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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?

#201
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not true. It bans regulation at the state and local level, not at the federal level.

I haven't followed those discussions (assuming there have been any kind of public discussions) but I guess the justification behind this is that IA is such a strategic industry for the USA that no state should dare to interfere. Like, say, the development of nuclear weapons. Wouldn't that have been awfull for the US people if, for instance, say the state of Nevada or the Marshall Islands could have banned nuclear tes…

Yes, you're certainly right about that, without the /s.

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

#202

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…

> Hari Seldon is a fictional character in the Foundation series of novels by Isaac Asimov. In his capacity as mathematics professor at Streeling University on the planet Trantor, Seldon develops psychohistory, an algorithmic science that allows him to predict the future in probabilistic terms

- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hari_Seldon

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

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hold on a sec. "HBD" is not a field of study; it's a meme ecosystem. There are (at least) two fields of actual scientific study that intersect with HBD: psychometrics, the subspecialty of psychology that deals in IQ measurement and twin studies, and molecular genetics, the quantitative subspecialty of genetics that studies correlations in the genome across large populations with marked traits (which can include thing…

I'm not sure I understood your point.

In my root comment, when I said "good point" I didn't mean good point as good, it was meant as a good point of maybe not taking seriously whatever he says. I realize it wasn't clear because reading my root comment again I'm not sure either what it was meant to be understood by the readers

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

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a bit disquieting though that these predictions instead of being pushed farther away are converging to a time even closer than originally imagined. Some breakthroughs and doomsday scenarios are constantly placed thirty years into the future; this seems to be actually getting closer earlier than imagined.

For the people imagining it yes For many of us the conversation hasn't gotten any less ridiculous just because computers can talk now

> just because computers can talk now

I find it astounding that some people appear completely unable to grasp what this really means and what the implications are.

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

#205
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the big thing that people never mention is, where will these evil AIs escape to? This is anthropomorphizing things. The AI does not need to switch "data center". It "escapes" in the sense of working past human control measures. That might involve entertaining the human owners with seemingly correct / useful answers while spending compute time on the AI's own pursuits. That might involve contaminating less c…

Why would an AI want to do any of that? What's missing from all the conversations anthropomorphizing AI is an explanation for where desire and goal making comes from. I'm sympathetic to asimovian paradoxes where the AI is trying to follow it's main directive and that has unforeseen consequences, but where does this idea come from that an artificial mind - with no body no mortality no sex no taste - would ever come up…

Because it's there?

The question raised was "where would they go". That's a weird place to raise "why would they go?" Isn't that most likely an entirely separate concern?

Perhaps "why?" is an even broader field. From a biological "because there is compute power available", to a more by-definition "because it's independently intelligent - which kind of requires not-limited to answering human questions".

But yes, motivation of an AGI is an interesting question and lack of body kinda a minor detail except to the few people that seem to claim that you can't be intelligent is you don't have a body.

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

#206

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…

Why would they need to escape?

They can just threaten global extinction by launching one or two nukes.

Haven’t you seen the excellent documentaries The Colossus? Or The Terminator?

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

#207

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…

Do you feel that you are shifting goalposts a bit when quibbling over whether AI will kill everyone in 2030 or 2035? As of 10 years ago, the entire conversation would have seemed ridiculous. Now we're talking about single digit timeline differences to the singularity or extinction. Come on man.

I mean... neither of those is going to happen so it's pretty silly.

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

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI meaningfuloy replacing people is a huge "what if" scenario still. It is sort of laughable that people treat it as a given.

I think that replace as in company with no employees is very farfetched. But if "AI" increases productivity by 10% in an industry, it will tend to reduce demand for employees. look at say internet shop vs bricks and mortar: you need far less staff to service a much larger customer base. manufacture for example, there is a constant drive to automate more and more in mass production. If you compare car building now vs…

That is actually a good point. I fully agree that we are at a level where AI can displace some labor due to an increase in productivity, if demand for the increased productivity does not exist.

In software development, a theoretical 20% increase in productivity without a 20% increase in demand could technically mean that somewhere in between 0% and 20% of your workforce is now unnecessary. And this is indeed true across many other industries.

And I fully agree we don't need 100% unemployment to have catastrophic results. Hell, 10% unemployment is already enough to make things pretty grim out there.

But you will agree that "AI increases productivity that reduces the amount of labor needed" is substantially different from "AI replaces humans". Framing is important if we want to have a meaningful conversation and speak the same language.

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

#209

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? Anyw…

This is how I feel about Neuralink and pretty much any form of transhumanism as well as humans traveling through space in ships. It's like imagining flying horses (and flying cars, for that matter).

Hey, neuroscientist here. Just FYI, Neuralink is doing some good stuff around implantation surgeries, but that's really about it. They haven't solved the main issue of glial scarring or how to feed information into tissue long term (at least as far as I know).

As far as the neuroscience field is concerned, no-one is able to solve those issues, and we're ~60% sure you can't solve them, ever. My crazy pet theory is to use optogenetics (stimulate with light, not electrodes) and some multipole magnets for nerve shaping. But, that is a legit crazy theory.

Point is, good people, good work, very crazy boss, very unlikely to make stated goal ever.

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

#210
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my favourite answer to the Fermi paradox So, to be clear, you are saying you imagine the odds of any kind of intelligent life escaping that, or getting into that situation and ever evolving in a way where it can reach space again, or just not being interested in robots, or being interested on doing space research despite the robots, or anything else that would make it not apply are lower than 0.000000000001%? EDIT:…

Might I have taken the potential for complete economic collapse because no one's got a paying job any more and billionaires are just sitting there, surrounded by their now useless robots, to the too extreme?

Unless you expect people to react really badly (a nuclear war isn't bad enough, from a large margin), then yes. And by "expect", I mean more certain than people get on physics.
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