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How to Build the Future: Demis Hassabis [video]

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Re: How to Build the Future: Demis Hassabis [video]

#31

Post by achandra03 »

jdw64 wrote: post #8

How would someone with an intellect like Demis Hassabis think? I want to learn to think more like him. What differences between his way of thinking and mine create such a powerful gap? If I could understand those differences, I might also understand how to narrow that gap. And if we could identify the causes of that gap, perhaps humans in general could develop much further. I truly envy his intelligence. When I read…

I think he's just wired differently. Raw IQ is usually overrated IMO, but this is one of the cases where I believe the significant difference is critical.

Re: How to Build the Future: Demis Hassabis [video]

#33

Post by libraryofbabel »

moab wrote: post #22
libraryofbabel wrote: post #11

Is anyone else reading Sebastian Mallaby’s new book about Demis and Deepmind: The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence ? It’s pretty good, and goes a lot into his background before Deepmind (chess kid, developing games at bullfrog, CS at Cambridge, bullfrog again, games startup…). He’s certainly an interesting guy, and as others are pointing out, more thoughtful and earnest…

Bro, are we reading the same book? The book is totally uncritical of the subject and paints him like the second coming of christ. It feels like GDM wanted a canonization of Hassabis, and the writer simply obliged. Also, how does everything that GDM did keep coming back to some vague ideas in the guy's thesis? He is a great leader, no doubt, but him winning the Nobel Prize was just a huge joke. Out of all the heads of…

Not a “bro” (there are women on this site you know), and perhaps you’re missing the British understatement in my “maybe a little too uncritical of its subject” line. Obviously the book is totally biased in favor of Hassabis and Deepmind. That doesn’t mean it’s not an interesting read and that doesn’t mean the connection between his experience in the games industry and Deepmind’s early success isn’t there. And I think the book does highlight his most critical skill, which is projecting a Reality Distortion Field to get other smart people to believe in things he has in mind that are still very speculative bets.

Like I already said, bias is inevitable in a book where the writer gets access (to the point of interviewing Hassabis in a North London pub every month), but the benefit to readers is that you do get a lot more insight into what makes the guy tick than you would in a book written by an outsider. I certainly learned a lot and just because I did doesn’t mean I’m buying into some cult of tech hero worship.

Re: How to Build the Future: Demis Hassabis [video]

#34

Post by 0x3f »

mentalgear wrote: post #4

People doing frontier research in knowledge representation & reasoning are worrying that soon, with the merging of LLM and knowledge graphs, automated 'everything' from research to production, will be possible. This implies that 'human cleverness' will get you nowhere any more and the only limits will then be computation - a resource Big Tech is hard at work completely walling normal people out of.

What exactly is 'merging' here? Existing formal knowledgebases with LLMs? I don't think that's anywhere near human knowledge and thus ability to make novel connections. And autoformalization is... basically not happening soon, so we're still ultimately bottlenecked there.

Re: How to Build the Future: Demis Hassabis [video]

#35

Post by 0x3f »

jdw64 wrote: post #8

How would someone with an intellect like Demis Hassabis think? I want to learn to think more like him. What differences between his way of thinking and mine create such a powerful gap? If I could understand those differences, I might also understand how to narrow that gap. And if we could identify the causes of that gap, perhaps humans in general could develop much further. I truly envy his intelligence. When I read…

I suspect Demis 'gapped' you structurally (upbringing, early decisions, luck, positioning), moreso than via intelligence, which doesn't actually vary that widely in humans.

Re: How to Build the Future: Demis Hassabis [video]

#36

Post by jatora »

libraryofbabel wrote: post #33
moab wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bro, are we reading the same book? The book is totally uncritical of the subject and paints him like the second coming of christ. It feels like GDM wanted a canonization of Hassabis, and the writer simply obliged. Also, how does everything that GDM did keep coming back to some vague ideas in the guy's thesis? He is a great leader, no doubt, but him winning the Nobel Prize was just a huge joke. Out of all the heads of…

Not a “bro” (there are women on this site you know), and perhaps you’re missing the British understatement in my “maybe a little too uncritical of its subject” line. Obviously the book is totally biased in favor of Hassabis and Deepmind. That doesn’t mean it’s not an interesting read and that doesn’t mean the connection between his experience in the games industry and Deepmind’s early success isn’t there. And I think…

"bro" doesn't mean male in this context. It's just a general exclamation bro

Re: How to Build the Future: Demis Hassabis [video]

#37

Post by jatora »

0x3f wrote: post #35
jdw64 wrote: post #8

How would someone with an intellect like Demis Hassabis think? I want to learn to think more like him. What differences between his way of thinking and mine create such a powerful gap? If I could understand those differences, I might also understand how to narrow that gap. And if we could identify the causes of that gap, perhaps humans in general could develop much further. I truly envy his intelligence. When I read…

I suspect Demis 'gapped' you structurally (upbringing, early decisions, luck, positioning), moreso than via intelligence, which doesn't actually vary that widely in humans.

Doesn't vary that widely in humans? Do you have a source for that?

Re: How to Build the Future: Demis Hassabis [video]

#38

Post by erpellan »

jatora wrote: post #36
libraryofbabel wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a “bro” (there are women on this site you know), and perhaps you’re missing the British understatement in my “maybe a little too uncritical of its subject” line. Obviously the book is totally biased in favor of Hassabis and Deepmind. That doesn’t mean it’s not an interesting read and that doesn’t mean the connection between his experience in the games industry and Deepmind’s early success isn’t there. And I think…

"bro" doesn't mean male in this context. It's just a general exclamation bro

Tell it like it is, sis.

Re: How to Build the Future: Demis Hassabis [video]

#39

Post by rhubarbtree »

lnenad wrote: post #3

There's really a few people leading the AI charge that I think would actually embody the kind of character needed for such a role than Demis. I don't know if he's fooling the public and deeply inside represents a person more aligned with Altman; but I'm really happy he's at the top with the public information I've seen/read about him. I'm hoping Google wins the race and builds a moat so that the other more nefarious…

It’s plausible he is as imagined. But selling to Google makes that irrelevant. His job is to serve their bottom line and they’ve done a lot of work on ads etc. He won’t maintain control.

Re: How to Build the Future: Demis Hassabis [video]

#40

Post by rl3 »

moab wrote: post #22
libraryofbabel wrote: post #11

Is anyone else reading Sebastian Mallaby’s new book about Demis and Deepmind: The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence ? It’s pretty good, and goes a lot into his background before Deepmind (chess kid, developing games at bullfrog, CS at Cambridge, bullfrog again, games startup…). He’s certainly an interesting guy, and as others are pointing out, more thoughtful and earnest…

Bro, are we reading the same book? The book is totally uncritical of the subject and paints him like the second coming of christ. It feels like GDM wanted a canonization of Hassabis, and the writer simply obliged. Also, how does everything that GDM did keep coming back to some vague ideas in the guy's thesis? He is a great leader, no doubt, but him winning the Nobel Prize was just a huge joke. Out of all the heads of…

>Dennis is the best, but the book did him a disservice by painting an unrealistically sunny picture of him as some kind of visionary figure.

Wait, 'unrealistically sunny'? You better not be talking about Dennis from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, because we're all screwed if so.

Then again, the western AI landscape has become somewhat stale recently. Claude and Gemini may have cute names, but they all pale in comparison to The Golden God.

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