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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

#191

Post by pixl97 »

Diogenesian wrote: post #136
SirHackalot wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An LLM certainly won’t be AGI, whoever said something so ridiculous? I’m saying eventually, when/if we have an architecture that gives rise to artificial intelligence.

I was using Hassabis's bullshit pseudodefinition of AGI, meaning basically that it has a formally high IQ and doesn't forget about object permanence too too often, but is still basically dumber than a cat. If I'm using your definition then it seems like no GPU (or farm of GPUs) is capable of implementing it, and none of us will live to see it. My point was really that intelligence and free will seem essentially ortho…

>none of us will live to see a computer that's meaningfully smarter than a goldfish.

I unfortunately do not have your optimism that humans won't do something as dumb as creating a smart computer. That our you're planning for us to die in the relatively near future.

Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely

#192

Post by pixl97 »

SirHackalot wrote: post #161
energy123 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conflating intelligence with qualia is quite the assumption. HN is really not a good place for serious philosophy discussions.

It’s not HN that’s the problem... Also please, tell me where is the right place for “serious” philosophical discussion. Would be glad to meet you in that forum and discuss. We don’t align on the definition of AGI. To me, AGI implies consciousness, it implies qualia. AGI is not well-defined, so there are varying definitions… My definition of AGI := an intelligent system with qualia. But qualia is entirely subjective,…

>AGI implies consciousness, it implies qualia. AGI is not well-defined, so there are varying definitions

Then it's pretty useless for rational discussion.

Rational discussion begins with a shared vocabulary or everyone just yells past everyone else. If you can't agree on what blue and red are, then no serious discussion on color can occur.

Really we need some new words that have never been used before and give them strong definitions rather than use our religiously motivated, dark aged terms that are wrapped up in something closer to mysticism rather than science.

> make a comeback to justify AI slavery for hundreds of years

I agree, how does the saying go?, it's hard to convince a person of something when their future salary depends on them not understanding it. They say LLMs are hallucinating parrots, but they never met someone from the tobacco industry saying cigarettes don't cause harm.

Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely

#193

Post by nradov »

DFHippie wrote: post #155
nradov wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it not sufficient? Americans give more to charity than citizens of any other developed country. The arguments that all food aid should be routed through government bureaucracies are entirely unconvincing. I'd rather donate to organizations like Second Harvest than pay higher taxes. https://www.shfb.org/

It is my understanding that this claim about Americans' charitable giving does not disaggregate giving to food banks, Girl Scout cookie drives, political causes, the environment, cultural events, religious institutions, etc. Much of this charitable giving does not feed the hungry or house the homeless.

Purchasing Girl Scout cookies isn't counted as a charitable donation.

Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely

#194

Post by rubyn00bie »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #151
cassianoleal wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Is that a fact? Do you have references to back it?

The widespread existence of secondary markets for SNAP benefits, which convert subsidized food for poor people into cash, carries this implication. This is pretty normal in some poor communities and that cash is commonly diverted to various vices. Some malnutrition is a consequence of this. Adding friction to the conversion of welfare benefits to cash is a feature. You can't force poor people to spend cash on proper…

> The widespread existence of secondary markets for SNAP benefits, which convert subsidized food for poor people into cash, carries this implication.

I think “widespread secondary markets” is carrying a lot of implications… yes, people do sell food stamps for cash, and yes it technically happens over a large area (the US) but it’s far from a significant problem within the population that uses food stamps. Most estimates I’ve seen range between 2-5% and they all tend to overestimate (like it literally says that in their methodology).

I think it’s also bizarre to assume they’re trying to kill themselves by doing so, and thereby imply the proceeds are for things like drugs or alcohol. FWIW—- I’ve know folks who sold their excess food stamps, to help pay for their cell phone or utility bills. I’ve know folks who buy them because they’re poor and they are wholly unable to get the caloric needs with their monthly allocation. And yes, I’ve also seen some folks who are likely selling them to buy drugs or alcohol… my point is it’s naive to assume it’s always for self-harm.

If anything, considering how cheap food stamps are as a program for the federal budget— we could absolutely make food free for literally everyone in the US. That would absolutely curb the secondary markets[1] as there would no longer be a market.

[1] I suppose some sort of export of shelf stable food to other countries would pop up, but that requires an international logistics network and is easier to prosecute and fight than an individual outside a grocery store.

Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely

#195

Post by rubyn00bie »

asdff wrote: post #182
LunaSea wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is why obesity is a much bigger issue than hunger today Obesity is much more related to the type of food than the quantity. Many developing countries have obesity issues due to scarcity of fresh and healthy food. In some places coca cola is cheaper and / or more available than drinking water.

Hard to imagine that a 24 rack of coca cola is actually cheaper than an iodine tablet or a couple drops of household bleach or you know, boiling water.

It can be when you don’t have access to boiling water, bleach, iodine tablets, and/or the water you have access to is extremely contaminated with chemicals because of pollution.

Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely

#196

Post by polytely »

bad guys doing bad stuff with the model is a worthwhile thing to watch out for, but for me the big question is mostly how these labs are going to make sure that these models will not collapse society. Like mass unemployment + ability to generate incredible amounts of propaganda and disinfo, seems to me like a recipe for incredible amounts of bloodshed. like to me the biggest risks look like Khmer Rouge-ing: "all people who know what matrix multiplication is get the wall"; or something like: Boston Dynamics killbots doing tiananmen square every day.

Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely

#197

Post by tangenter »

modeless wrote: post #89

This genre of AI researchers begging third parties to stop them from destroying the world is getting really tiresome. Setting up regulatory bodies with ill-defined goals to counter hypothetical threats from science fiction is a recipe for disaster. The premise is that government is too slow moving to be able to react once actual problems are discovered, and I reject that. Yes, government usually moves slowly in most…

We already have a name for this that’s widely used: concern trolling.

Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely

#198

Post by dinkelberg »

Marha01 wrote: post #25
f6v wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what sorts of new economic models will be needed to help everyone thrive in a post-scarcity world What sort of new economic models did we come up with to help everyone thrive in a post-X world? Like, food production is really a solved technical problem. We can feed anyone on the planet if we wanted to. Another example: we could put everyone who's homeless into some sort of a house. Have we done that yet?

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…

> obesity is a much bigger issue than hunger today

Hunger is acute suffering, mostly by people who cannot change anything about it, while obesity is more of an epidemiological problem and can in principle be avoided by eating (or in the case of dependent persons, feeding) less.

Re: Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely

#199

Post by fragmede »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #45
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?

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 e…

https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/11/26/how-a-market-sy...

There's a fascinating points system food banks use on the back end to allocate which food goes to which bank.

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