Carmack seems extremely lucid about his position in the field and the current nature of the field in general. While rogue scientists don't have great odds, Carmack is definitely doing important research studying off-mainstream subjects.
John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence
31–40 of 506 posts
Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence
#32This paragraph took me aback: But if I just look at it and say, if 10 years from now, we have ‘universal remote employees’ that are artificial general intelligences, run on clouds, and people can just dial up and say, ‘I want five Franks today and 10 Amys, and we’re going to deploy them on these jobs,’ and you could just spin up like you can cloud-access computing resources, if you could cloud-access essentially arti…
I think AI will mostly communicate with other AI. For instance you have an AI assistant whom you task to organize a diner. That assistant will then talk to the assistants of all invitees, the assistant of the venue, the cooks, etcetera, and fill in the calendars.
Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence
#33> So, about four years ago, I went on one of my week-long retreats, where I just take a computer and a stack of reference materials and I spend a week kind of reimplementing the fundamentals of the industry. And getting to the point where it’s like, ‘All right, I understand this well enough to have a serious conversation with a researcher about it.’ And I was pretty excited about getting to that level of understandin…
> As much as I respect Carmack as a computer graphics expert, I really doubt his competence in machine learning. He doesn't have a single notable paper published. Publishing papers is the way the academic/scientific world measures notability and/or competence. It's not the way the engineering world that Carmack comes from measures it. They measure it by building. But you're right, we kind of have to just trust that h…
> This is not an accurate account of how he said he developed his knowledge base.
I quoted him directly, because I was expecting this kind of response. He took a week off and implemented some stuff from the ground up and was ready to have serious conversations with AI researchers. The 40 papers by Ilya came later. I have read a 100 ML papers and reviewed preprints. That's quite a low bar, especially if you are prone to skip the math and simply read the abstract and conclusions.
His whole approach gives me a ML for hackers vibe and his thoughts on AGI, if it had come from anyone else, would have been described as word salad.
Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence
#34>And one of the things that I trained myself to do a few decades ago is pulling ideas out and pursuing them in a way where I’m excited about them, knowing that most of them don’t pan out in the end. Much earlier in my career, when I’d have a really bright idea that didn’t work out, I was crushed afterwards. But eventually I got to the point where I’m really good at just shoveling ideas through my processing and shoot…
Well, he's not taking risks anymore by doing this. He has already proven himself, he's rich, and he's paid incredible amounts to do whatever he likes.
Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Education is great, but it can go only so far. We will always have to find things to do for the less gifted in order to provide them with some dignity. Even if they are not strictly needed for reasons of productivity or profitability. Anything else would be inhumane.
Do you see “giftedness” as a 1D score, where someone is either smart or not smart? And presumably this quality happens to correlate with software engineering ability? I think you’re hinting at some very hurtful, dangerous ideas.
That's how I read it as well. Maybe their heart is at the right place but I think "gifted" and "having what happens to be needed right now" are completely different things, at least to me.
Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence
#36>And one of the things that I trained myself to do a few decades ago is pulling ideas out and pursuing them in a way where I’m excited about them, knowing that most of them don’t pan out in the end. Much earlier in my career, when I’d have a really bright idea that didn’t work out, I was crushed afterwards. But eventually I got to the point where I’m really good at just shoveling ideas through my processing and shoot…
Well, he's not taking risks anymore by doing this. He has already proven himself, he's rich, and he's paid incredible amounts to do whatever he likes.
The lesson to be learned is that it’s less risky, not more, to understand that some ideas don’t work out and to have ways to identify failures quickly.
Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence
#37This paragraph took me aback: But if I just look at it and say, if 10 years from now, we have ‘universal remote employees’ that are artificial general intelligences, run on clouds, and people can just dial up and say, ‘I want five Franks today and 10 Amys, and we’re going to deploy them on these jobs,’ and you could just spin up like you can cloud-access computing resources, if you could cloud-access essentially arti…
i'm not holding my breath.
Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Education is great, but it can go only so far. We will always have to find things to do for the less gifted in order to provide them with some dignity. Even if they are not strictly needed for reasons of productivity or profitability. Anything else would be inhumane.
People can find their own outlets if given the basic necessities and enough time. I fear this attitude will lead to job programs where people work a 9-5 and achieve essentially nothing, I.e. bullshit jobs.
seems that as automation has increased bullshit jobs have too, so that future seems very plausible to me.
Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Education is great, but it can go only so far. We will always have to find things to do for the less gifted in order to provide them with some dignity. Even if they are not strictly needed for reasons of productivity or profitability. Anything else would be inhumane.
People can find their own outlets if given the basic necessities and enough time. I fear this attitude will lead to job programs where people work a 9-5 and achieve essentially nothing, I.e. bullshit jobs.
> I fear this attitude will lead to job programs where people work a 9-5 and achieve essentially nothing, I.e. bullshit jobs.
We already have plenty of those in the most profitable industries today.
Re: John Carmack’s ‘Different Path’ to Artificial General Intelligence
#40This paragraph took me aback: But if I just look at it and say, if 10 years from now, we have ‘universal remote employees’ that are artificial general intelligences, run on clouds, and people can just dial up and say, ‘I want five Franks today and 10 Amys, and we’re going to deploy them on these jobs,’ and you could just spin up like you can cloud-access computing resources, if you could cloud-access essentially arti…
AI is going to make education way better and more affordable too. Personalized 1:1 tutoring in any subject for the cost of running a model.
This would be such a godsend when I was in school. When there was no "click" with me and the teacher, I just zoned out and flunked the class. A teacher that is custom made is really a game changer.