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Abundant Intelligence

blog.samaltman.com

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81–90 of 136 posts

Re: Abundant Intelligence

#81

Post by tensor »

Sivart13 wrote: post #52

> Maybe with 10 gigawatts of compute, AI can figure out how to cure cancer. Something I've never understood: why do AGI perverts think that a superintelligence is any more likely to "cure cancer" than "create unstoppable super-cancer"

AI will do neither of those things because curing or creating cancer requires physical experiments and trials on real people or animals, as does all science outside of computer science (which is often more math than science).

I can see AI being helpful in generating hypothesis, or potential compounds to synthesize, or helping with literature search, but science is a physical process. You don't generally do science just by sitting there and pondering, despite what the movies suggest.

Re: Abundant Intelligence

#83

Post by TaupeRanger »

"What do you mean you won't give us trillions of dollars? Don't you want to cure cancer??" The models are getting more efficient - there's something very weird going on here - like the AI bubble is trying to merge with an energy/datacenter bubble to create a mega bubble.

Re: Abundant Intelligence

#84

Post by siva7 »

Well, i see the case that those with great power want factories building ai factories, much like a factorio simulation, to solve cancer. Sure sama, you have to name the most noble goal imaginable everyone agrees on, though we know that's not what drives you. AI to become a fundamental right, that won't work as some kind of subscription service, we also agree on this?

Re: Abundant Intelligence

#85

Post by ozten »

tensor wrote: post #81
Sivart13 wrote: post #52

> Maybe with 10 gigawatts of compute, AI can figure out how to cure cancer. Something I've never understood: why do AGI perverts think that a superintelligence is any more likely to "cure cancer" than "create unstoppable super-cancer"

AI will do neither of those things because curing or creating cancer requires physical experiments and trials on real people or animals, as does all science outside of computer science (which is often more math than science). I can see AI being helpful in generating hypothesis, or potential compounds to synthesize, or helping with literature search, but science is a physical process. You don't generally do science ju…

There are a few fully automated wet labs and many semi-autonomous. They are called "Cloud Labs", and they will only become more plentiful. AI can identify and execute the physical experiments after using simulations to filter and score the candidate hypotheses.

Re: Abundant Intelligence

#86

Post by roxolotl »

keiferski wrote: post #44

What's the serious counter-argument to the idea that a) AI will become more ubiquitous and inexpensive and b) economic/geopolitical success will be tied in some way to AI ability? Because I do agree with him on that front. The question is whether the AI industry will end up like airplanes: massively useful technology that somehow isn't a great business to be in. If indeed that is the case, framing OpenAI as a nation-…

I think the most compelling arguments are:

LLMs aren’t AI. These are language processing tools which are highly effective and it turns out language is a large component of intelligence but they aren’t AI alone.

Intelligence isn’t the solution or bottleneck to solving the world’s most pressing problems. Famines are political. We know how to deploy clean energy.

Now that doesn’t quite answer your question but I think it says two things. First that the time horizon to real AI is still way longer than sama is currently considering. Second that AI won’t be as useful as many believe.

Re: Abundant Intelligence

#87

Post by siva7 »

Sivart13 wrote: post #52

> Maybe with 10 gigawatts of compute, AI can figure out how to cure cancer. Something I've never understood: why do AGI perverts think that a superintelligence is any more likely to "cure cancer" than "create unstoppable super-cancer"

Somehow it never crossed my mind, but human civilization could plausibly end in the next 10 years. Many thought if then the cause would be a nuclear war, turns out it's more like the 90's movie 12 monkeys. I would love to be proven wrong, yet there is no international regulation on AI.

Re: Abundant Intelligence

#88

Post by MountDoom »

beeflet wrote: post #49
keiferski wrote: post #44

What's the serious counter-argument to the idea that a) AI will become more ubiquitous and inexpensive and b) economic/geopolitical success will be tied in some way to AI ability? Because I do agree with him on that front. The question is whether the AI industry will end up like airplanes: massively useful technology that somehow isn't a great business to be in. If indeed that is the case, framing OpenAI as a nation-…

Maybe AI will become more ubiquitous. But I predict LLMs will be capped by the amount of training data present in the wild.

Ubiquity doesn't depend on the AI getting much better as much as it depends on the computational cost going down (i.e., better hardware + software optimizations). When you can put a ChatGPT-class model locally on every desktop or phone, people will use it even if the accuracy or safety isn't quite there.

Just look at how people are using Grok on Twitter, or how they're pasting ChatGPT output to win online arguments, or how they're trusting Google AI snippets. This is only gonna escalate.

That said, this is probably not the future Sam Altman is talking about. His vision for the future must justify the sky-high valuations of OpenAI, and cheap ubiquity of this non-proprietary tech runs counter to that. So his "ubiquity" is some sort of special, qualified ubiquity that is 100% dependent on his company.

Re: Abundant Intelligence

#89

Post by woopsn »

The fundamental driver of the economy will be people, as always, because only people define "value".

Word generating machine will not "figure out how to cure cancer" but it could help, obviously. AI is extremely valuable tool but it does not work on my behalf, except in same sense a coin sorter does. It's a tool. I still see this thing confuse left and right (no exaggeration), which would be fine - tools aren't perfect - except for all bullshit from VCs. That is where the danger lies, not with the tool but idolatry.

I am concerned the system encourages suicide, delusional thinking etc. They need to work that out immediately. Must be held to at least the standard of a lawn mower or couch with regard to safety. Probably should make it safe before hooking it up to 10GW power plant. Does not help perception that author of this blog saying how awesome future will be is also building a hideaway bunker for himself.

This is all on you at OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Twitter etc. Whatever happens.

Re: Abundant Intelligence

#90

Post by lioeters »

ksec wrote: post #50

Google: Do no Evil. Apple: Privacy is a fundamental Human right. That is why we must control everything. And stop our user from sharing any form of data other than to Apple. OpenAI: AI is a fundamental Human right..... There is something about Silicon Valley that is philosophically very odd for the past 15 to 20 years.

Looks like they're trying to seem more than a profit-seeking corporation but a way of life, culture and value system.

Who decides what is good and evil, and what are our human rights. Is it any of their business? Through their actions they're shaping society.

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