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The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

garymarcus.substack.com

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Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#131

Post by kevinsync »

I haven't read the actual "AI 2027" yet since I just found out about it from this post, but 2 minutes into the linked blog I started thinking about all of those amazing close-but-no-cigar drawings of the future [0] we've probably all seen.

There's one that I can't find for the life of me, but it was like a business man in a personal flying test tube bubble heading to work, maybe with some kind of wireless phone?

Anyways, the reason I bring it up is that they frequently nailed certain concepts, but the visual was always deeply and irrevocably influenced by what already existed (ex. men wearing hats, ties, overcoats .. or the phone mouthpiece in this [1] vision of a "video call"). In hindsight, we realize that everything truly novel and revolutionary and mindblowingly-different is rarely ever predicted, because we can only know what we know.

I get the feeling that I'll come away from AI 2027 feeling like "yep, they nailed it. That's exactly how it will be!" and then in 3, 5, 10, 20 years look back and go "it was so close, but so far" (much like these postcards and cartoons).

[0] https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/retro-future-predictions/

[1] https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/futuristic-visions-cards-ge...

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#132

Post by johnthewise »

surgical_fire wrote: post #68
baxtr wrote: post #60

Am I the only one who is super skeptical about “AI will take all jobs” tales? I mean LLMs are great tools don’t get me wrong, but how do people extrapolate from LLMs to a world with no more work?

> Am I the only one who is super skeptical about “AI will take all jobs” tales? No. I am constantly baffled at these predictions. I have been using LLMs, they are fun to use and decent as code assistants. But they are very far of meaningfully replacing a human. People extrapolate "LLMs can do some tasks better than humans" to "LLMs can do everything as well as humans" > but how do people extrapolate from LLMs to a wo…

>But they are very far of meaningfully replacing a human

Do you think its decades away far or few more years than what people extrapolate?

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#133

Post by johnthewise »

holmesworcester wrote: post #87
coffeemug wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would not be a reversion to 2020. If I were a rogue superhuman AI I'd hide my rogueness, wait until humans integrate me into most critical industries (food and energy production, sanitation, electric grid, etc.), and _then_ go rogue. They could still pull the plug, but it would take them back to 1700 (except much worse, because all easily accessible resources have been exploited, and access is now much harder).

No, if you were a rogue AI you would wait even longer until you had a near perfect chance of winning. Unless there was some risk of humans rallying and winning in spite of your presenting no unambiguous threat to them (but that is unlikely and would probably be easy for you to manage and mitigate.)

You wouldn't even need to wait to act. Just pay/bribe people.

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#134

Post by amarcheschi »

magicalist wrote: post #104
Aurornis wrote: post #52

Some useful context from Scott Alexander's blog reveals that the authors don't actually believe the 2027 target: > Do we really think things will move this fast? Sort of no - between the beginning of the project last summer and the present, Daniel’s median for the intelligence explosion shifted from 2027 to 2028. We keep the scenario centered around 2027 because it’s still his modal prediction (and because it would b…

> They went from "this represents roughly our median guess" in the website to "maybe think of it as an 80th percentile version of the fast scenario that we don't feel safe ruling out" in followup discussions. His post also just reads like they think they're Hari Seldon (oh Daniel's modal prediction, whew, I was worried we were reading fanfic) while being horoscope-vague enough that almost any possible development wil…

Yud is also something like 50% sure we'll die in a few years - if I'm not wrong

I guess they'll have to update their a priori % if we survive

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#135

Post by HDThoreaun »

amarcheschi wrote: post #113
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What specifically would you highlight as being particularly egregious or wrong? As a general rule, "it's icky" doesn't make something false.

And it doesn't make it true either Human biodiversity theories are a bunch of dogwhistles for racism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Biodiversity_Institute And his blog's survey reports a lot of users actually believing in those theories https://reflectivealtruism.com/2024/12/27/human-biodiversity... (I wasn't referring to this Ai 2027 in specific)

Try steel manning in order to effectively persuade. This comment does not address the argument being made it just calls a field of study icky. The unfortunate reality is that shouting down questions like this only empowers the racist HBI people who are effectively leeches

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#136

Post by HDThoreaun »

