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The Age of AI has begun

gatesnotes.com

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Re: The Age of AI has begun

#21

Post by breck »

capableweb wrote: post #12

> Philanthropy is my full-time job these days, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how—in addition to helping people be more productive—AI can reduce some of the world’s worst inequities. Globally, the worst inequity is in health: 5 million children under the age of 5 die every year. One great first step Open AI can take towards this is by actually making their models open. As long as the models are intentionally kept…

> AI can reduce some of the world’s worst inequities.

To reduce inequity abolish (c)opywrong laws.

BG grew rich via (c)opywrong laws.

That is the dilemma. Does he see it and just not connect the dots? Or can he connect the dots but doesn't really care? I am not sure.

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#22

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

I thought this was a pretty good post, but I'm still pretty shocked that people as intelligent as Gates don't spend more time on the potential downsides. To be clear, he does highlight some of the downsides, but his responses are just "handwavy" in my opinion.

What is most baffling to me is that the highlight of this post is that Gates talks about the potential for AI to reduce worldwide inequality, where in all honesty I see the exact opposite being more likely. Our current economic systems just fundamentally can't deal with ever larger swaths of the population being unable to compete with AI. And despite all the answers I've seen of "well, duh, that's because our current economic systems are so broken!", I have yet to see any sort of plausible answer that addresses how we get from our current version of capitalism to something else where all the spoils just don't go to the few people that control the strongest AI implementations (that doesn't involve massive amounts of strife and despair).

Perhaps technologists, even ones as smart as Gates, are just too siloed in their worldview of technology being an ever increasing force for good. I actually find this particularly surprising from Gates, given how he's seen first hand that large swaths of the world blame him for the pandemic, or for wanting to vaccinate us with "microchips", due to the power of propaganda through social media.

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#23

Post by Giorgi »

drumhead wrote: post #13

I like to think its more the age of the Genuine Personal Digital Assistant has begun. The LLMs are great at assisting you to do your job but they wont take over yet.

ChatGPT is only second version and it can already take over every single financial job, every single copyrighting job, entry level programming, and many more.

Imagine what it will do in 5 years. Many versions later. Intellect based job is going to die as we know it.

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#25

Post by kenjackson »

flyinglizard wrote: post #18
system16 wrote: post #14

> In my lifetime, I’ve seen two demonstrations of technology that struck me as revolutionary. > The first time was in 1980, when I was introduced to a graphical user interface > The second big surprise came just last year. I’d been meeting with the team from OpenAI I guess it's not surprising since Microsoft was late to the game with IE, but it's interesting he never mentions "the internet" in this list.

The internet evolved, it wasn't just useful all at once (as in "a demonstration that struck me"). Early users struggled every day to grow its utility and find more uses, all the way from a glorified BBS to what it is today.

The first time someone demo'ed the web to me, my first thought was -- why would I use this when I have ftp, gopher, archie, etc... The web definitely didn't seem revolutionary to me. And for me my introduction to the internet was even more mundane -- it was just email and the ability to telnet so I could do my programming assignments.

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#26

Post by serverholic »

capableweb wrote: post #12

> Philanthropy is my full-time job these days, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how—in addition to helping people be more productive—AI can reduce some of the world’s worst inequities. Globally, the worst inequity is in health: 5 million children under the age of 5 die every year. One great first step Open AI can take towards this is by actually making their models open. As long as the models are intentionally kept…

It’s interesting how the first benefit he lists for AI is productivity. It was a similar message in one of OpenAI’s recent blog posts.

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#27

Post by marcodiego »

capableweb wrote: post #12

> Philanthropy is my full-time job these days, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how—in addition to helping people be more productive—AI can reduce some of the world’s worst inequities. Globally, the worst inequity is in health: 5 million children under the age of 5 die every year. One great first step Open AI can take towards this is by actually making their models open. As long as the models are intentionally kept…

> [...] reduce some of the world’s worst inequities.

Is it fair to say that 90's and early 2000's microsoft was a great proponent and enabler of such inequalities?

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#28

Post by gfodor »

deathanatos wrote: post #16

Oh please . This is such a trope at this point. We asked ChatGPT a question about a system the other day. Its response was, > That number is equivalent to [another number]. That number controls $thing, and that number is the recommended value for thing according to $standard. It relates to $unrelated_thing. It did the math wrong when converting the number from one unit to another. (From days to seconds.) While it got…

You're wrong. I wonder if you've tried GPT-4 yet.

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#29

Post by thwayunion »

deathanatos wrote: post #16

Oh please . This is such a trope at this point. We asked ChatGPT a question about a system the other day. Its response was, > That number is equivalent to [another number]. That number controls $thing, and that number is the recommended value for thing according to $standard. It relates to $unrelated_thing. It did the math wrong when converting the number from one unit to another. (From days to seconds.) While it got…

The part on education was the most cringe for me.

As a general rule: when rich big egos try to improve education, it ends poorly. Consider the Gates Foundation itself trying to MBAify teaching and then being astounded when it (a) didn't improve student outcomes and (b) drove teachers away (not surprising: if you have put up with MBA levels of brain rot you might as well get paid better than teaching can ever sustainably pay) [1].

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-melinda-gates-foundatio...

Re: The Age of AI has begun

#30

Post by paxys »

marcodiego wrote: post #27
capableweb wrote: post #12

> Philanthropy is my full-time job these days, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how—in addition to helping people be more productive—AI can reduce some of the world’s worst inequities. Globally, the worst inequity is in health: 5 million children under the age of 5 die every year. One great first step Open AI can take towards this is by actually making their models open. As long as the models are intentionally kept…

> [...] reduce some of the world’s worst inequities. Is it fair to say that 90's and early 2000's microsoft was a great proponent and enabler of such inequalities?

Microsoft was the main driving force behind bringing down the price of computers and software come to a point where they could be in every home and in every classroom around the world. They have done more to educate people in developing countries and offer them a path out of poverty than maybe any other company in history.
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