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I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

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Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#41

A few snippets from his full post here: https://gwern.net/guardian-angel . > "The chatbot personas are deeply misaligned with you, and aligned with their owners; and the economic incentives are to farm you with ads and subscriptions, while racing not to amplify you but to replace you." > "On my visits to the Bay Area, I would ask AI researchers or interns why they are doing their current research or projects, when in…

Leaving AI completely aside, it still amazes me that people finds "novel" the idea of removing highly-paid white collar intellectual workers (software developers or otherwise) completely out of the loop.

No-code platforms date back to the 80's. Getting rid of engineers in general is even older [*].

Even relational databases and SQL were initially promoted as "ways to get rid of those expensive programmers to access your data" because they resembled some form of English.

The funny thing about the ad below is that stuff like "stop hiring / get rid of humans" would have been seen as highly insensitive in 1950's America, so they touted that as "put them to do something more important".

[*] https://www.globalnerdy.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/200...

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#42
post #30

As exciting as it sounds, but "As a constraint, a GA designer should aim at a system which costs, as of mid-2026, >$1,000⧸month" will make this an elite tool for the privileged. I don't even disagree with the premise that people are shocked if something costs no matter how much value it delivers, nor do I suggest they should make it cheaper. It is just the realization that AI will accelerate the widening of the gap b…

2026: $1,000/month 2027: $100/month 2028: $10/month

Hopefully!

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#43

LLM psychosis claims another victim... A reminder for anyone reading this: talk to people. Real humans[1]. They will remind you there's more to life than what ChatGPT can offer you. They might even remind you, for all their stupidity and flaws, what intelligence looks like as compared to a program that predicts tokens. Forums like these always get philosophical in high-minded discussions about intelligence, but there…

I totally understand the sentiment, and I generally agree. Something so strange I'm noticing is how AI-pilled regular people are becoming. My sister-in-law is a totally non-technical person, but everything is chatgpt this, chatgpt that. My wife, my kids, various friends — they're all talking about generative AI with way too much regularity. On the bright side, they're disclosing when information comes from AI, but a year ago I would never hear about AI from them. I don't like it.

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#45

(I'm not a part of GA.) I've known gwern for the better part of a decade. Working with him has been great. We've done quite a few projects together, including being the first ones to demonstrate that GPT-2 could play chess (or rather, can be used for actual useful work instead of just being an autocomplete). He's a great person. I've wanted to do a writeup on it for some time, but what surprised me the most is his hu…

> "How much would you pay to have access to a smarter version of yourself?"

How much would I pay to rent my fucking self from a landlord? No, bodylord? Mindlord? Poe's Law.

But looking at the post, they argue that big AI labs have an incentive problem which stops them from personalising, but Guardian Angel will make agents which are "Genuinely yours". In what sense is it genuinely mine if someone else owns it and rents it to me? And how does this fix any incentive problem, they're incentivised to better train wealthier people's AIs, and incentivised to keep dropping "my" intelligence or memory or and then dangle a booster carrot for a small fee. The more they can make it think like me, the more effectively they can work out how to exploit me, advertise to me, propagandise me, and that will be profitable information to sell to other marketers.

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#46
post #38

It's hard to read Gwern's accompanying article without seeing this for what it is, which is a kind of mania. I'm sure he means well and is genuine in his aspirations, but what's outlined for GA is framing LLM's as quasi-gods, which they absolutely are not. I wish him the best, and look forward to being proven wrong.

An LLM just solved 10 top tier math problems this week. It seems very likely that in 6 months they will solve 100 top tier math problems, maybe 1 millenium math problem, maybe 10 top tier physics problems, etc.

It's only going to get crazier.

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#47
post #30

As exciting as it sounds, but "As a constraint, a GA designer should aim at a system which costs, as of mid-2026, >$1,000⧸month" will make this an elite tool for the privileged. I don't even disagree with the premise that people are shocked if something costs no matter how much value it delivers, nor do I suggest they should make it cheaper. It is just the realization that AI will accelerate the widening of the gap b…

2026: $1,000/month 2027: $100/month 2028: $10/month

Just because the hardware and inference costs may decrease in the future doesn't mean prices will. The AI vendor market is the furthest thing from a competitive industry where there are limited barriers to entry and new market entrants exert downward pressure on prices and profit margins.

Every single company in this market is losing billions on this business, and the only way to make it back is to acquire paying customers at a loss and jack up prices later.

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#48

Their profile specifically says they will not acknowledge follow requests, but they only share posts with followers. As such, not sure what the value of the top level link is.

Yeah I clicked through and just see hundreds of "this account limits who can view their posts" messages.

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#49

(I'm not a part of GA.) I've known gwern for the better part of a decade. Working with him has been great. We've done quite a few projects together, including being the first ones to demonstrate that GPT-2 could play chess (or rather, can be used for actual useful work instead of just being an autocomplete). He's a great person. I've wanted to do a writeup on it for some time, but what surprised me the most is his hu…

> " How much would you pay to have access to a smarter version of yourself? " How much would I pay to rent my fucking self from a landlord? No, bodylord? Mindlord? Poe's Law. But looking at the post, they argue that big AI labs have an incentive problem which stops them from personalising, but Guardian Angel will make agents which are "Genuinely yours". In what sense is it genuinely mine if someone else owns it and r…

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Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#50
post #36

> The big AI labs are building a single mind for everyone Reminds me of Pluribus (I just started watching it on Apple TV so maybe this is a late realization for me)

> Reminds me of Pluribus - I just started watching it

It is astoundingly good. A contender for the best show I've ever seen (and I saw the 1st run of Star Trek TOS).

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