Here's to hoping some of that goes to acquiring and open sourcing Mujoco, or to switching OpenAI Gym's default physics to something open source.
Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI
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Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI
#592I could be wrong on this. I think the AI/AGI problem isn’t so much about money and more about not having discovered the unique insight that will make it happen. In other words, someone in a garage might be far more likely to find how to trigger the proverbial inflection point. Throwing money at a problem doesn’t always produce solutions. It can sure accelerate a project down the path it is on...but, if the path is wr…
I dont think this is true at all. I think that NLP models, especially the state of the art ones (in the coming years), will cost a few million to train. Massive volumes of data sucked up by a model.
That is exactly the issue that supports my perspective on this. The fact that we need millions of dollars and massive volumes of data is an indication that we might be going down the wrong path.
Think about how far we are from being able to even get close to what an ant can do. Work it backwards from there.
Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI
#593Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prove me wrong if it is so obvious. As the people at OpenAI have rightly said, AGI is a compute-gated problem. It is a problem that can only be solved with very, very large amounts of compute. The world has some total amount of computing power in terms of silicon based computation. For AGI to happen, there are two requirements: that this total be equal or greater than some theoretical threshold value for AGI and that…
Nothing in that sounds easy. If there are N governments in the world, and they all agree to not regulate to not create general AI, then it's strongly in all of their interests to betray the others, create general AI, and capture the economic growth. Even if general AI is impossible, it's in their interests to develop huge computing capacity, because that's demonstrably economically useful. You are hypothesizing that'…
Like I have said countless times, it’s easy compared to what we get in return. It’s easy to understand in principle. It doesn’t require sophisticated mathematics.
So you think that we should let all countries have whatever weapons they want under your logic. They will develop nukes and chemical weapons regardless of any international agreement that is established, so why even try? The obvious answer is to advance our own nuke technology as fast as possible so that we, the good guys, will lead where the arms race goes.
And AGI is a far greater existential threat than nuclear weapons. It is a greater existential threat than anything else, including global warming. It’s the biggest Pandora’s box in history. The idea of controlling or guiding its impact by having “the good guys” develop AGI first is the precipice of naivety. We lose nothing by trying to stop it. And we stand to gain more than we have ever gained from any coordinated effort. How easy or hard it might be is irrelevant, although it is much easier than basically anyone appreciates.
Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI
#594New York Times has a bit more context > Mr. Nadella said Microsoft would not necessarily invest that billion dollars all at once. It could be doled out over the course of a decade or more. Microsoft is investing dollars that will be fed back into its own business, as OpenAI purchases computing power from the software giant, and the collaboration between the two companies could yield a wide array of technologies. http…
(I work at OpenAI.) > It could be doled out over the course of a decade or more. The NYT article is misleading here. We'll definitely spend the $1B within 5 years, and maybe much faster. We certainly do plan to be a big Azure customer though!
> (I work at OpenAI.)
Can you do an AI CTF like the Stripe distributed systems CTF sometime?
Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI
#595I think I can develop GAI for less, in a shorter time-frame. Doubt anyone believes me enough to give me $$$.
Self fund your project and build a prototype. If you can demonstrate even some limited progress the investor community will drown you in funding.
Once it becomes clear to non specialists that AGI is possible, and possibly imminent, that greatly changes the equation, though. This isn't a technology like any other.
Why wouldn't governments and other groups just seize the prototype? You'd have a hot-potato on your hands and figuring out how to survive might be your biggest concern. Like imagine you suddenly came into possession of a trillion dollars in bearer bonds. If that leaks out, people will come after you, not just by legal means.
All of this skews the calculus towards immediate public disclosure, rather than trying to gain advantage by delaying release.
EDIT> Or going first, and attempting to neutralize all possible competitors. This is a terrible calculus.
Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI
#596> As the waitress approached the table, Sam Altman held up his phone. That made it easier to see the dollar amount typed into an investment contract he had spent the last 30 days negotiating with Microsoft.
> “$1,000,000,000,” it read.
Wow, Sam Altman sounds like an asshole.
Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI
#597Earlier quoted context omitted.
Self fund your project and build a prototype. If you can demonstrate even some limited progress the investor community will drown you in funding.
Once it becomes clear to non specialists that AGI is possible, and possibly imminent, that greatly changes the equation, though. This isn't a technology like any other. Why wouldn't governments and other groups just seize the prototype? You'd have a hot-potato on your hands and figuring out how to survive might be your biggest concern. Like imagine you suddenly came into possession of a trillion dollars in bearer bon…
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Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI
#598Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 90% confidence [0] that creating a self-sustaining nuclear reaction with Uranium was impossible But the fact that Fermi was doing such a calculation in the first place proves that we knew in principle how a fission weapon could work, even if we didn't know "how far off [they] were". As soon as we figured out the moon was just a rock 240,000 miles away, we knew in principle we could go there, even if we didn't know…
> as soon as we figured out the moon was just a rock 240,000 miles away, we knew in principle we could go there, even if we didn't know how far off that would be I have problems agreeing with that specific claim, knowing that both "the rock" and the distance were known to some ancient Greeks around 2200 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipparchus Hipparchus estimated the distance to the Moon in the Earth radi…
Holy shit, that is so impressive. They didn't even have Newton's law of gravity yet.
Once we had Newton's law of gravity though, we knew the distance, radius, mass, and even surface gravity of the moon. Would you say it's fair to say that by then we knew in principle we could go there and walk there?
(P.S. I assume you know this but the way you wrote your comment makes it seem like our measurements of lunar distance are nearly as inaccurate as Hipparchus's, when we actually know it down to the millimeter (thanks to retroreflectors placed by Apollo, actually). The wide variation from 55x to 64x Earth's radius is because it changes over the course of the moon's orbit, due to [edit: primarily its elliptical orbit, and only secondarily] the Sun and Jupiter's gravity.)
Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI
#599Earlier quoted context omitted.
Self fund your project and build a prototype. If you can demonstrate even some limited progress the investor community will drown you in funding.
Once it becomes clear to non specialists that AGI is possible, and possibly imminent, that greatly changes the equation, though. This isn't a technology like any other. Why wouldn't governments and other groups just seize the prototype? You'd have a hot-potato on your hands and figuring out how to survive might be your biggest concern. Like imagine you suddenly came into possession of a trillion dollars in bearer bon…
We're discussing reality here, not paranoid fantasies and conspiracy theories.
Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI
#600Earlier quoted context omitted.
> as soon as we figured out the moon was just a rock 240,000 miles away, we knew in principle we could go there, even if we didn't know how far off that would be I have problems agreeing with that specific claim, knowing that both "the rock" and the distance were known to some ancient Greeks around 2200 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipparchus Hipparchus estimated the distance to the Moon in the Earth radi…
Holy shit, that is so impressive. They didn't even have Newton's law of gravity yet. Once we had Newton's law of gravity though, we knew the distance, radius, mass, and even surface gravity of the moon. Would you say it's fair to say that by then we knew in principle we could go there and walk there? (P.S. I assume you know this but the way you wrote your comment makes it seem like our measurements of lunar distance…
> The wide variation from 55x to 64x Earth's radius is because it changes over the course of the moon's orbit, due to the Sun and Jupiter's gravity
I think you’re not only wrong but even Kepler and Newton already knew that better than you:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_orbit
“Strictly speaking, both bodies revolve around the same focus of the ellipse, the one closer to the more massive body, but when one body is significantly more massive, such as the sun in relation to the earth, the focus may be contained within the larger massing body, and thus the smaller is said to revolve around it.”
But maybe you have some better information?