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Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely

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Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely

#41

Post by StilesCrisis »

squidbeak wrote: post #29
Marha01 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food production is indeed a solved problem in most countries (we are almost post-scarcity when it comes to food), which is why obesity is a much bigger issue than hunger today. Hunger is present pretty much only in conflict zones. I fully expect such issues in conflict zones, even in AI post-scarcity world. Housing is definitely not post-scarcity today, building a house is still very expensive, not to mention the lim…

> Hunger is present pretty much only in conflict zones. How do you explain the existence of food banks in peaceful first world countries?

Without trying to sound crass, food banks _are_ the reason we don't see people dying of starvation in first world countries. If people need food, a food bank will give it to them no questions asked.

Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely

#42

Post by techpression »

Has anything really important been solved by AI yet, or where is this radical (imo) belief around AGI coming from? Genuinely curious, I know there are some math problems solved and ML has been used for far longer than AI to improve things, but where is clean (efficient) energy, the cure for cancer (or any of the horrible neurological disorders, take your pick), new hardware designs, quantum computing solutions, etc etc, you get the gist. Where are the things that will actually send humanity into the next era of civilization, I don't care about more React apps (but I do enjoy my coding companions for other things).

Heck, a proof for P=NP or P!=NP or solve the The Riemann Hypothesis. Just give me something truly exciting and I will believe AGI is around the corner, until then I will see it as cool technology, that while beneficial to me, also helped cause the biggest amount of disinformation we've every seen.

Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely

#43

Post by graemep »

estearum wrote: post #38
thegrim33 wrote: post #10

Spoiler: The plan is .. add massive regulation, but only to the US, don't affect other countries developing it in any way other than "setting a good standard that'll hopefully influence them". Seems like an airtight plan.

That's called the carrot The beauty of the United States' global hegemony is that it also has lots of sticks

Sufficient sticks to get China to agree to the same rules? Overseen by whom?

Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely

#44

Post by OttoVonBizark »

squidbeak wrote: post #29
Marha01 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food production is indeed a solved problem in most countries (we are almost post-scarcity when it comes to food), which is why obesity is a much bigger issue than hunger today. Hunger is present pretty much only in conflict zones. I fully expect such issues in conflict zones, even in AI post-scarcity world. Housing is definitely not post-scarcity today, building a house is still very expensive, not to mention the lim…

> Hunger is present pretty much only in conflict zones. How do you explain the existence of food banks in peaceful first world countries?

The fact food banks exist suggest over all food scarcity is solved in that specific culture. - if it wasn't there wouldn't be any spare food for a food bank

Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely

#45

Post by xyzzy123 »

squidbeak wrote: post #29
Marha01 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food production is indeed a solved problem in most countries (we are almost post-scarcity when it comes to food), which is why obesity is a much bigger issue than hunger today. Hunger is present pretty much only in conflict zones. I fully expect such issues in conflict zones, even in AI post-scarcity world. Housing is definitely not post-scarcity today, building a house is still very expensive, not to mention the lim…

> Hunger is present pretty much only in conflict zones. How do you explain the existence of food banks in peaceful first world countries?

Food is allocated using a variety of mechanisms in peaceful first world countries, primarily money but also via government assistance, kinship, friendship, community, etc.

At any given time many people have problems with one or more of those systems. Money is easy to run out of because it's used for everything, the government can be slow and difficult, relationships can fray, people can be isolated, etc. Food banks exist as a backstop for when the regular means of allocating are not working.

The problem isn't "scarcity" per se, it's more of an allocation thing. Who has a claim on enough food to stay alive? Everyone! But what foods can they claim? How much? What specific channel / institution (with associated allocation rules) will distribute it to them? What are the conditions and controls? etc.

Allocating things can be difficult. An allocation mechanism with no controls will see fraud, waste and abuse. Even when an institution is willing to give things away no questions asked, there are (often invisible until you think about them) conditions like "please don't claim huge quantities and resell what we're giving you, that would be unfair to others".

It's also interesting to think about the fact that you can't fix food scarcity in general by simply giving hungry people money, because money is too fungible.

Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely

#46

Post by merelydev »

How will this be enforced, at least with financial markets money is discrete, can largely be counted. This seems like a slippery slope to full blown surveillance of the internet and in general computing.

If AGI is truly imminent and will collectively effect all of us why not apply democracy to it, and vote for new AI models?

Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely

#48

Post by [deleted] »

squidbeak wrote: post #29
Marha01 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food production is indeed a solved problem in most countries (we are almost post-scarcity when it comes to food), which is why obesity is a much bigger issue than hunger today. Hunger is present pretty much only in conflict zones. I fully expect such issues in conflict zones, even in AI post-scarcity world. Housing is definitely not post-scarcity today, building a house is still very expensive, not to mention the lim…

> Hunger is present pretty much only in conflict zones. How do you explain the existence of food banks in peaceful first world countries?

[deleted]

Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely

#49

Post by felixgallo »

StilesCrisis wrote: post #41
squidbeak wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hunger is present pretty much only in conflict zones. How do you explain the existence of food banks in peaceful first world countries?

Without trying to sound crass, food banks _are_ the reason we don't see people dying of starvation in first world countries. If people need food, a food bank will give it to them no questions asked.

Unfortunately this is not just precarious, it's extremely vulnerable to changing political conditions. Many of the food bank services in my state have lost significant funding owing to the use of words like 'women' or 'black' in their grants, which were duly grepped for and shut down.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Cuts-t...

Civilization can't rely effectively on systems that are this fragile.

Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely

#50

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

techpression wrote: post #42

Has anything really important been solved by AI yet, or where is this radical (imo) belief around AGI coming from? Genuinely curious, I know there are some math problems solved and ML has been used for far longer than AI to improve things, but where is clean (efficient) energy, the cure for cancer (or any of the horrible neurological disorders, take your pick), new hardware designs, quantum computing solutions, etc e…

The point is that we need to have a safety plan in place before an AI is smart enough to radically reshape the world. If you've got an AI that's ready to start sending humanity into the next era of civilization, it may be too late to control when and how it does that.

> Heck, a proof for P=NP or P!=NP or solve the The Riemann Hypothesis. Just give me something truly exciting and I will believe AGI is around the corner, until then I will see it as cool technology, that while beneficial to me, also helped cause the biggest amount of disinformation we've every seen.

I hope you'll keep this in mind when those milestones are reached. What I've seen a lot of people do, unfortunately, is pretend that the impressive things nobody thought AI could do 5 years ago are trivial things that aren't very hard.

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