enough, I should have phrased that less strongly. Until you show that your neural net does "thinking" or "reasoning" I'll disregard that and prefer to think about it in terms of what we actually know neural nets actually do . Does that work?

Just start with your definition for reasoning. If A implies B, and B implies C, does A imply C? Does that count as reasoning?
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