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I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy

naomibashkansky.com

191–200 of 233 posts

Re: I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy

#191

What is the benefit ? Sharing thoughts to the external world would be like going to a bakery and walking out with flour and eggs. Isn't the act of talking/writing part of the thinking ? Am I just going to share intrusive thoughts and half-baked ideas to my CIA agent now ?

I can see legit use cases where people simply can't communicate in any physical way. People with locked-in syndrome, etc. But, obviously those only make up a small number of people. Strapping a mind-reading machine onto some detainee is probably the more likely case.

Military sci-fi is full of mind-machine interfacing like this. There’s definitely value in being able to interface directly with a machine instead of having to push buttons or read outputs.

The problem is that anything based on LLM architecture is not going to be fast or accurate enough to allow someone to, say, fly a fighter jet with this interface.

Re: I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy

#192

I am not a religious person, but this feels to me, intuitively, for lack of any better word, and with only the mildest flippancy, satanic. ‘Tech’ culture has gotten very, very weird. It’s turned sour. It’s so far past the point where I no longer feel the joy and excitement and liberatory potential of computing. I’m not even that old. What happened?

I feel the complete opposite.

Years ago I was close to disavowing technology and only doing the minimal effort needed to keep up with my job, because I'd gotten bored and disillusioned with it. Anything more than a small hobby project had accumulated too much complexity and busywork for me to feel excited about working on it. I suffered through it for the sake of the few things I cared about most, but it took its toll on me. I didn't have the infinite energy I may have had for my favorite projects in high school anymore.

But then this new wave of AI came along. First there was Copilot, and I was in awe not necessarily at its immediate practicality, but the potential it demonstrated. I felt the embers of passion tentatively peek their heads out from wherever I'd previously buried them.

Every new leap, computing became more and more rewarding again.

First general searches became incredibly easier to find the relevant bits I wanted from. I actually wanted to look things up again now that I didn't have to grok dozens of pages of Google or Stack Overflow. I got my custom home router configured the way I wanted it instead of giving up or settling for copying some known config that wasn't quite what I wanted, after a small amount of trial and error.

Then it became reasonably competent at simple but tedious tasks, at least 90% where the last 10% was easy to fix by hand. Enormous git conflict to slog through? Instead of staring at the screen feeling my heart sink and wandering off to bedrot instead, I felt excited at the prospect that I could instead command the computer to do it for me, and it was actually motivating to get that to work. Instead of feeling too exhausted and annoyed to keep working, I felt rewarded and refreshed.

Then it started writing entire code files, then entire features, then entire applications all on its own, with my guidance and input on architectural decisions and aesthetics. Performing entire FreeBSD upgrades while keeping custom kernel module packages working, fixing Gentoo systems with messed up USE flags and an otherwise intractable dependency hell to sift through, hell, even writing entire kernel patches to fix sleep mode and graphics problems I'd been having on my 2010 Macbook Pro with Gentoo installed. I feel something reminiscent of my memories of opening Christmas presents as a child when the AI is done making something I'm super excited for.

I'm eternally grateful for the current AI zeitgeist in the tech world. We're living in the best time so far in history to be into tech. And things like Conduit? How would you not be excited for something with so much potential to be made? Even if you don't like it, imagine what it could mean for people with communication disabilities, carpal tunnel, etc. I'd love to be able to just type with my thoughts, and sending them straight into an AI sounds awesome too.

If this is satanic then I don't want to go to heaven. I feel more joy, excitement, and liberatory potential in technology than I have at any point in my life. I even feel more liberated to learn more - without the tedium raising my cortisol and stealing my attention all day, I'm actually more inclined to do things like write code in vim on my VT320 or read over code there with no distractions or AI input. I've reaped great rewards from being able to think more clearly and at higher levels of abstraction, free of the bonds of bullshit and tedium, at peace in the knowledge that I will never have to shave a yak against my will ever again.

Re: I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy

#193
post #133

I am not a religious person, but this feels to me, intuitively, for lack of any better word, and with only the mildest flippancy, satanic. ‘Tech’ culture has gotten very, very weird. It’s turned sour. It’s so far past the point where I no longer feel the joy and excitement and liberatory potential of computing. I’m not even that old. What happened?

There has been an inflection point in the recent past where the majority of heavily marketed and promoted "tech" (namely, software and tools) have gone from assisting lives and promoting ease to actively making lives more difficult and compromising the social integrity of human civilization. People disagree on where that inflection point lies but nearly everyone has a story of how they used to be excited for new gadg…

Could you explain exactly how this project that aims to let people beam thoughts to their computers is "actively making lives more difficult and compromising the social integrity of human civilization" as opposed to "assisting lives and promoting ease"? What could be more empowering and convenient to a user of a computer, especially one with a relevant disability?

Re: I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy

#194

I am not a religious person, but this feels to me, intuitively, for lack of any better word, and with only the mildest flippancy, satanic. ‘Tech’ culture has gotten very, very weird. It’s turned sour. It’s so far past the point where I no longer feel the joy and excitement and liberatory potential of computing. I’m not even that old. What happened?

