Altman is a ruthless capitalist, not a thought leader in any way. Why are we sharing his writing while pretending that he is?
AI (2014)
61–70 of 72 posts
Re: AI (2014)
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Well was Jobs a "doer"? Jobs' talent was that he was an incredibly talented salesman.
Salespeople sell things that already exist. If you can envision new things that would sell well, that's a bit more than sales talent
> Salespeople sell things that already exist. If you can envision new things that would sell well, that's a bit more than sales talent
A lot of gadgets that were claimed by Steve Jobs to have been envisioned by Apple (or rather: by him) - as I wrote: Steve Jobs was an exceptional salesman - already existed before, just in a way that had a little bit more rough edges. These did not sell so well, because the companies did not have a marketing department that made people believe that what they sell is the next big thing.
Re: AI (2014)
#63"If we never figure out how to make computers creative, then there will be a very natural division of labor between man and machine." Even if AI can't reach (yet) the creativity level, it performs well while trying, at least for now. Who knows in the near future? So far, the roadmap is clear. The AI push is causing major layoffs in the tech and crypto industries nowadays. But we have been receiving the message "adapt…
> We have created these machines, and now we have to deal with them.
"We" didn't create these machines. Some assholes did
I'm personally in favor of killing the assholes and destroying the machines, forgetting they ever existed.
Not a popular opinion I guess, so instead we'll just continue on until they replace and kill us. Hooray!
Re: AI (2014)
#64Altman is a ruthless capitalist, not a thought leader in any way. Why are we sharing his writing while pretending that he is?
Ruthless capitalists are worshipped in the tech industry
Re: AI (2014)
#65> And maybe we don't want to build machines that are concious in this sense. The most positive outcome I can think of is one where computers get really good at doing, and humans get really good at thinking. If we never figure out how to make computers creative, then there will be a very natural division of labor between man and machine. This is where LLM is currently going. Not really AGI since they can't think like…
That's an expression of class thinking from the beginning IMO. People think of themselves as thinkers and creators, while those who do labour they rely on without getting too much into details are merely doers and can ideally be replaced. But it's really thinking and creativity all the way down if you try to learn to do things well
I think this is what makes me uneasy about the whole LLM/"consciousness" debate. I may be wrong, but as far as I know, we still don't really understand how a bunch of feedforward networks and attention modules result in the kind of crazy semantic context understanding and planning-in-human-language behavior we observe in LLMs. Neither do we know how the billions of neurons in a human brain do it.
The debate how similar or dissimilar LLMs are to brains wasn't solved by any kind of scientific finding, it feels we just sort of decided at some point that they'd have to be fundamentally different, because everything else would be highly problematic.
Re: AI (2014)
#66> The most positive outcome I can think of is one where computers get really good at doing, and humans get really good at thinking. If we never figure out how to make computers creative, then there will be a very natural division of labor between man and machine. Man will do nothing and machine will do everything. That's a bleak world no one is preparing for. How is that universal basic income scheme coming along?
That world is not necessarily bleak. We currently have two broad mechanisms to equate people's value. *Employees:* Easy to replace = Low Salary = Gets Few Resources Hard to replace = High Salary = Gets Many Resources *Entrepreneurs:* Output consumed low = Low Pay = Gets Few Resources Output consumed high = High Pay = Gets Many Resources (Resource consumption ignored) In a world where machines do everything, aspects o…
What makes rich people special is that they have things normal people do not have. They have material wealth with which they can derive power. They don't want to share it now and they won't in the future. Do you really think that these people who have spent so much time and effort hoarding their wealth want to share it with everyone? Absolutely not.
Re: AI (2014)
#67I model LLMs as searchers. Give the input search and they match an output. The massiveness of the parameters and training data let them map data in a way searching looks like human thinking. They can also permutate a little and still stay in a space that can overlap with reality.
The human brain may be doing a very similar thing though, search and permutation via searched rules. It may be doing it just in a functional way, with more ability to search on massive data that may be with holes but filled with synthetic data via mind subprocesses on learned rules.
I think machines can eventually get there, especially if we can figure out how to harness continuous models instead of discrete ones. And I have a feeling that functional analysis may be the key.
Re: AI (2014)
#68I model LLMs as searchers. Give the input search and they match an output. The massiveness of the parameters and training data let them map data in a way searching looks like human thinking. They can also permutate a little and still stay in a space that can overlap with reality. The human brain may be doing a very similar thing though, search and permutation via searched rules. It may be doing it just in a functiona…
It's an interesting way to think about it. For every word you say, every message you write, every task you do, every thought you have, every subtle cue you give, there is a statistically best response / follow up / output.
And all of that can distilled and stored into such a small amount of data. If that's really how consciousness works in our mind (just another representation of "output") it's fascinating.
The repercussions though could be concerning. On one hand it means things like consciousness upload will be possible. On the other hand it means security agencies can monitor people and figure out who is (literally) committing thought crime. They'd just need to search the space and figure out what weights a person's internal model runs on - and you wouldn't actually need that much reference material to do it. Basically Minority Report.
Re: AI (2014)
#69I found Sam's early 2015 posts on machine superintelligence and regulation [1] [2] to be even more interesting in hindsight, given OpenAI's accelerationist bent of late, OpenAI president Greg Brockman's lobbying efforts against AI regulation, and frequent accusations of attempted regulatory capture.
[1] https://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-1 [2] https://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-2
Sam's recommendations at the time include: 1) Provide a framework to observe progress… 2) Given how disastrous a bug could be, require development safeguards to reduce the risk of the accident case. For example, beyond a certain checkpoint, we could require development happen only on airgapped computers…, require that certain parts of the software be subject to third-party code reviews, etc. 3) Require that the first SMI developed have as part of its operating rules that a) it can’t cause any direct or indirect harm to humanity (i.e. Asimov’s zeroeth law), b) it should detect other SMI being developed but take no action beyond detection, c) other than required for part b, have no effect on the world. … 4) Provide lots of funding for R+D for groups that comply with all of this, especially for groups doing safety research. 5) Provide a longer-term framework for how we figure out a safe and happy future for coexisting with SMI…
Also, in his acknowledgments he gives the greatest thanks to onetime partner, now rival, Dario Amodei.
Re: AI (2014)
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Well was Jobs a "doer"? Jobs' talent was that he was an incredibly talented salesman.
Salespeople sell things that already exist. If you can envision new things that would sell well, that's a bit more than sales talent
Have you ever heard of Steve Jobs?