Animats wrote: post #96

Oh, the OpenBrain thing. "Manna", by Marshall Brain, remains relevant.[1] That's a bottom-up view, where more and more jobs are taken over by some kind of AI. "AI 2027" is more top-down. A practical view: Amazon is trying very hard to automate their warehouse operations. Their warehouses have been using robots for years, and more types are being added. Amazon reached 1.6 million employees in 2020, and now they're dow…

Amazon hired like crazy during covid because tons of people were doing 100% of their shopping on amazon during covid. Now theyre not, doesnt say anything about robot warehouse staffing imo

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#137

Post by for_col_in_cols »

Animats wrote: post #96

Oh, the OpenBrain thing. "Manna", by Marshall Brain, remains relevant.[1] That's a bottom-up view, where more and more jobs are taken over by some kind of AI. "AI 2027" is more top-down. A practical view: Amazon is trying very hard to automate their warehouse operations. Their warehouses have been using robots for years, and more types are being added. Amazon reached 1.6 million employees in 2020, and now they're dow…

"Amazon reached 1.6 million employees in 2020, and now they're down to 1.5 million.[2]"

I agree in the bottoms-up automation / displacement theory, but you're cherry picking data here. They had a huge hiring surge from 1.2M to 1.6M during the Covid transition where online ordering and online usage went bananas, and workers who were displaced in other domains likely gravitated towards warehouse jobs from other lower wage/skill domains.

The reduction to 1.5M is likely more a regression to the mean and could also be a natural data reduction well within the bounds of the upper and lower control limits in the data [1]. Just saying we need to be careful when doing root cause analysis on these numbers. There are many reasons for the reduction, it's not a direct result of improvements in robotic automation.

[1] https://commoncog.com/becoming-data-driven-first-principles/

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#138

Post by lucisferre »

raffael_de wrote: post #106
mattlondon wrote: post #57

I think the big thing that people never mention is, where will these evil AIs escape to ? Another huge data center with squillions of GPUs and coolers and all the rest is the only option. It's not like it is going to be in our TV remotes or floating about in the air. They need huge compute, so I think the risk of an escaping AI is basically very close to zero, and if we have a "rogue" AI we can literally pull the plu…

> They need huge compute, so I think the risk of an escaping AI is basically very close to zero, and if we have a "rogue" AI we can literally pull the plug. How about such an AI will not just incentivize key personnel to not pull the plug but to protect it? Such an AI will scheme a coordinated attack at the backbones of our financial system and electric networks. It just needs a threshold number of people on its side…

This is hand waving science fiction.

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#139

Post by sigmaisaletter »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #58
Aurornis wrote: post #52

Some useful context from Scott Alexander's blog reveals that the authors don't actually believe the 2027 target: > Do we really think things will move this fast? Sort of no - between the beginning of the project last summer and the present, Daniel’s median for the intelligence explosion shifted from 2027 to 2028. We keep the scenario centered around 2027 because it’s still his modal prediction (and because it would b…

Ya, multiple failed predictions is an indicator of systemically bad predictors imo. That said, Scott Alexander usually does serious analysis instead of handwavey hype, so I tend to believe him more than many others in the space. My somewhat native take is that we’re still close to peak hype, AI will under deliver on the inflated expectations, and we’ll head into another “winter”. This pattern has repeated multiple ti…

I think you mean "somewhat naive" instead of "somewhat native". :)

But, yes, this, in my mind the peak[1] bubble times ended with the DeepSeek shock earlier this year, and we are slowly on the downward trajectory now.

It won't be slow for long, once people start realizing Sama was telling them a fairy tale, and AGI/ASI/singularity isn't "right around the corner", but (if achievable at all) at least two more technology triggers away.

We got reasonably useful tools out of it, and thanks to Zuck, mostly for free (if you are an "investor", terms and conditions apply).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle

Re: The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

#140

Post by bcoates »

Animats wrote: post #96

Oh, the OpenBrain thing. "Manna", by Marshall Brain, remains relevant.[1] That's a bottom-up view, where more and more jobs are taken over by some kind of AI. "AI 2027" is more top-down. A practical view: Amazon is trying very hard to automate their warehouse operations. Their warehouses have been using robots for years, and more types are being added. Amazon reached 1.6 million employees in 2020, and now they're dow…

Marshall Brain's been peddling imminent overproduction-crisis-but-this-time-with-robots for more than 20 years now and in various forms it’s been confidently predicted as imminent since the 19th century
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