I feel the complete opposite. Years ago I was close to disavowing technology and only doing the minimal effort needed to keep up with my job, because I'd gotten bored and disillusioned with it. Anything more than a small hobby project had accumulated too much complexity and busywork for me to feel excited about working on it. I suffered through it for the sake of the few things I cared about most, but it took its tol…

Fascinating how different peoples’ intuitions can be. Thanks for the earnest response.

Re: I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy

#195

There’s quite a few out-of-the-norm assumptions in this. 1. Superhuman AI is inevitable. 2. Writing will become a bottleneck to communicate effectively with it. 3. Higher communication bandwidth would let us keep up with the machines. 4. Therefore with higher bandwidth humans could stay part of AI decision processes. 5. That makes it more “human”, as humans would be kept in-the-loop without becoming a bottleneck to b…

After #6, the ASI has replaced you. Seems to be the goal for some of these folks.

Re: I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy

#196

I am not a religious person, but this feels to me, intuitively, for lack of any better word, and with only the mildest flippancy, satanic. ‘Tech’ culture has gotten very, very weird. It’s turned sour. It’s so far past the point where I no longer feel the joy and excitement and liberatory potential of computing. I’m not even that old. What happened?

I feel the complete opposite. Years ago I was close to disavowing technology and only doing the minimal effort needed to keep up with my job, because I'd gotten bored and disillusioned with it. Anything more than a small hobby project had accumulated too much complexity and busywork for me to feel excited about working on it. I suffered through it for the sake of the few things I cared about most, but it took its tol…

[deleted]

Re: I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy

#197

We have machines that can read our thoughts and act on our slightest whims. How come these brilliant machines can’t figure out how to make a hospital stay not cost $60,000? Or build a car for less than $30,000? Or keep a megalomaniac from fooling enough people to seize power in a country of 300 million people?

These are all very easy things to do. People with significant resources just benefit from them not being solved.

Re: I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy

#199
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The meaning of psychosis hasn't changed from before AI. It means loss of touch with reality. It's still somewhat subjective because people can interpret reality in different ways. But to me what you are describing is pretty close to it. Because we know there was never any harmonic resonance and or "strange emergent state between two interlocutors". I say this as somebody who uses the frontier models everyday for work…

As somebody who has unfortunately had to deal with people suffering actual psychosis stemming from some of the most terrible illnesses that can afflict a human being - no, this is not psychosis. What parent is describing is more akin to believing in astrology and tea leaves.

Yeah, that makes much... nonsense. Being impressed by something novel achieved as result of cooperative effort between a frontier LLM and a human, is "astrology and tea leaves". Can you elaborate, or...

Is the difference here between us that you are using a passive-aggressive drive-by snipe, probably to preserve ill-gotten karma tickets? I will suggest you may have been the cause of the illnesses you cite. You have an abusive quality, which is known to exacerbate such disorders. As a coward, you may have pushed things too far with these 'unfortunate' people, and found through a bit too much expectation -- if not encouragement -- what you quietly desired to find. Similar to what you have done here.

The truth is, those, such as your self, who recklessly pathologize others recreationally, often cause far more harm than the supposed crazies ever do, even to themselves. And for the gullible people here, as you flag this comment and become pleased with yourselves -- before doing so, ask yourself: Is "harmonic resonance" used in a rinky-dink, heavily moderated and filtered forum thread truly adequate grounds to start issuing psychological evaluations? I know you guys pretend to value ethics and fancy yourselves as sentinels of better rationale, but I think you'll have to live with something on your conscience if you don't pause to think about this one before the instant gratification of dragging someone down. Retrospect might point the finger of pathology in the other direction...

Pick your fights wisely. Have some integrity.

I'll also say the alliance you've formed with the little green man is touching. You've just met and it's already using "we" as if you're in a special club together. How adorable. "we know that it can lead there with AI." I'd love to see your club share your concerns with Yampolskiy, or some of the folks that actually work on frontier models, or any of the well-respected people who take the subject a bit more seriously than you suggest is healthy.

Is it really inappropriate to say, if sincerely and without exaggeration, that you make me nauseous? You do.

Re: I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy

#200
post #2

are you specifically focused on non-invasive methods/why? seems like you reach a noise barrier which limits things like this

From the article > It’s hard to collect enough data using invasive methods. Few people want a chip in their brain! But non-invasive methods are getting much better. The hardware is improving and getting cheaper, though I apologize for being vague about the particularities of our hardware.

The hardware is a helmet with a buch of sensors and IR LEDs on the inside. There's a writeup of the process and a picture of the outside here:

https://condu.it/thought/10k-hours

Their data acquisition routine was driven by Claude and they were recruiting random people off Craigslist pretty aggressively a few months back. I know a couple of folks who responded out of curiosity and described a very janky setup in the rented basements of a couple of residential houses in SF. From what I heard about the setup the data they got must have been incredibly noisy.

To the people who are sceptical here, I wouldn't count them out yet. They almost certainly can get funding with what they captured, which would get them better hardware. And given the state of brain scanning - people have captured images from scanned brain activity some years ago as I recall - I'd say they have a good shot. But yeah, it's not telepathy.

Previous HN discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46195109

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