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The turbulent AI era is here

gatesnotes.com

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Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#31

If AI is really that powerful, shouldn't someone like Gates be able to end hunger and homelessness with a one-time capital expenditure? Somehow "give people jobs" is the primary problem he wants to solve, not ending poverty. It borderline seems like he's most worried about maintaining the working poor as a valuable societal institution.

Gates is worth about $100B, Elon Musk about $850B. Let's call it $1T altogether. That would be at most about $115 per human on Earth (~8.5B humans). Not sure that is sufficient to "end hunger and homelessness."

let's set aside for a second the fact that this is not how things work, but you are off by an order of magnitude

EDIT: parent comment was edited: it used to say $15

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#32

I'm sorry. I absolutely do not trust Bill Gates. His history of ruthless, cutthroat tactics in the 90s is not easily forgotten and when he proposes things like international organizations to audit everyone's AI[1] I can't help but question his motives. I also don't understand what gives him the moral standing to propose a solution at all. He's not the fucking pope but a ruthless tech businessman with vested financial…

> He's not the fucking pope

No, but he did link to the Pope in this very essay.

Pope Leo XIV, "On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence":

https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/docume...

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#33

If AI is really that powerful, shouldn't someone like Gates be able to end hunger and homelessness with a one-time capital expenditure? Somehow "give people jobs" is the primary problem he wants to solve, not ending poverty. It borderline seems like he's most worried about maintaining the working poor as a valuable societal institution.

He is planning to leverage AI with significant capital expenditures:

> The Gates Foundation has 19 years left of the 20 years in which it will spend its remaining $200 billion. AI will help it achieve its ambitious goals by both accelerating the discovery of vaccines and medicines for HIV, TB, malaria, and malnutrition and helping the healthcare workforce and patients know how to use those tools. The foundation’s goals include cutting the number of children who die every year in half again, as was done from 2000 to 2024. All of our work, not just health but also agriculture and education, will take full advantage of AI.

---

I think "maintaining the working poor" is a strange misread of "give people jobs". His point is that people get a ton of meaning out of their work in our current capitalist system, and regardless of whether or not we change our system in the long term, if we don't do something about jobs in the short term, there will be a civil crisis:

> In a capitalist society, employment is the way most people get the money they need to pay for the basics of life as well as being a key source of dignity and social connection.

> When a community has high unemployment, the ripple effects can be pervasive. Research suggests that in some parts of the United States, factory closures contribute to a rise in deaths from opioid overdoses. Now imagine similar pressures on both white-collar and blue-collar workers nationwide.

> Waiting until people are already displaced or underemployed will be too late. AI is a structural challenge to the way our economy is organized, and it requires thinking and action now.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#34
640k ought be enough for this AI. I'm not sure takes like these are helpful. It's widely acknowledged that this is a technological shift, like electricity, like industrialization, etc. It could be (good or bad) but most likely (good AND bad). Does anyone really believe, sincerely, that AI will be the great equalizer? It's a hilarious proposition. They are working their hardest to make sure that its not imo.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#35

All of this is truly bizarre, I hope that we can make sense of this craze in the future. Maybe it will be seen similarly to the dancing crazes of the Middle Ages.

Or maybe it's not just a craze and we'll soon look back and think "I wonder what we might've done differently if we'd been clear-eyed about what was happening."

Unless there's another significant breakthrough, LLMs will only get incremental improvements.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe it's not just a craze and we'll soon look back and think "I wonder what we might've done differently if we'd been clear-eyed about what was happening."

Show me a person who truly revised their priors to put forward a novel solution to AI that isn't just "do the thing that I like and that benefits me in some way". The discourse around all this is a mix of quasi-religious beliefs (pro and con) and blatant opportunism. For Dario and Sam, the solution is "give us a monopoly on this tech". For Gates, it's "create an supranational organization with unprecedented taxation…

https://www.pacingthefrontier.com/ https://ai-2040.com

Can you describe a method of slowing frontier AI development that you yourself would not classify as monopoly-seeking by US AI companies or power-seeking by governments and technocrats?

Limiting the development of powerful AI requires restricting free enterprise in some way, backed by the threat of force; hence, there will always be a cynical framing available.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#39
"In my second one, which I started full time in 2008, I am giving back the wealth I made at Microsoft with the goal of making the world a healthier, better educated, and more equitable place."

Like inventing waterless toilets when people just need access to clean water ?

The sad story is that we don't need innovation, we need better politics.

Oh and he could open source windows, that would make us more equitable for sure.

Re: The turbulent AI era is here

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show me a person who truly revised their priors to put forward a novel solution to AI that isn't just "do the thing that I like and that benefits me in some way". The discourse around all this is a mix of quasi-religious beliefs (pro and con) and blatant opportunism. For Dario and Sam, the solution is "give us a monopoly on this tech". For Gates, it's "create an supranational organization with unprecedented taxation…

https://www.pacingthefrontier.com/ https://ai-2040.com Can you describe a method of slowing frontier AI development that you yourself would not classify as monopoly-seeking by US AI companies or power-seeking by governments and technocrats? Limiting the development of powerful AI requires restricting free enterprise in some way, backed by the threat of force; hence, there will always be a cynical framing available.

In the case of the US AI industry, how about some stricter banking laws to forbid its current circular financing?
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