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Sam Altman’s leap of faith

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Re: Sam Altman’s leap of faith

#101

Post by skybrian »

ngrilly wrote: post #89

In the recorded interview, Sam Altman says climate change is such a hard problem that we need strong AI first to solve it. I have doubts about this for several reasons: - Human psychology is one of the biggest obstacles (maybe the biggest) in solving climate change, and I'm not sure how a strong AI is supposed to fix that. - Building carbon-neutral energy sources is a hard problem, but most experts are optimistic abo…

I think the idea might be that strong AI could accelerate R&D in general. For example, the politics could change a lot if inexpensive technical solutions are found for removing carbon from the air.

That may seem rather unlikely, but the true believers in Strong AI tend to think of it as a magic wand: if people can do scientific research, why couldn't a machine do it faster?

Re: Sam Altman’s leap of faith

#102

Post by duncancarroll »

"the opportunity with artificial general intelligence is so incomprehensibly enormous that if OpenAI manages to crack this particular nut, it could “maybe capture the light cone of all future value in the universe"

This feels a bit too Kurzweilian to me. I still don't understand how we go from General AI --> ??? --> Infinite $$$

Re: Sam Altman’s leap of faith

#103

Post by jelliclesfarm »

gnomewascool wrote: post #72
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #66

This whole premise that one can generate profits out of AGI is ridiculous. If AGI comes to fruition, it won’t be working to make profits for anyone. The idea that we would end up with a Friendly AGI that would prostrate itself to the destructive Super Apex Predator of this planet is laughable. That AGI would work diligently to pay investors off 100x is..well..a lame duck that won’t take off...it cant even barely limp…

Why, in principle, would it not be possible for us to design an AGI, that would have care for our (all sentient beings') welfare or care for the investors' profit as (one of) its core goal(s)? To make a biological comparison, the vast majority of humans have a deep, intrinsic need to procreate and have children. It doesn't really follow from some rational analysis — it's just there, presumably "imbued" into us by evo…

Right. In that case, it won’t be true AGI.

Re: Sam Altman’s leap of faith

#104

Post by jelliclesfarm »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #80
gnomewascool wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why, in principle, would it not be possible for us to design an AGI, that would have care for our (all sentient beings') welfare or care for the investors' profit as (one of) its core goal(s)? To make a biological comparison, the vast majority of humans have a deep, intrinsic need to procreate and have children. It doesn't really follow from some rational analysis — it's just there, presumably "imbued" into us by evo…

I think and hope that it is possible to make a moral, social AI. An adult in a room of children should feel responsible and empathetic toward them. I also hope that parent is right in that it won't want to generate profit for its investors. I hope it does the moral thing instead and puts us in a post-scarcity state where we don't live and die by capital. :3 (Or kill us all. Whichever.) >why could we not design an AGI…

A moral social AI would never tolerate the super apex predator that is the human being.

Re: Sam Altman’s leap of faith

#105

Post by not_a_moth »

tristanm wrote: post #57

It's interesting that in order for his pitch to work (if you invest in OpenAI, you will get up to 100x returns), assuming they do build AGI, it still requires that their AGI acquires a very stable, virtually guaranteed advantage of large magnitude. This very strongly requires that they cannot share anything they discover whatsoever. Especially since they apparently plan on using it to make strategic investments to be…

Yeah, there's a big assumptions about the nature of an AGI breakthrough, mainly that it will be a snowball of run away value. Why assume this? Is it because we think AlphaGo/Zero can produce human-like cognition? Why wouldn't it be a long, incremental process of X thousand small breakthroughs, over say a decade, where the result is something like average human-level intelligence; maybe the most important invention of our time, but not super intelligence, and not "run away".

(Then after another X years (or decades) you might figure out super intelligence, if regulations haven't intervened by then)

If the trajectory is incremental as described, it seems untenable that OpenAI could keep some major monopolistic advantage on AGI, without being completely un-open/sealed off for decade(s).

Re: Sam Altman’s leap of faith

#106

Post by jelliclesfarm »

marcosdumay wrote: post #73
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #66

This whole premise that one can generate profits out of AGI is ridiculous. If AGI comes to fruition, it won’t be working to make profits for anyone. The idea that we would end up with a Friendly AGI that would prostrate itself to the destructive Super Apex Predator of this planet is laughable. That AGI would work diligently to pay investors off 100x is..well..a lame duck that won’t take off...it cant even barely limp…

The "artificial" part on the name is there to indicate that it will want to do whatever it was designed to want to do. If it is designed to make its creators rich, it will try to do exactly that. Maybe with disastrous consequences, even to its creators, but all for the objective it's given, not for some random human feelings.

Intelligence..by definition...will ‘learn’ automatically and will slip beyond the constraints of human generated code.

Re: Sam Altman’s leap of faith

#107

Post by geofft »

ngrilly wrote: post #89

In the recorded interview, Sam Altman says climate change is such a hard problem that we need strong AI first to solve it. I have doubts about this for several reasons: - Human psychology is one of the biggest obstacles (maybe the biggest) in solving climate change, and I'm not sure how a strong AI is supposed to fix that. - Building carbon-neutral energy sources is a hard problem, but most experts are optimistic abo…

> Human psychology is one of the biggest obstacles (maybe the biggest) in solving climate change, and I'm not sure how a strong AI is supposed to fix that.

If you believe in Yudkowsky's AI-box claim, a strong AI can convince politicians and business executives of things they are determined not to believe.

Re: Sam Altman’s leap of faith

#108

Post by olivermarks »

TechCrunch is a site that has historically promoted these types of chimeras for gain and then subsequently been prominent in writing post mortems and knocking ideas down, much like the tabloid press do with showbiz personalities.

Re: Sam Altman’s leap of faith

#109

Post by chrischen »

arugulum wrote: post #5

Allow me to present Altman's wager: - If OpenAI does not achieve AGI, and you invested in it, you lose some finite money (or not, depending on the value of their other R&D) - If OpenAI does not achieve AGI, and you did not invest in it, you saved some finite money, which you could invest elsewhere for finite returns - If OpenAI achieves AGI and you invested in it, you get infinite returns, because AGI will capture al…

Would a $0.01 investment be good enough then to partake in infinite returns?

Re: Sam Altman’s leap of faith

#110

Post by MegaButts »

olivermarks wrote: post #108

TechCrunch is a site that has historically promoted these types of chimeras for gain and then subsequently been prominent in writing post mortems and knocking ideas down, much like the tabloid press do with showbiz personalities.

Should they not discuss the potential benefits of a new technology or the failure of an attempted technology? You're basically complaining about them reporting on technology, which is their purpose.
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